Owen Kelly and Tomas Träskman conclude a mini-series about cultural experiments in ways of living with a discussion about micro-nations. They look at a variety of micro-nations that range from quirky hobbies and artistic performances to political activism and on to something less easily definable.
They discuss numerous examples including Sealand, which has existed for over fifty years, and Christiania, which had numerous cultural and political effects in the wider world. They also introduce many less well-known examples as well as providing links to literature on micro-nations, including the book by Erwin S. Strauss that many believe kick-started the whole movement.

François Matarasso presents an audio essay, the last in the current series, examining the depoliticisation of community art in Britain between 1970 and 2011. He wrote the essay between 2011 and 2013 and has subsequently revised it for reading here.
He argues that the Thatcher government began a concerted move to recast citizens as consumers, and to move from the communal to the strictly individual. He says that “Community art was used to describe a complex, unstable and contested practice developed by young artists and theatre makers seeking to reinvigorate an art world they saw as bourgeois at best and repressive at worst. The term fell out of favour at the beginning of the 1990s, to be replaced by the seemingly-innocuous alternative, ‘participatory arts’, though the original term is still used by some people and may even be in the process of rehabilitation”.
He produces a detailed a complex argument that uses plenty of contemporary examples ranging from Welfare State and 7:84 to ‘Swagger Jagger’, the first record by Cher Lloyd, who finished fourth in the 2010 series of The X Factor.

In 2022, on months that have a fifth Friday, we have delved into the history of radio to bring back historical examples that let us hear unfiltered aspects of the world as it seemed to our grandparents; something tangentially related to ideas of cultural democracy.
In this episode we conclude with an episode of Dragnet: “perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history”, and one that translated from radio to television with equally popular results.
This episode, A Twenty Two Rifle for Christmas, broadcast on December 22, 1949, features Jack Webb as Sgt Joe Friday and Barton Yarborough as his partner, Sgt Ben Romero in a seasonal case. As always, it features an explicit, albeit paternalistic, moral (in this case, one still sadly applicable).

This month’s Common Practice episode occurs one or two days before the annual Christmas celebrations, depending on where you live. We have some very interesting conversations and interviews coming up in the next few months, but we worried about whether people would have the time and energy to listen to one while preparing the holiday season.
After much discussion we decided to put out a lighter festive podcast featuring Sherlock Holmes. The Night Before Christmas formed the 17th episode of season 6 of the American radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first aired on the Mutual Network (WOR-MBS) on December 24 1945, starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. While not a direct adaptation of an Arthur Conan Doyle story, it derives from the 1892 story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
Petri Wine sponsored the series and you might note the way in which the wine relates to the story. Instead of having advertisements in which the actors step out of character, Petri opted to use one of the first examples of product placement in radio. The man to whom Watson tells the story offers him a glass of wine and they comment on it as part of the narrative.
Interesting and entertaining in its own right, this vintage radio show also serves as an old-fashioned festive greeting from everyone at Miaaw.

In Episode 24 of A Culture of Possibility, François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard talk about Arlene’s forthcoming book. In The Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated? comes at its subject from three angles: paintings, including portraits of of eleven individuals whose work helped Arlene understand and become herself; a short memoir about each person, from James Baldwin to Paulo Freire to Alice Neel to Jane Jacobs; and essays that look at the harm that’s been done by privileging credentialed expertise and devaluing lived knowledge.
Tune in for the book’s backstory including family drama, fifties cultural alienation, outrage at the conversion of social goods to profit centers, a visit to a psychic, a pandemic silver lining, plus Arlene reading excerpts about Nina Simone, museum trustees’ elitism, and Isaiah Berlin!

Owen Kelly and Ken Worpole follow their discussion about the ways in which experiments with living arrangements regularly occur and then reoccur. In this month’s episode they look at cults: at how we can define these, why they grow and spread, and what this means for cultural democracy.
Their conversation begins with an article of Ken Worpole’s called 6 Days in a 70s Utopia, which New Humanist published in their Summer 2019 edition. This recounts the story of a visit from a group in Hackney to a small town in Denmark where a dedicated group led a radical experiment in education and living.
The discussion then broadens to take in questions of definition: between cults and sects, and between religious communities and political groups. This draws from a wide range of reference points.

François Matarasso presents an audio essay suggesting that, as an area of conscious policy, culture has never been more important to democratic states than it is today.
He argues that its importance grew throughout the 20th century as rapidly growing and changing mass media pushed governments to control or restrain its influence. In the past, patronage and repression had been crude but sufficient mechanisms for rulers to extend cultural influence. But in large, democratic, industrial societies, the complexity of cultural activity demanded more sophisticated responses.

In the second part of a two episode podcast, Professor Ana Laura López de la Torre and Sophie Hope discuss the specific role and function of ‘extensión’ at the Universidad de la República, Uruguay.
All academic activity is organised under 3 essential functions: teaching, research and extensión. This last function - loosely translated as ‘outreach’ - is a distinctive element of the Latin-American university movement. Extensión mandates public universities to serve society and the public good. Over the years, the way this has been interpreted and put in practice has changed alongside ideas of democracy, equality, social justice and inclusion. Today, ‘critical extensión’ is a complex field of theoretical and methodological innovation, connected to the fields of critical pedagogy, southern epistemologies and decolonial thought.
Ana Laura talks us through this function of the university and gives us a detailed account of current project working with students and an old site of detention and torture during the dictatorship.