miaaw.net

Arlene Goldbard | Sophie Hope | Owen Kelly | François Matarasso

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

  1. 5d ago

    40 Years Ago: culture & democracy the manifesto

    In this episode Sophie Hope talks with Owen Kelly about the manifesto that the Shelton Trust produced for the 1986 Another Standard Sheffield conference which attempted to add ideas about cultural democracy to the practice of community arts. Mayhem ensued...   Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse EPISODE 92 | NOVEMBER 6 | 2026    PARTICIPANTS SOPHIE HOPE | OWEN KELLY   COMMENTARY In July 1986 Another Standard, the association of community artists, held a conference in Sheffield. A manifesto working group presented the manifesto they had been asked to work on for discussion. Perhaps unfortunately they had not just written but also designed and laid out a manifesto, and arranged with Comedia to have it printed and made available. This was interpreted by some, but not all, of those attending as pre-empting discussion, and this in turn caused a number of disagreements within the movement to surface in ways that made discussion of the manifesto difficult if not impossible. At the end of September this year Owen Kelly, who was one of the three co-writers of the manifesto, attended a seminar at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in central London where he and Sophie led a discussion with participation from others attending. The evening lasted longer than planned and the discussion was lively. We recorded the event intending to produce a live episode, but the sound quality ended up not being as good as we hoped. Sophie and Owen have therefore compared notes from the meeting and undertaken a conversation that reiterates and extends some of the arguments on the night. This time they achieved an audio quality that is actually audible.   REFERENCES Another Standard 1986: Culture & Democracy the manifesto https://dibdibdob.com/stuffandbobs/culture-and-democracy.pdf

    40 Years Ago: culture & democracy the manifesto
  2. Oct 30

    Bold Venture: Bogart & Bacall

    In the fourth episode for 2026 we listen to an episode of Bold Venture, a radio series from the early nineteen fifties to explore storylines, economics and the development of the means of distribution in the mid-twentieth century media industries.   Friday Number 5  EPISODE 23 | OCTOBER 30, 2026   HOST OWEN KELLY   COMMENTARY On months that have a fifth Friday we break from our normal schedule. This year, as we did in 2022, we take an opportunity to delve into the history of radio to bring back some examples that let us hear unfiltered aspects of the world as it seemed to our grandparents. Today go back to July 9 1951, and the 16th episode of a 78 episode series called Bold Venture and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The series features a story that will still sound sadly familiar to listeners today, although the way it is presented and resolved may not. It also raises some interesting issues about the nature of syndication as a deliberate strategy to circumvent the influence of the major radio networks and set up alternative distribution platforms appealing to smaller more local advertisers. Finally, trying to work out how to calculate the value of Bogart and Bacall’s fees in today’s money raises questions about how this calculation is usually carried out in current media journalism. Owen Kelly introduces the episode and explains all this and more.   REFERENCES Old Time Radio on Bold Venture https://oldtime.radio/episodes/bold-venture Old Time Radio Researchers Group on Bold Venture https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Bold_Venture Wikipedia on Bold Venture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_Venture Wikipedia on electrical transcription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_transcription Wikipedia on Frederic W Ziv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ziv Wikipedia on the Frederic W Ziv Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziv_Company

    Bold Venture: Bogart & Bacall
  3. Oct 23

    Music Therapy: “Beauty, Science and Passion”

    This month Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope look at various roles that music therapy has played at Guildhall School of Music and Drama from the 1970s to the 2020s.   Echoes and the Unsaid  EPISODE 09 | SEPTEMBER 23 | 2026   HOSTS Jo Gibson | Sophie Hope   COMMENTARY The Music Therapy postgraduate programme at Guildhall School of Music and Drama was founded in 1967 by Juliette Alvin.   In this episode Jo and Sophie are joined by: Leslie Bunt, who taught on the course from 1980 to 1993 Sarah Hoskyns, who taught on the course from 1982 to 2005 and was programme lead from 1990 Ann Sloboda, who has taught on the course since 1984 and is currently programme lead Donald Wetherick, who has taught on the course since 2003 and completed his PhD in Music Therapy at Guildhall Emma Kenrick, a graduate of the course (2016) who is now a tutor on it, as well as full-time Music Therapist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital The group discuss the origins of the course and the development of Music Therapy as an area of research in its own right.  They talk about the importance of students working on placements alongside staff in different sectors, such as prisons, hospices, schools and hospitals, and the role of clinical improvisation. They also explore how songwriting, listening to meaningful music, and a wider range of instruments, not just piano, have become central to therapy over the years.  Finally, they discuss the need for institutions to support and adequately resource the staff on these courses, not just the students.   REFERENCES The course and research MA Music Therapy at Guildhall School of Music and Drama Listen-In research project Our guests Leslie Bunt Sarah Hoskyns Ann Sloboda Donald Wetherick Emma Kenrick Other people mentioned in the podcast Juliette Alvin Maggie Pickett Ernest Berk Bryony Williams Jonathan Smith Peter Reason John Richer Tony Wigram Elaine Streeter Jackie Robarts Stuart Wood Irene Pujol Helen Bonny Claire Flower Daniel Stern Mercedes Pavlicevic Further reading Atkinson, J. Experience, evidence and what counts in UK music therapy: an arts-based autoethnographic study(thesis) Musgrave, G. (2023). “Music and wellbeing vs. musicians’ wellbeing: Examining the paradox of music-making positively impacting wellbeing, but musicians suffering from poor mental health.” Cultural Trends, 32(3), 280–295

    Music Therapy: “Beauty, Science and Passion”
  4. Oct 9

    No Agenda

    In this month’s episode of Parallel Streams we listen to an episode of a wildly popular podcast called No Agenda, published under a Creative Commons licence. The podcast is hosted as always by Adam Curry, and this episode features Rob Dew as co-host. PARALLEL STREAMS EPISODE 10 | OCTOBER 9 | 2026   PARTICIPANTS Adam Curry | Rob Dew | Owen Kelly   COMMENTARY Wikipedia says that “No Agenda is a podcast co-created by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak. Since its launch, the show has been recorded twice weekly, on Thursdays and Sundays at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, and is primarily focused on deconstructing and critiquing mainstream news media. Following Dvorak's death in July 2026, Curry announced that the podcast would continue, beginning with a memorial episode featuring stories and anecdotes from Dvorak's family and friends”. The show has no advertisers and instead relies entirely on donations. There are no guidelines for the amount and frequency of contributions; instead, these are left to the discretion of the listener, a model called “value for value" by the show's hosts. The show also relies on its listeners—dubbed "producers"—to provide artwork and audio clips. They have over 1,400,000 listeners per episode and - WARNING - the episodes can last up to three hours in length. The episode we have chosen to rebroadcast is episode 1904 titled Junkie Communism and first broadcast on September 17, 2026. It lasts approximately two hours and forty five minutes. REFERENCES The No Agenda website https://noagendashow.net The Tribute to John C Dvorak episode https://noagendashow.net/listen/1889 About Value for Value https://noagendashow.net/about/value4value About the No Agenda community https://noagendashow.net/producers  Adam Curry's microblog http://adam.curry.com/linkblog.html

    No Agenda

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