miaaw.net

once a week audio essays, conversations and discussions
about cultural democracy, community-based art, and the commons.
Podcast Description
once a week audio essays, conversations and discussions
about cultural democracy, community-based art, and the commons.
Episodes
Episodes



Jan 31, 2025
Radio Miaaw
Jan 31, 2025
Jan 31, 2025
46 min
Most months have four Fridays, and we know what to do with them. We put out a podcast: a different but related one for each Friday in the month.
Sometimes, however, a month has five Fridays, and then we do something different - usually celebrating sound in one way or another.
This month we have the first Friday Number Five of 2025 and we start another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences which we last did four years ago.
We will pick a theme for each edition. In this episode we showcase a range of music available on Tribe of Noise, based in Amsterdam and one of the longest running independent platforms for Creative Commons licensed musics.
References
Sal Randolph on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal_Randolph
Tim Kulig: Campaign Intro 1
Tim Kulig’s website, with lots of free-to-use music https://timkulig.com
Tribe of Noise: current featured artists
Michelle Chandler: Can’t Go Home
Mullerette: We Don’t Say
Jenny Dee: Bandit of Love
Morrisa Jeanine: Out The Game
Psalters: Home for Refugees
Michelle Chandler: Ballad of the Roses
Morrisa Jeanine: In The Zone
Psalters: US vs Us
Tim Kulig: Campaign Outro 1



Jan 24, 2025
Reclaiming & using post-colonial land
Jan 24, 2025
Jan 24, 2025
50 min
This episode addresses the question: how can we reclaim land from white colonial power structures? In it Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Nadia Shaikh and Mark Teh, who both made presentations at Social Making 5.
Nadia Shaikh “joined Right to Roam in 2021 after 14 years in the nature conservation sector, convinced that mainstream 'nature protection' wasn't involving people in a meaningful way and that the connections between enclosure, land ownership and our devastating biodiversity loss were too big to ignore. She now lives in Scotland where she enjoys roaming free, rock pooling and kayaking. She covers the campaign’s operations, events, and work on social justice.”
Mark Teh “is a performance maker, researcher, and curator based in Malaysia. His practice is situated primarily in performance, but also operates via exhibitions, education, social interventions, writing, and curating.
He is a member of Five Arts Centre, and graduated with an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London”.
In this episode Hannah, Mark, Nadia and Sophie discuss the different ways in which Right To Roam in England and the artists associated with Five Arts Centre in Kuala Lumpar approach the theory and practice of reclaiming land for democratic use.
Note:
Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, 2024, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.



Jan 17, 2025
A State of Culture
Jan 17, 2025
Jan 17, 2025
1hr 4 min
This month, Owen Kelly joins Arlene Goldbard to discuss a report entitled “State of Culture” from Culture Action Europe, which describes itself as "the major European network of cultural networks, organisations, artists, activists, academics and policymakers. As the only intersectoral network it brings together members and strategic partners from all areas of culture. Culture Action Europe is the political voice of the cultural sector in Europe...."
The group was new to both of us, but since CAE says of itself that "we take care of the cultural ecosystem," cultural democracy is one of the tags on its website, and a few posts mentioning François Matarasso appear, we decided to study the 163-page report so you don't have to!
Tune in to find out what the political voice of the European cultural sector is thinking and saying these days.



Jan 10, 2025
Angharad Davies: Building Trust Relationships
Jan 10, 2025
Jan 10, 2025
20 min
Angharad Davies is an artist and architectural researcher, and a member of public works. Her research examines the communities that exist around local, publicly accessible spaces. She believes in architecture as biography, and writing as an architectural process.
In this episode, we hear about her long term work with communities at Rurban in Poplar, London, and the activities and approaches they use to build relationships with local residents.



Jan 3, 2025
Anarchy, New Society, Colin Ward
Jan 3, 2025
Jan 3, 2025
32 min
Owen Kelly talks to Ken Worpole about just some of the adventures of Colin Ward during his adventurous and varied life. JANUARY 3 | SERIES 2025
STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 79
PARTICIPANTS
Owen Kelly | Ken Worpole
COMMENTARY
In London, on March 29, 2010, The Daily Telegraph published an obituary that began like this. “Colin Ward, who has died aged 85, was Britain's leading anarchist, a pioneer of adventure playgrounds and a champion of allotment holders and tenant co-operatives; he was the former editor of Anarchy magazine and an unlikely holder of the post of education officer of the Town and Country Planning Association”.
His life covered a lot of different territory from architecture to education. He lived “an anarchism rooted in everyday experience, and not necessarily linked to industrial and political struggles. His ideas were heavily influenced by Peter Kropotkin and his concept of mutual aid”.
In his 1973 book <em>Anarchy in Action</em> he wrote “The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism”.
Ken Worpole knew Colin Ward well for many years, and has contributed a chapter to a new book, <em>Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchism</em>, celebrating his life, thought, and work. In this episode he talks with Owen Kelly about some aspects of these.
REFERENCES
Colin Ward: a biography on Wikipedia
Roman Krznaric: an appreciation of the chuckling anarchist
Wayne Price: What can we learn from Colin Ward?
Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchism at Five Leaves Press
The death of Blair Peach, which Ken mentions



Dec 20, 2024
Culture, Food, Justice, Land
Dec 20, 2024
Dec 20, 2024
46 min
François Matarasso is taking a break for medical treatment. We hope he will rejoin us very soon.
On episode 47 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard interviews Clementine Sandison, an artist who works with people in Scotland to build solidarity networks, improve livelihoods and access to training for landworkers, and campaigns on land justice.
Clementine works as co-Director of Alexandra Park Food Forest, a community greenspace in the East end of Glasgow where volunteers produce food, cook and share meals, organize community celebrations, and explore notions of commoning and how to steward public land.



Dec 13, 2024
Embedding creative enterprise models
Dec 13, 2024
Dec 13, 2024
51 min
This episode addresses the question: should embedding creative enterprise models be a fundamental approach to sustaining the future of Socially Engaged Art?
Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Kathrin Böhm from Company Drinks, a community space and cultural enterprise based in Barking and Dagenham; and Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell from Bank Job and Power Station, based in the London Borough of Walthamstow. All three of them participated in Social Making iteration 5.
Company Drinks works as a long term project in which each step of the production, distribution, and planning operates as a public space. They have produced drinks from handpicked ingredients for ten years now, and use social enterprise models as part of their arts practice.
Power Station grew out of a previous project called Bank Job that took over a high street bank and attempted to create an equitable local economy. Power Station works towards making a street in Waltham Forest into a collective power station, with long term plans to create a borough wide, communally owned solar power company.
Note:
Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.



Dec 6, 2024
The Museum of Unrest
Dec 6, 2024
Dec 6, 2024
37 min
The Museum of Unrest acts as a not-for-profit educational project to support artists designers and communities engaged in art and design linked to social and environmental justice. The project is an online continuation of an organisation that has supported
art and social engagement since 1975 when it opened in west London as Paddington Printshop and subsequently became londonprintstudio. Faced with Covid and rising costs the londonprintstudio facilities closed in 2020 but gave birth to the Museum of Unrest.
The first collection went online in January 2024 and included commissioned articles, interviews and links on the topic of artists’ and activists’ museums. The second collection went online last month. Curated by Clive Russell it asks the question: what might we mean by “good design”?
In this episode Owen Kelly talks to John Phillips and Clive Russell about their work, the museum, and where it might all lead.






