In the 13th episode of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard talks with California-based visual artist Cynthia Tom, creator of A Place of One’s Own, “An art-making and exhibition-based organization dedicated to sparking the transformation of women from heartache to resilience.”
They talk about patterns of trauma arising for Asian American and other immigrant women and how art can help to heal them, patriarchy, colonization, and intergenerational relationships.
Cohost François Matarasso is taking a break and will be back in coming months.

Ellis Brooks wrote an article on Medium claiming that “NFTs Are Critical for the Future of Art”. Owen Kelly inquires into the premises of her argument and the remedy she proposes.
He argues that using blockchain technology to authenticate digital artworks will create many more problems than those it set out to solve. He also argues that the problem, as defined in the article, raises complex issues and we should not therefore take it at face value. In fact the opposite: we should interrogate it and see what lies behind it.
Blockchain technology can in principle work to support a digital commons but its current goal seems almost the opposite: to turn every aspect of living into a tradeable asset and every aspect of our living into something we can (and should) buy and sell.

Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope discuss Solidarity Not Charity, written by Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard. This “rapid report” analyses “arts and culture grantmaking in the solidarity economy”, a term that it borrows from a long standing radical, feminist economic movement.
As often, discussing parts of the report leads to a wider discussion about the issues that the report addresses. Can we assume that grantmakers have our interests at heart? Can we assume that we have a working relationship with funders, or should we see ourselves in a struggle against what they stand for?
Whatever happened to the strategies of self-funding that people at many different times and in many parts of the world used to build autonomous oppositional structures? Has this possibility disappeared in the rush to consumption?
The book provides a valuable resource in at least three ways. It presents a coherent argument. It presents a lot of interesting case studies and examples. It serves to trigger wider discussions.

Owen Kelly looks at a few of the common practices that occur in the Christmas season celebrations. Where did Santa Claus come from? How does he differ from Father Christmas? What does the Christkind have to do with any of this (and why does it sound like something from the Stephen Moffatt era of Doctor Who)?
We explore the development of the current incarnation of Santa Claus / Father Christmas during the nineteenth century, in parallel with the invention of shopping as a leisure activity and department stores as event-driven venues where shopping took place.
Finally we travel to Iceland where Vera Vestmann Kristjánsdóttir explains common practices there: including the thirteen Icelandic Santas, their use of potatoes as warnings, and the cat that hunts the coatless.

In the 12th episode of A Culture of Possibility, cohost François Matarasso returns to talk with Arlene Goldbard about the first year of the podcast.
They explore the strength of community-based arts work as reflected in the range of guests, stressing alignment around core values, the importance of emergence and allowing time for the work to unfold—and the obstacles presented by funding bodies and policymakers. It’s a wide-ranging conversation. As Francois says, our guests have been "very different people who work in very different situations and with different ways, but they all have an openness to the world and to each other and to other people. And that I think is a really valuable thing to hold on to at the moment.”
We hope you enjoy it. We also hope you’ll let us know what ideas and experiences you’d like us to feature on the podcast in 2022.

In the third episode Of Friday Number 5 Owen Kelly mused about the limitations that copyright laws impose on musicians’ abilities to use other music as starting points for their own work. He promised to think this through in a more structured way, and this represents his first attempt at doing just that.
In this episode Owen looks at the history of copyright from the invention of printing in 1476 to the creation of the Berne Convention in 1886. He asks when Mickey Mouse will step into the public domain, and points to the ways in which the copyrights laws benefit intermediaries much more than creators. He looks at three different ways in which the current laws fail everybody, writers and readers, musicians and listeners.
Finally he looks at the recent work of Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin who have developed a computer program that has recorded every possible melody (all 68.7 billion of them) via MIDI to a hard drive, and then made them available in the public domain.
He asks what conclusions we might draw from this.

Jo Coleman works as associate tutor in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College, London. She conducts practice-based research into programming practices in local community radio.
Her received her first degree (in Geography) from Cambridge University and began her professional career in radio in the late 1980’s as marketing and public relations executive for the Chiltern Radio network, and later with Jazz FM in London.
Having trained and volunteered in production and presenting at a public access/community cable television and radio station in Northern Virginia, Jo continues to volunteer in community media in the UK, and as a member of the Community Media Association.
“Digital Innovations and the Production of Local Content in Community Radio: Changing Practices in the UK” offers an overview of the new technologies, media forms, and platforms in radio production, shedding light on how digitalization is impacting the routines and experiences of a predominantly volunteer-based workforce.
Jo Coleman argues that despite the benefits of digital media, traditional aspects of programme production remain of vital importance to the interpersonal relationships and values of community radio. In this episode she talks with Sophie Hope about all of this and more.

In the first episode of Common Practice we talked with Agnieszka Pokrywka about her long-standing interest in fermentation and her creation of Ferment Radio which looks at the many feminist and queer theories of fermentation and their political and social implications.
Ferment Radio has now celebrated its first anniversary with an episode in which Tosca Terán discusses her collaborative work with mushrooms with results in some very fungi music.
Tosca Terán works as an interdisciplinary, ecofeminist, human holobiont whose work is located somewhere between art, ecology, and craft. As part of the duo Nanotopia, she takes biodata from non-human organisms as mushroom’s mycelium and translates it into music.
In this episode Owen Kelly introduces the episode and then discusses Ferment Radio’s purpose and future with Agnieszka Pokrywka.
Another podcast with a free podcast inside every packet!