Gunsmoke: Shakespeare

Jo and Sophie talk to programme leaders, tutors, students and the administrator of the two-year postgraduate Leadership programme, which ran from 2007–2019 at Guildhall School of Music and Drama for musicians wanting to develop their practice in socially engaged settings.
This constitutes episode 5 of a special series for miaaw.net about social practice programmes and projects at Guildhall School of Music and Drama from the 1970s–2020s.
 Echoes and the Unsaid 
EPISODE 05 | MAY 22 | 2026 
HOSTS
Jo Gibson | Sophie Hope
COMMENTARY
In this episode, we hear from tutors Jan Hendrickse, Nell Catchpole and Sigrun Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths; administrator Lucy Hunt; and students Preetha Narayanan and Jo Gibson about the beginnings, changes and challenges of the programme.
Topics include: the diverse, international cohort; how staff and students navigated the process of making music in different settings; how meanings of socially engaged practice evolved over time; and the tensions between the programme and the conservatoire context in which it was situated.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the podcast and to the Leadership programme over the years.
 
REFERENCES
Links to websites of the podcast guests:
Jan Hendrickse https://www.janhendrickse.com/
Nell Catchpole https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/staff/nell-catchpole
Sigrun Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/staff/sigrun-saevarsdottir-griffiths
Preetha Narayanan https://www.preethanarayanan.com/
Jo Gibson https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/profile/1884
Past website documenting the Leadership programme
Guildhall Connect https://royalanniversarytrust.org.uk/winners/guildhall-connect-a-large-scale-programme-using-musical-creativity-to-engage-and-inspire-young-people/
Series of reports about Guildhall Connect by Chigusa Futako
Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Guildhall
De-centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research

On Episode 64 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso discuss the ethical issues that arise when working with communities. 
The presentation was recorded live at a session at the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam earlier this Spring.
 
A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY
EPISODE 64 | MAY 15 | 2026 
PARTICIPANTS
Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso
 
COMMENTARY
In the second episode based on live recordings from ICAF in Rotterdam, we hear Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso and their presentation on Community Arts and Ethics.
The episode has three parts. We begin with a short introduction in which Arlene and François set the context for the workshop. We then hear the first part of the workshop - their initial presentation - exactly as it happened. We have deliberately left in the slight imperfections and occasional background noise to preserve as far as possible the atmosphere in the hall. 
At the event this was followed by an interactive feedback session. However it was not possible to obtain permissions from all those present to use their voices. Instead Arlene and François have created a summary of the questions that people raised and the answers they provided. This freshly recorded summary forms the final part of the episode.
 
REFERENCES
Ethics & Participatory Arts, a 2021 pamphlet by Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso https://content.gulbenkian.pt/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/05120439/2021_AC_Ethics-and-Participatory-Art.pdf
ICAF Rotterdam https://icafrotterdam.com/
François: A Restless Art https://arestlessart.com/
François: A Selfless Art https://aselflessart.com/
Arlene on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlene_Goldbard
Arlene’s website  https://arlenegoldbard.com/about-2/
 
 

In this month’s episode of Parallel Streams we listen to an episode of THOUGHT SNACK, with Max Haiven and Sarah Stein Lubrano.
THOUGHT SNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah and Max explore the big ideas that make and break our world.
PARALLEL STREAMS
EPISODE 05 | MAY 8 | 2026
 
PARTICIPANTS
Max Haiven | Owen Kelly | Sarah Stein Lubrano
 
COMMENTARY
Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. He works as an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University in Canada.  His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).
Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. For many years she was the Head of Content at The School of Life in London, Currently she is Head of Research for the The Future Narratives Lab, whose work focuses on narratives about social and political change. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).
Together Max and Sarah founded and now organise Sense & Solidarity which offers a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.
This THOUGHT SNACK podcast was released under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence.
The music in the podcast is by Dan Gouly.
REFERENCES
Three Motivations for Fascists on Soundcloudhttps://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/threefascistmotivations
 
THOUGHT SNACK on Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/thoughtsnack
 
Sense and Solidarity https://senseandsolidarity.org/
 
Sarah Stein Lubrano https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com
 
Max Haiven https://maxhaiven.com/
 

During a discussion about the possible meanings of cultural democracy Sophie Hope raised the concept of structures of feeling that Raymond Williams had developed. 
In this episode we examine this concept in more detail.
 
Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse
 
EPISODE 86 | MAY 1 | 2026 
 
PARTICIPANTS
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly
 
COMMENTARY
Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope dig out their copies of Marxism & Literature and discuss the cultural theory that Raymond Williams develops there. They reflect on Williams’ insistence on keeping in mind that we live our lives as processes, and that cultural theory needs to avoid turning these into finished products that we can dissect at our leisure.
We examine some of the things that this might mean in practice, and what all this might mean for anyone interested in exploring ideas like cultural democracy.
This continues an argument that we have been developing over the last few episodes and the argument will conclude in the next episode, when all the threads (cultural democracy as process, the subtle perils of AI, and the structure of feelings) will come together into a total something that will appear (slightly) greater than the sum of its parts.
Note
The file uploaded on May 1 had some serious audio glitches. Apologies. We uploaded a repaired file on Saturday May 2. Please enjoy this one!
 
References
Oxford Reference online https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100538488
Sean Matthews on Structure & Feeling https://www.academia.edu/1196858/Change_and_theory_in_Raymond_Williamss_Structure_of_Feeling_2001_

Episode 63 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso discuss cultural policy as it really is, and not as policy makers would like you to think of it. 
The presentation was recorded live at a session at the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam a few weeks ago.
 
A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY
 
EPISODE 63 | APRIL 17 | 2026
 PARTICIPANTS
Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso
COMMENTARY
Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso have hosted the A Culture of Possibility podcast for over five years but they have never met face to face - until they finally met late last month at the ICAF Festival in Rotterdam. They had been invited to give two joint workshops: one on cultural policy and community arts, and one on ethics and community arts.
In this episode, we listen to the first part of the first workshop - the initial presentation - exactly as it happened. At the actual event this was followed by an interactive feedback session. Here you are invited to conduct your own experiment at home.
Please note that you may hear a few microphone problems at the beginning of the presentation, and some extraneous noise from time to time; but not very much, and certainly not enough to distract from what Arlene and François have to say.
REFERENCES
ICAF Rotterdam https://icafrotterdam.com/
François: A Restless Art https://arestlessart.com/
François: A Selfless Art https://aselflessart.com/
Arlene on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlene_Goldbard
Arlene’s website https://arlenegoldbard.com/about-2/

In the fourth episode of Parallel Streams we listen to episode 52 of Ferment Radio, with Kirsty Hendry and Aga Pokrywka.
Ferment Radio is “a podcast series that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet”. 
PARALLEL STREAMS
EPISODE 04 | APRIL 10 | 2026
 
PARTICIPANTS
Kirsty Hendry | Owen Kelly | Aga Pokrywka
COMMENTARY
Ferment Radio has produced more than 50 episodes “that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet”. 
They do this because, argue, “Pollution, drought, floods, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change... We are experiencing the consequences of human’s alterations of the Earth’s ecosystems. There is no pristine world. We are living on a broken planet”.
They are Aga Pokrywka and her guests, and their starting points are more diverse than you can imagine, although they all link back to the process of fermentation.
REFERENCES
Ferment Radio https://fermentradio.com
Super Eclectic https://supereclectic.team
Super Eclectic shop https://holvi.com/shop/supereclectic/
Temporary Democracy: https://www.miaaw.net/e/temporary-democracy-in-a-cultural-space/
Sandor Katz: feminist and queer theories of fermentation https://www.miaaw.net/e/common-practice-ferment-radio/
Play that Fungi Music! https://www.miaaw.net/e/play-that-fungi-music/
Life on Mars https://www.miaaw.net/e/common-practice-life-on-mars/
Show me your kitchen https://www.miaaw.net/e/podcasting-ferment-radio/

Rebekah Cupitt and Owen Kelly discuss the possibility of artificial general intelligence; the nature of Claude, and the relationship (if any) between artificial intelligence and creativity. 
They also discuss the meaning of the word excode.
 Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse
 
APRIL 3 | 2026 | EPISODE 85 
PARTICIPANTS
Rebekah Cupitt | Owen Kelly
COMMENTARY
Rebekah Cupitt has a BA (University of Queensland, Australia) and an MA in Social Anthropology (Stockholm University, Sweden) and holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction specialising in Mediated Communication. Rebekah's research focuses on the people who use technology in their everyday lives and the socio-cultural aspects of technology relevant to its design. 
More specifically, Rebekah examines the ways in which technology influences communication in Swedish Sign Language and how it then becomes an active participant in performances of deaf (and hearing) identity in technology and media-rich organisational contexts. 
Rebekah's research takes a post-human and anti-normative approach to techno-utopias which often haunt human-computer interactions and therefore have implications for design. 
In this episode she talks with Owen Kelly about a series of topics she discussed recently at a lecture she gave in the BIDA+ Critical AI series at Birkbeck, University of London. Her talk was entitled Piercing the veil of authority in techno-utopian and AGI-driven futures, although the discussion heads in slightly different directions.
REFERENCES
Anthropic’s blog post about Claude wanting to bloghttps://www.anthropic.com/research/deprecation-updates-opus-3
The Register’s comment on thishttps://www.theregister.com/2026/02/26/anthropic_claude_opus_3_blog/
Claude’s Corner on Substackhttps://substack.com/@claudeopus3
Bringjord, S. and Ferucci, D 1999 Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, A Storytelling Machine. Psychology Press. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BDJ5AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
Buolamwini, J. 2024 Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. Random House 
Chan, A.S. 2013 Networking Peripheries. Technological Future and the Myth of Digital Universalism. The MIT Press.
Shane Legg, co-founder of DeepMind (now GoogleDeepMind) on AGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3u_FAv33G0
 

On Episode 62 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso begin a conversation about co-creation. 
They both believe that co-creation is integral to community-based arts work. But what does it mean? What are its pitfalls? Why does it matter?
 
A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY 
 
EPISODE 62 | FEBRUARY 20 | 2026 
PARTICIPANTS
Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso
COMMENTARY
On Episode 62 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about co-creation. 
Co-creation is integral to community-based arts work. What does it mean? What are its pitfalls? 
Why does it matter? 
REFERENCES
ICAF Rotterdam https://icafrotterdam.com/
A Restless Art https://arestlessart.com/
A Selfless Art https://aselflessart.com/
Traction Opera Project https://arestlessart.com/co-creation/traction/