Susan Jones worked as the director of a-n The Artists Information Company from 1980 to 2014. Her doctoral thesis Artists livelihoods: the artists in arts policy conundrum, Manchester Metropolitan University 2015-2019, exposed baseline flaws in the interrelationship between arts policies and artists’ livelihoods over the last 30 years and articulated a unique new rationale for better support to artists that could enable many more to pursue livelihoods through art practices over a life cycle.
She now works as an independent arts researcher and writer who holds specialist knowledge and insight about the social and political environment for artists and contemporary visual arts.
She has published an essay in the latest issue of Art Monthly looking at the possibility of a new deal for cultural practitioners. In the light of the new UK Labour government, and the opportunities that may or may not bring, Owen Kelly talks to Susan Jones about possible futures.
After the recording Susan pointed out that Owen had referred several times to something called “arts monthly”, when he meant Art Monthly; and that he had mispronounced Nicholas Serota’s name. He should have said Nick Ser-OH-ta.

On April 26 and 27, 2019, seven months before Jeremy Corbyn led the British Labour party to unexpected defeat in a general election, the Raymond Williams Society held its annual conference. Now, in July 2024, as Keir Starmer celebrates a landslide victory for the Labour party, and a new Labour government prepares its long-term agenda, we present a completely re-edited and remixed look at the session on cultural democracy.
The conference addressed the topic: Cultural Production and the Redundancy of Work: precarity, automation and critique. The Movement for Cultural Democracy organised a panel at the conference and Sophie Hope, Nick Mahony and Stephen Pritchard spoke at it.
In this episode Sophie Hope describes some of the context to Owen Kelly, and we listen to live recordings of Nick and Stephen’s presentations.
Nick Mahony’s presentation, “Realising Cultural Democracy”, provides a historical background for the growth of the Movement for Cultural Democracy. He draws a link between the writing of Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution and the birth of this current manifestation of a movement for cultural democracy that began at The World Transformed in Liverpool, in September 2017.
Stephen Pritchard reflects on his childhood in Jarrow in a performance style lecture that uses video and archival sound recordings as part of the presentation. The presentation, “Home Is Where We Start From”, has a poetic air that weaves in critiques of the way working class culture has been deliberately co-opted or dismantled; and the ways in which gentrification and art-washing continue to attempt to do this.

It’s episode 42 of A Culture of Possibility, which means no guest this time. Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about some of the words commonly used in discussions of cultural democracy and community-based arts, include culture, art, authenticity and creativity. Humpty Dumpty may have said “When I use a word, it means exactly what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less,” but we think communication, effectiveness, and collaboration depend on exploring meanings for both differences and points of connection.
What words would like you like explored?
In this discussion Arlene and François draw from the work originated by Raymond Williams n his 1976 book Keywords, which has had many subsequent editions. They also reference New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, edited by Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, and published in 2005; one of several inspired by Williams’ book.

In this ninth episode of ‘Ways of Listening’, socially engaged artist and PhD researcher Alex Parry explores workshop practices in depth. Alex’s bio describes her long-term interest in ‘how things form communities’. She has a history of working in public spaces, creating events and objects that encourage collective experiences.
In a conversation with Hannah Kemp-Welch Alex describes her overlapping interests in collective organising with artistic practices, and how this led to a formative project, intervening in the structure of the seminar to disrupt the usual power dynamics. Alex questions - how do we respond to non-participation? Could there be richness in refusal?
Together with Hannah, Alex discusses the tensions between the requirement or desire to plan a workshop, and creating space to really listen and respond to the room.

According to Gregory Kyle Klug, in a review on Amazon, “Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed is the author’s response to the philosophical juggernaut of materialism in the western world. In it, he exposes the intellectual and spiritual poverty of the view that man is nothing more than a naked ape with advanced computing power; that all reality and knowledge can be reduced to the objective measurement and analysis of physics and chemistry. This has been the prevailing view of scientists and intellectuals in the modern age, beginning with Descartes, and remains so today. In this book, as relevant today as it was in 1977, Schumacher demonstrates the inadequacy of this philosophy, while pointing to the ancient tradition–confirmed by modern writers and mystics–that matter, life, consciousness, and self-awareness represent progressively higher Levels of Being, and that recognition of this hierarchy is essential to a true understanding of the world”.
Owen Kelly takes a sceptical look at A Guide for the Perplexed, the book that E. F. Schumaker considered his most important work. He argues that we should read it, but read it sceptically.

In this episode Sophie talks to Ben Jones, founder of Dingy Butterflies, a community arts organisation based in Gateshead, in the North East of England.
Ben gives us some background to the organisation and an insight into a recent citizen science and arts project called Bees of Bensham.
We learn something about the myths of bees, and that while their behaviours are perhaps the antithesis of cultural democracy, humans learning to keep habitats scruffy and drawing attention to existing biodiversity perhaps is.

Natalia “Nati” Linares is a cultural organizer and communications strategist who works to expand the horizons for economic fairness and stability to the creative community. Through her work as artist and communications organizer and cofounder of Art.coop, an organization that addresses inequality among artists and culture workers, she helps creatives and culture workers change conversations about the role that art plays in changing our social and economic systems.
Natalia spent more than a decade working in the music industry before joining the New Economy Coalition, a network of over 150 groups focused on building the solidarity economy movement in the U.S. and internationally. In 2021, she co-authored the report Solidarity Not Charity: Arts & Culture Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy, which traced the long history of artists organizing for economic justice and pushed funders to invest in solutions to the root causes of systemic failures that leave artists vulnerable. Art.coop supports artistic communities to provide for themselves and increase collective ownership of housing and creative businesses, as well as build solidarity in the field by speaking more openly about the harsh realities of making a living in their industries while tapping into legacies of artist resistance.
In Culture of Possibility #41, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Nati Linares, whose focus is the solidarity economy for artists, with its resist/fight and build model: calling attention to what’s wrong, experimenting with alternatives. We talk about Nati’s grounding in the music business, leading to an understanding of capitalism and how it works or doesn’t for artists, and the research she and her colleagues have done on alternative models for financing artists’ work.

Sound artist and composer Simon James reflects on his recent project with young people in Whitehawk, initiated as part of the Class Divide campaign - fighting against the educational attainment gap in East Brighton.
Sounds recorded during workshops, both on the Whitehawk housing estate and on an adjacent archaeological site, formed part of the exhibition Neolithic Cannibals: Deep Listening to the Unheard. Neolithic Cannibals recreated the Neolithic Camp - a place of communion, celebration, and ritual - as a compassionate listening space inviting audiences to discover Whitehawk's richness, joy, playfulness, and hope, empowering local voices through rarely explored sonic expressions.
Simon discusses the process of the project, and how listening played a central part throughout it.