Simon James - Listening across class divide

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.

Every year some months have five Fridays, and every time this happens we find something to do there: something out of our normal schedule. We try to adopt an annual theme. In 2021 we played music licensed under creative commons licences; in 2022 we found four old radio shows; and in 2023 we looked back to four early episodes of Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse.
This year whenever we stumble into the fifth Friday of a month we will look around us and find a podcast that interests us: one published under a Creative Commons licence that relates in one way or another to our areas of interest.
This show brings you Episode 69 of a podcast called Free as in Freedom, and was released on Tuesday 12 November 2019. It was produced by The Software Freedom Conservancy.
Karen M. Sandler and Bradley M Kuhn discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and move on to talk more generally about the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) causes for software users and developers

This episode is a live recording of an event in which Sophie Hope talks with artists Amy Feneck and Ruth Beale. Together they reflect on 12 years of collaborative practice, spanning art, politics and the ongoing need to talk about economics.
The conversation that forms the heart of this episode was recorded at an event organised by the Alternative School of Economics on 9 March 2023 at Gasworks,in London, England.

In Culture of Possibility #40, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview James Thompson, Professor of Applied and Social Theatre at the University of Manchester.
James Thompson was the founder In Place of War, a project researching and developing arts programs in war zones and has extensive experience working with and writing about theatre under such conditions. The project describes itself as “a global organisation that uses artistic creativity in places impacted by conflict and climate change as a tool for positive change. We enable grassroots change-makers in music, theatre and across the arts to transform cultures of violence and suffering into hope, opportunity and freedom.”
Arlene Goldbard, François and James talk about his journey and his work and what we might learn about shifting perspective from eulogy to criticism, to solidarity, to love, consciously valuing what is good.

Practitioner and researcher Sylvan Baker examines listening within applied theatre practices.
Sylvan has worked across applied theatre, socially engaged arts and education for the past 30 years, and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
He describes a process of using ‘headphone verbatim’ to share testimonies with care-experienced young people, and shows how playback and performance change the resonance of the spoken word.

Last month we completed a three part mini-series and asked for responses. To our surprise the ones we got did not propose digital tools but enquired about a comment in the show notes here at miaaw.net.
We noted that “Rather oddly he does not mention Todoist at all despite the fact that it sits at the heart of his attempts to stay organised. He obviously didn't stay organised long enough to remember to talk about it.”
Tell us more about Todoist, you asked, and ask Owen to explain about his attempts to stay organised.
In this episode, which you can think of as a surprise appendix, Owen Kelly explains some more about his personal organisation. He uses a simplified version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, and uses the ToDoist app as the repository for all his tasks. He also uses it to turn tasks into calendar events which he then stores in CalDav calendars on his NextCloud server where they sync to all his digital devices.

Karen Pilkington and Sophie Hope met doing their duties as board members of a community arts organisation.
They want to get to know each other better and so in this podcast Sophie hears all about Karen’s inspiring work as a community activist in Plymouth, the origins of the Village Hub, how they’ve been organising their work through collaborative decision-making, transparent finances, disaster-proofing and how making relationships, equitable collaborations and decent conversations underpin everything.

In Culture of Possibility #39, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about the difficult conditions community-based artists and groups must work under as austerity measures, encroaching authoritarianism, and challenging world problems increase.
They talk about artists’ strengths in building community for such times, and the importance of uncertainty in nurturing a culture of possibility. They encourage listeners to approach the future from the perspective of readiness: what will be needed to face challenges and opportunities, and how can you develop it?
Listeners are asked to offer their own perspectives and ideas by writing a response in the form of an email. You can find the address to write to at https://miaaw.net