In his own words, Edwin Mingard works as “a socially-engaged visual artist. I work principally with moving image, making standalone artists' film and installations. My work often plays with mainstream and accessible forms – documentary, music video, magazine – so as to move beyond a traditional gallery audience.
“I am interested in who makes moving image work, how, why, and for whom. I often produce work within a discrete community or interest group, making work with a personal connection to my collaborators and broader social relevance. I want to celebrate and make visible the joy of the making process itself and explore its value for individual and collective growth and change. I develop processes to enable diverse groups of people to make work together. This focus is mirrored in the subject matter of my work, which deals with themes around our social environment and relationships with one another”.
In this episode, Edwin Mingard talks to Hannah Kemp-Welch about the need to turn off ‘broadcast mode’. Edwin brings diverse groups of people together to explore social change through moving image. He shares his learning from a long term project with young people in Stoke who were either homeless or recently experienced it, collaborating on a beautiful film called ‘An Intermission’ (2020).

Su 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.
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Susan Jones about the relationships between the visual arts, arts policies, and the nature of artists’ livelihoods. They discuss these issues in relationship to the discussion about these and other related topics at the Aberdeen Summit held in June 2023.

The word falay means running water, accumulated underground through rainfall over millennia. Considered by locals of Ru-us al-Jibal as sacred, it acts as a driving force in the creation of landscapes and social practices.
In Helsinki, Zeynep Falay von Flittner has brought together a collective of transitions designers, systems thinkers, sustainability experts and researchers using system-aware creative practice to catalyse regenerative futures.
In this conversation she discusses what drives her, the work of Falay Design, her personal journey, and her roles as the founder of Design Activists for Regenerative Futures, and as a member of the board of Systems Change Finland.

On Culture of Possibility podcast #34, François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard talk with Ralph Lister, executive director of Take Art in rural Somerset, England.
Take Art has been offering rural touring, projects in dance, theatre, and other arts practices, and working with artists and community groups, including schools, hospitals, day centres, youth clubs and early childhood education for going on four decades.
In this episode, they look at the ways perception, funding, and policy frameworks differ for rural and urban communities, how rural projects are networking and collaborating across Europe, and about the remarkable work Take Art has been able to carry forward, even in challenging times.

Albert Potrony’s website describes him as “an artist with a participatory practice examining ideas of identity, community and language. Potrony is interested in generating social spaces through his projects, and participation from diverse groups and individuals is a key element of his work.”
In this conversation with Hannah Kemp-Welch he introduces his participatory arts practice, describing a recent project with young fathers in Gateshead and former members of an anti-sexist men’s group. Albert and Hannah talk about collaborative practice in detail, and the role of listening within this.
‘Not knowing’ emerges as a key theme.

In this episode Owen Kelly continues a discussion begun last month. He begins by quoting a comment that ARlene Goldbard made after the last episode, and addressing the point she made.
He goes on to look at the relationship between copyright and branding, and at two recent events in which large corporations have attempted to extend the use of trademarks in predatory ways. He looks at Starbucks’ attempts to silence their union and at easyGroup, “Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s private investment company” and their successful attempt to shut down an indie band who have, for the last eight years, called themselves Easy Life.
Not easyLife (as in easyJet), you may note, but that traditional English expression “Easy Life”, as in “she’s opted for the easy life now”.

Sophie Hope talks to Sam Trotman, Director of Scottish Sculpture Workshop about the work SSW do in the rural community of Lumsden.
They focus on how their Community Making Space came about, who uses it and how SSW work with a wide range of makers, near and far.
They talk about working with wool, working with clay, and what’s for lunch.

On Culture of Possibility podcast #33, François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard realize that, having talked a great deal about cultural democracy, they have yet to dive into the second half of that topic.
Many people take democracy for granted, but what is it really: certainly more than majority rule and voting every once in a while.
Where is it practiced? What’s standing in the way of democracy’s full realization and what can we do about it? How can culture advance democracy?