In the 14th episode of A Culture of Possibility, co-hosts François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard interview two accomplished makers of theater with older performers — David Slater (founder and now associate member of Entelechy Arts in South London) and Alan Lyddiard (Artistic Director of The Performance Ensemble in Leeds).
They share their stories, describe their processes in helping to create new forms of theater that serve the people they work with rather than imposing conventional forms that leave them out, and talk about the people and work that have inspired them. Alan explained that "I don't find much interest going to the theater, and seeing the well-made play anymore. I find it dull, mostly. But I find it exceptionally rewarding to be on the streets of a city and see the people working away doing what they do, and being creative in their daily lives. And that's the bit that I would like to capture and try to get hold of and try to work with and get to know better."

In 2015 Thames & Hudson published a book called “Thinking Big: how the evolution of social life shaped the human mind”. The book had three authors: Robin Dunbar, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford; Clive Gamble, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton; and John Gowlett, Professor of Archaeology at Liverpool University.
The book developed out of a seven year research study called “Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain” and argues in favour of the social mind hypothesis. Simply put this states that “a link has always existed between our brains, or more precisely the size of our brains, and the size of our basic social units. We see this link as essential to understanding our evolution as a single, global species that can live in cities the size of Rio de Janeiro, drawing daily on vast amounts of information to manage our lives”.
In this episode of A Genuine Inquiry Owen Kelly asks what relevance the social mind hypothesis has for those interested in developing a coherent theory of cultural democracy.

Gretchen Coombs works as a writer and researcher with a focus on socially engaged art practices in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. She also has a postdoctoral research fellowship in design and creative practice at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Her new book, The Lure of the Social, acts as a creative practice ethnography, which navigates a spectrum where at one end the author works closely with socially engaged artists as part of her ethnographic research, and at the other she tries to find a critical distance to write about their art projects and the institutional structures that support their work, such as art schools and conferences.
Over the course of the book, Coombs introduces readers to artists and their work, and to the key debates and issues facing this fast-growing and emergent field. She navigates the contradictions and paradoxes of this field of practice through description and analysis and, importantly, gives voice to the artists who are working to make art relevant in times of social and political uncertainty.etchen Coombs works as a writer and researcher with a focus on socially engaged art practices in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. She also has a postdoctoral research fellowship in design and creative practice at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Her new book, The Lure of the Social, acts as a creative practice ethnography, which navigates a spectrum where at one end the author works closely with socially engaged artists as part of her ethnographic research, and at the other she tries to find a critical distance to write about their art projects and the institutional structures that support their work, such as art schools and conferences.
Over the course of the book, Coombs introduces readers to artists and their work, and to the key debates and issues facing this fast-growing and emergent field. She navigates the contradictions and paradoxes of this field of practice through description and analysis and, importantly, gives voice to the artists who are working to make art relevant in times of social and political uncertainty.

We have spoken with Abhijit Sinha and Megha Sharma before. They founded Project Defy, based in Bangalore, and dedicated to creating new types of learning spaces in which members of a community can come together and decide what they want to learn for themselves.
In this episode Owen Kelly talks with Abhijit about how Project Defy has coped with the devastation that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused across India. We talk about their rapid changes in approach including their digital and phone-based program FLITE, where Defy facilitators spoke with families over the phone and helped them organize learning at home while in lockdown. We also discuss two other programs that developed or changed radically during the pandemic: DASH and DISPECS.

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.