Miaaw Monthly

Issue 46 | July 2026

Owen Kelly — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Welcome to Wednesday July 1st which, among other things, signals that it is time for another edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of Beehiiv.com, the people who make this possible and relatively simple for us.

We have made more progress on the Miaaw.net website during the last month, and we will try to burst through some significant milestones during summer.

Last month’s newsletter featured some spelling mistakes and some misplaced dates. Our fingers have been attending retraining sessions, and hopefully you will spot the difference.

Having said that, and having noted that this is another month with five Fridays, here come all five of the podcasts for July 2026, each with its own capsule description!

PODCASTS FOR JULY 2026

Friday July 3

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 88

Recently Sophie Hope set about reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men for historical reasons, and because she was curious how it fitted into the history of ethnographical writing (if it did).

She persuaded Owen Kelly to join her in this enterprise, and together they discuss James Agee’s writing and Walker Evan’s photographs as a possible beach option in our annual holiday reading episode.

Friday July 10

Parallel Streams | Episode 7

Owen Kelly introduces a recent episode of Cory Doctorow’s podcast which features a live (and lively) recording of a discussion about his latest book: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.

Friday July 17

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 66

In episode 66 of A Culture of Possibility co-hosts Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with Paulo Lameiro, a musician, educator and musicologist, based in his hometown of Leiria, Portugal.

For decades, he’s led Concertos para Bebes (Concerts for Babies), an amazing ongoing series of interactive performances by professional musicians, created to engage very young children in music.

He started his career in opera as a baritone, and still works on co-created opera, but the center of his work involves collaboration with communities including incarcerated youth and Romani communities.

Friday July 24

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 7

In this episode Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope interview the educator Peter Renshaw, who has been a huge influence on the development of socially engaged practice and research at Guildhall and all the initiatives we’ve heard about in this series so far.

Friday July 31

Friday Number Five | Episode 22

This month continues to the theme of old time radio in which we hunt down old episodes of radio series you may never have even heard of that not only tell a good story but also illustrate in their own quirky ways the manner in which cultural assumptions and the acceptable and unacceptable change and shift over time.

We have still to make up our mind about our choice for this month, which depends in part in finding a high enough quality recording of the episode we want to play.

Stay tuned, as they used to say!

A THOUSAND WORDS

David Cayley (1946 - 2026)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

David Cayley

We learned last week from the newsletter The Convivial Society, run by LM Sacasas, that David Cayley had died on June 10th.

In the words of LM Sacasas:

Cayley was an accomplished journalist and documentarian. For over thirty years, he found a home at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), where he produced CBC Radio’s Ideas series. During this run, his programs explored the work of Charles Taylor, Simone Weil, Richard Sennet, George Grant, and René Girard among many others. Happily, Cayley created a personal website, where he made an archive of these shows available. There is an education to be had in this archive for those with the time to listen.

But it is likely that Cayley will be chiefly remembered as the great advocate and interpreter of the work of his friend, Ivan Illich. Those of you who have been reading the Convivial Society for some time will know that the name of this newsletter is taken from Illich’s work and that my own thinking and writing has been indelibly shaped by my reading of Illich. So, like many others who have sought to learn from Illich, I am, and will remain, in Cayley’s debt.

We heartily agree. Cayley’s interview with Ivan Illich (later turned into a book) is well worth seeking out.

And so is the newsletter The Convivial Society!

Listening Glossary

Hannah Kemp-Welch who ran the very-well-received Ways of Listening podcasts for Miaaw has edited a book called Listening Glossary, which comes out in October from Silver Press.

We will hopefully be talking with Hannah about this in the coming months but we wanted to alert you to it as soon as possible. You can see its Amazon page right here right now!

Pre-ordering is not forbidden!

PubPub

François Matarasso alerted us to something interesting this month: the existence of PubPub, “the open-source, community-led, end-to-end publishing platform for knowledge communities”.

We have just begun exploring this, and will report back when we have something sensible to say. You can begin your own exploration if you click here to access their site.

PubPub is an initiative of Knowledge Futures, “a small team powered by a large community. Click here to find out more about that.

Finally, the dial tone retires…

You might like to know that on June 30th (that’s yesterday to you), Finland closed down its only remaining line-phone network.

From YLE’s website of Finnish news in English:

From Wednesday, the country's landlines will fall silent as telecom operator Elisa retires its fixed-line network for both private customers and businesses.

Elisa's competitor Telia discontinued its own landline service in 2019, while DNA stopped supporting landline networks at the start of this year.

Finland has had a landline telephone network since the 1880s, and Finns were eager early adopters.

By the 1960s, Finland rose to seventh place in Europe for landline subscriptions, and the number of landline phones in Finnish homes peaked in the early 1990s.

The numbers started to steadily decline after that however, with the advent of mobile phones, especially as Finnish firm Nokia became a world leader in the new technology.

And next month…

The August edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, August 5 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

Which science tells us should be on August 7!

Issue 45 | June 2026

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:06:41 +0000

This is the Wednesday before the first Friday of June and so it is time for another edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of Beehiiv.com, the people who make this possible and simple for us.

The Miaaw.net website looks a little more complete this month, because we have found time to go back and add most (but not quite all) of our podcasts to the Series menu. You can now find every episode ever published of A Culture of Possibility, for example, by clicking on the menu item under the Series menu. We will endeavour to get the rest of the episodes attached to the menu during June.

We are aware that not all of the older episodes have their links available on their show-notes. They are not lost though, and they will be added back over the coming months.

Finally, when everything has been fixed and the website looks perfect, we will probably find a reason to move again and start all over. Sisyphus ‘R’ Us!

PODCASTS FOR JUNE 2026

Friday June 5

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 87

In an apparently unexpected plot twist Owen Kelly talked to Claude.ai about what it knows and how it thinks. This began because Owen decided that he would ask Claude to define the difference between AI and AGI, and then developed further.

Much further…

Friday June 12

Parallel Streams | Episode 6

We contacted Bill Cleveland, Host of the ART IS CHANGE Podcast, and Director of Center for the Study of Art & Community in Alameda, Canada.

We asked him to choose an episode that he thought you would like to hear, and to introduce it, and he agreed - and this is that episode.

Friday June 19

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 65

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with Clare Reynolds, codirector of Restoke, a community arts organization in Stoke-on-Trent in the north of England.

They first interviewed her five years ago, and return to discover how Restoke has progressed, and how it has changed after receiving National Portfolio funding from Arts Council England.

Friday January 26

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 6

Over the next two episode we will hear from Peter Renshaw, founder of the Performance and Communication Skills programme at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the 1980s. This initiated placements for music students in schools, prisons and community centres.

Peter has written extensively on music, education and socially engaged practice and is an influential figure in the worlds of community music and collaborative practices.

A THOUSAND WORDS

An example of Ruben Bolling’s cartoons [see below for more details]

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Creative Bureaucracy again

We received this email which began Dear Creative Bureaucrats, and asked

How can creative administration strengthen democracy? This question sits at the heart of this year's Creative Bureaucracy Festival.

At a time when government modernisation has become a top political priority across Europe and beyond, public administrations have a unique opportunity to become more innovative, faster and more effective — and to deliver results that people can truly experience. In doing so, they play a critical role in strengthening democratic trust.

On 11 June 2026, the ninth Creative Bureaucracy Festival will bring together more than 2,000 participants from public administration, politics and civil society in Berlin.

This year's programme addresses key challenges shaping public sector transformation — from federal cooperation and digital transformation to resilience and defence, artificial intelligence, migration, cities as innovation labs, leadership, youth participation and new forms of citizen engagement.

Now you know what’s in store for you if you find yourself in Berlin on June 11!

No ICE in the cup

No ICE in the Cup is a national call to action demanding the World Cup remain joyful, safe and secure for all to enjoy. This means that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no place near the World Cup festivities. We want ICE out of stadiums, out of watch parties, out of local businesses, and off the streets where people will gather to celebrate the game they love.

The World Cup is coming to the United States. It should be a moment of joy and community around the beautiful game of soccer. But for many communities, especially immigrants, the presence of ICE threatens to turn that celebration into a moment of cruelty and fear.

Soccer belongs to the world. Our communities and international visitors deserve to experience it without the threat of government violence or intimidation.

We are artists, organizers, lawyers, athletes, and community members from small businesses, diverse faiths, veterans groups and labor unions from across the country who have come together to make this demand clear: No ICE in the Cup.

You can find out more at the website here: https://www.noiceinthecup.us The action is organised by the US Department of Arts & Culture.

NeuroArts Resource Center is 1 year old

According to a message we received,

The Neuroarts Resource Center was created in response to a strong need for a central meeting ground where the many disciplines involved in neuroarts could connect, collaborate, and share knowledge. Developed through extensive consultation with researchers, artists, clinicians, educators, and partners around the world, the NRC was designed to address key community needs: access to up-to-date research and clinical findings, opportunities to connect across a global network, and dedicated resources for funding and professional development. Today, the NRC serves as a fully searchable, continually updated hub that brings together research, events, opportunities, and tools to support collaboration.

Since its May 2025 launch, the NRC has grown to more than 2,700 members from 168 countries. We have received more than 320,000 page views and over 5,600 content uploads. The content shared spans 15 sectors including 135 disciplines and more than 1,200 research articles, with much more to come.

You can find out more at https://neuroartsblueprint.org.

Who is Ruben Bolling?

According to Wikipedia

Ruben Bolling is a pseudonym for Ken Fisher (born c. 1963 in New Jersey), an American cartoonist and the author of Tom the Dancing Bug.

His work started out apolitical, featuring absurdist humor, parodying comic strip conventions, or critiquing celebrity culture. He came to increasingly satirize conservative politics after the September 11 attacks and Iraq war in the early 2000s. This trend strengthened with the Donald Trump presidency and right-wing populism from 2017-2020, his critiques of which earned him several cartooning awards.

We note there that he has a Substack, which you can find at https://substack.com/@tomthedancingbug/posts and this has several levels, including a free subscription. The free subscription brings you a newsletter every Friday containing up to three comics, some new and some reprints.

You can also find his comics at boingboing.net and at Go Comics, as well as many other places.

And next month…

The February edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, July 1 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

Issue 44 | May 2026

Owen Kelly — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the May 2026 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of Beehiiv.com.

Last month we accidentally reprinted a note from the month before. If you spotted this and decided that you were too polite to mention it then please award yourself a virtual prize of your own choosing.

This month we have all-new content, except for the single note that we have (almost) repeated from last month. This time the repetition is deliberate because the conference invitation is still open and the note is therefore still timely.

PODCASTS FOR MAY 2026

Friday May 1

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 86

The last month has seen a number of interesting developments in the dubious world of artificial intelligence. We have been preparing for this for several months!

In the March edition Owen Kelly offered a new dynamic view of the idea of cultural process as part of a look into the history of “conscious consumption” and its cousin “ethical consumption” .

In the April edition Rebekah Cupitt and Owen Kelly discussed the possibility and likelihood of artificial general intelligence; tand the true nature of Claude.

In this month’s edition Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly go back in time and examine Raymond Williams’ theory of the structure of feeling.

And then next month, if all goes well, Owen Kelly will attempt to tie all this together by looking again at Claude and the problems it raises for creativity, culture and democracy.

Friday May 8

Parallel Streams | Episode 5

Sophie Hope introduces another episode of the Miaaw series where we feature sample episodes of podcasts from other people and places that we think might interest and inspire you..

Friday May 15

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 64

In the April episode of A Culture of Possibility we heard a live recording of co-hosts Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso giving a live workshop on cultural policy and community arts.

In this month’s episode we hear the second part of their adventures at ICAF in Rotterdam. We listen as they present a workshop on ethics and community arts, and this time we think we will be able to include the question and answer session!

Friday May 22

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 5

This episode of Echoes and the Unsaid Sophie has the title Leadership. In it Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope talk to programme leaders, tutors, students and the administrator of the Masters in 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.

We hear from tutors and programme leaders Jan Hendrickse, Nell Catchpole and Sigrun Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths; from Lucy Hunt who administered the course and provided pastoral care for the students; and from Preetha Narayanan and Jo Gibson, students on the programme, about the beginnings, changes and challenges they experienced.

Friday May 29

Friday Number Five | Episode 21

This month sees the second episode of the year of the guaranteed-irregular Friday Number Five, and this year we have returned to the theme of old time radio. We hunt down old episodes of radio series you may never have even heard of that not only tell a good story but also illustrate in their own quirky ways the manner in which cultural assumptions and the acceptable and unacceptable change and shift over time.

We aim to present cultural history in an interesting way that might shake us free of some of our contemporary assumptions.

A THOUSAND WORDS

Cultural history: the world of snuff comics (see below for more details)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Quackery with a university logo

Letters of an ancient alphabet carry a hidden numerological code. Spend enough time deciphering it – covering your whiteboard with notes and formulas – and the secrets of the universe will be revealed to you. This isn’t the plot of an Umberto Eco novel; in Georgia, it almost became an actual field of study.

‘Astrolinguistics’ and ‘astroarchaeology’ – outré pastimes that forge spurious connections between stars, signs and history – very nearly forced their way into Georgia’s mainstream education system. Late last year, a government ordinance turned these quasi-scientific subjects into degree programs at none other than Kutaisi International University (KIU), drawing protests from the nation’s academic community.

We learned this from Eurozine, an online magazine worth exploring. It contains a wide range of articles that relate to the subjects we cover here and in the Miaaw podcasts. You might find the current article on Social Experiments without Experimentalism worth glancing at, for example.

You can find out the whole story, in all its madness, if you click here.

We mentioned this last month, but it remains current so we mention it again here.

You can, if you wish, help to celebrate STP&A's history and collectively contribute to its future. To do this you will need to know that Proposals and Applications for the Mentorship Pilot Program and Conference Scholarship are due May 6.

You can also see the five new tracks for this year's conference on the official STPA conference website.

Snuff, comics, and history

I found the comic shown above recently while bouncing around the web in the old fashioned way. It tells the story of a snuff salesman while pushing the Helme Company’s snuff in almost every panel.

You can find the complete comic if you click here. In a full length “adventure” it shows a snuff salesman turning two young boys onto the idea of using snuff, while their older sister gets ready for a date with the, ahem, pusher.

Don’t know much about snuff? You will!

The comic comes from a site called Comic Book Plus which you might (or might not) find worth exploring for cultural and historical reasons; especially if you feel you don’t have enough bizarre old comics in your life. The site contains many public domain comic books, dime novels, newspaper comic strips, pulp magazines and old time radio shows. They are as they were.

By its very nature it contains some material that would not get printed in the twenty first century. It does, however, offer examples of popular culture from the past 100 or more years as raw material for thought and debate.

Aesthetica Magazine art prize

The Aesthetica website says:

“The Aesthetica Art Prize celebrates contemporary art across a range of media. We're exhibiting and championing some of the world’s most significant talent and contributing towards a global dialogue around today’s creative practices. Aesthetica is part of the UNESCO City of Media Arts network. This award offers artists opportunities for exhibition at a major public gallery alongside publication in Aesthetica Magazine. The winner will receive £10,000 prize money as well as opportunities for wider exposure and development.

“Over the years, winning pieces have reflected upon both social and political structures, questioning the value that we place on the planet and each other. They have pushed the boundaries of form and technique, providing new and inspiring ideas. The Aesthetica Art Prize is a conduit to help us to make sense of the world around us. As we progress – and that’s a term for debate – we must look at what we gain and what we lose. In this world of augmented and virtual reality, constant connections, instant access, the metaverse, phones, selfies and satellites, is loud and intrusive.

“We need to look at the balance of things and understand that there needs to be an equilibrium. We must not be afraid to ask hard questions.”

We mention this not because we expect anyone reading this to grab their cameras and tell their bank manager that £10,000 is on its way, but because you may not have seen or heard of Aesthetica, despite the fact that it “is part of the UNESCO City of Media Arts network”.

We think the website is worth knowing about and looking at. That’s all. And if you have grabbed your camera and phoned your bank manager then we wish you luck!

On the Radical Imagination

You may or may not know about Max Haiven. He describes himself as “a propagandist for an impossible country”. He claims that he “uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination”. He co-wrote a book in 2014 called The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity.

We recently came across a video in which he talks at length about how his conceptions about the radical imagination have changed and developed over the last decade.

If you have an hour to spare, you can watch the video here on YouTube.

He later wrote a book called Art After Money, Money After Art. We hope to speak with him about this sometime this summer. Stay tuned, as people used to say.

And next month…

The June edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday June 3, with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

Whenever date that is!

Issue 43 | April 2026

Owen Kelly — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:16:43 +0000

Welcome to Miaaw Monthly: the monthly newsletter that comes out every month on the first Wednesday before the first Friday of the month. Confused? You will be.

And we should politely inform you that the newsletter arrives courtesy of Beehiiv.com - just in case you have any thoughts of doing your own newsletter and want to know who to approach.

Work on our new-this-year Podbean.com website continues at the speed of fairly nifty molasses, and the first visible fruits should arrive sometime towards the end of April. Once we have the initial changes up and running we will start the laborious process of updating all the episode guides for our old podcasts to the new format.

PODCASTS FOR APRIL 2026

Friday April 3

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 85

In an episode called AGI, Claude & creativity, Rebekah Cupitt and Owen Kelly discuss the possibility and likelihood of artificial general intelligence; the true nature of Claude, the relationship (if any) between artificial intelligence and creativity, and the place of democratic values in all of this.

They also discuss the meaning of the word excode.

Friday April 10

Parallel Streams | Episode 4

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”.

Friday April 17

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 63

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso have hosted a podcast for over five years but they had never met face to face (“in real life” as we used to say) until late last month. They met at the ICAF Festival in Roitterdam, where they had been invited to give a joint lecture.

In Episode 63 of A Culture of Possibility, we hear this lecture play out exactly as it happened.

Friday April 24

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 4

In this episode of Echoes and the Unsaid Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope talk to a group of people involved in the BA Performance and Creative Enterprise (PACE) Programme that ran from 2015-2021 at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

They discuss the background to the course, and reflect on how it challenged the structures of the conservatoire.

A THOUSAND WORDS

The opening night of the ICAF Festival. Photo by Arlene Goldbard

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Slow News

Delayed Gratification is a magazine produced by a group called Slow News, who we have mentioned before.

They have just announced that:

It took us 15 years, but we have finally joined the world of podcasting. The new series is called, quite simply, Delayed Gratification, the Slow News Podcast, and you can find it by searching for that title wherever you usually get your podcasts (head here if you're on Spotify, or here for Apple Podcasts).

Episode one focuses on the news of September 2025, the final month covered by the current issue. It's hosted by Rob and the guests are Emily Hart, who wrote the fascinating issue 60 article about Colombian mercenaries in Ukraine, and James Montague, who wrote an in-depth piece on the aftermath of Israel's bombing of Hamas targets in Qatar.

Episodes two, three and four of the DG podcast will be about October, November and December respectively – and that's the quarter to be covered in issue 61 of Delayed Gratification. We're working hard right now on getting it finished, and it'll be sent to subscribers and shops later in the month. To ensure you get your hands on a copy – and to support our reader-funded independent, original Slow Journalism (we don't take advertising in DG) – you can subscribe here.

Conference Call

We are aware that the amount of money available for presenting at (let alone merely attending) conferences has in many cases dropped to zero or less.

Nonetheless for the one or two who still have the possibility of attending a conference or two, here is one that came to our attention recently.

Social Theory, Politics and the Arts are holding their 50th annual conference at Ohio State University, and the deadline for applications is May 6. You may also apply for a conference scholarship.

You can see the five new tracks for this year's conference on the official STPA conference website.

Ireland’s basic income for artists became permanent

This comes from the February 14th edition of the Positive.News weekly newsletter.

A basic income scheme for artists that launched during the pandemic to kickstart Irish culture was made permanent this week.
Offering participants a weekly stipend of €325 (£283), the €25m (£21m) pilot helped more than 2,000 artists, although many more applied. According to an independent study, the scheme generated €100m (£87m) in “social and economic benefits” to Ireland’s economy.
Elinor O’Donovan (pictured) is among the artists to have been accepted onto the scheme, which was launched by the Irish government in 2022.
“Before I started receiving it, I was working part-time as a receptionist just to be able to afford my rent. I was thinking about moving to a country where I might be able to afford to live a bit cheaper,” she told Positive News.
“Now I work full-time as an artist. [The scheme] has given me the flexibility that the job of an artist requires and has allowed me to take risks. I’ve gone into film and I was able to pay other people to work with me on it.”
Although limited in scope, it’s the world’s first basic income scheme to be made permanent.

This serves as a good example of almost-UBI in action.

Some of us might think that the next step should involve widening its remit to make it available to everyone: to actually make it universal. Then those from the pool of “everyone” who wish to pursue a life as an artist will have the means to do so, as they should; as will those who wish to pursue a life of baking, dancing, mapping their local woods, or spending all day in a nearby pub.

Which, we might say, are also arts.

And next month…

The May edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, April 29 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later, on May 1.

Believe that and you’ll believe anything!

Issue 42 | March 2026

Owen Kelly — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:45:20 +0000

Welcome to Miaaw Monthly: the monthly newsletter that comes out every month on the first Wednesday before the first Friday of the month. Confused? You will be.

And we should politely inform you that the newsletter arrives courtesy of Beehiiv.com - just in case you have any thoughts of doing your own newsletter and want to know who to approach.

Work on our new-this-year Podbean.com website continues at the speed of fairly nifty molasses, and the first visible fruits should arrive sometime towards the end of this month. Once we have the initial changes up and running we will start the laborious process of updating all the episode guides for our old podcasts to the new format.

And, if that isn’t enough, sometime last month we released our 300th podcast.

Miaaw is now officially too old to die young.

PODCASTS FOR MARCH 2026

Friday March 6

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 84

In an episode called All the fun of Conscious Consumption, Owen Kelly delves into the history of “conscious consumption” and its cousin “ethical consumption” and, with his tinfoil hat on, asks whether they constitute a giant diversionary tactic aimed at keeping people busy while discouraging them from seeking the changes the will actually “make a difference”.

Spoiler: they sort of do.

Friday March 13

Parallel Streams | Episode 3

In the third episode of Parallel Streams, where we retransmit podcasts we think relate to Miaaw’s mission, Sophie Hope introduces and contextualises the final episode of Remember the Future Season 2 from art.coop.

What does it mean for philanthropy to exist in relationship to the solidarity economy? What if artists led a redistribution effort to resource arts collectives?

Friday March 20

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 62

In Episode 62 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about the nature of co-creation.

Co-creation is integral to community-based arts work.

What does it mean? What are its pitfalls? Why does it matter?

Friday March 27

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 3

In the third episode of Echoes and the Unsaid Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope meet John Sloboda (Emeritus Professor at Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Director of the Institute), Imogen Flower (researcher and evaluator), Toby Young (Professor of Composition at Guildhall School) and Maia Mackney (Public Engagement and Evaluation Manager at Guildhall School).

They discuss the history and nature of The Institute for Social Impact Research in the Performing Arts at Guildhall School - which ran from 2019 to 2023.

A THOUSAND WORDS

David Harding: a pivotal figure in the Scottish community arts movement.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

David Harding (1937 - 2026)

We heard last week that David Harding, the man who more or less invented the idea of the town artist, has died. For those who don't know of him or his work, here is his description of his own areas of interest, borrowed from his website,

“Visitors and readers of this website will discern that my interests lie in the contemporary development of public art and social/political art in both practice and education; in practice, in terms of my own work and that of other artists; in education, in terms of how those practices can be taught in art schools; in particular my experiences working on the Art and Social Contexts course at Dartington College of Arts and then as founding Head of the Environmental Art course at Glasgow School of Art.”

You will find a fuller obituary of David at MemoriTree. There will be many other obituaries too.

Oh that David Rovics!

Somebody actually asked us, after listening to last month’s episode of Parallel Streams, how different David Rovics’ own performances of his songs are from the AI generated stuff he was talking about on the podcast.

Owen has found an example of exactly the same song performed by The Ministry of Culture (ie David Rovics and Kamala Emanuel: two voices and one guitar) and Ai Tsuno, his imaginary friends. The song is intended as an anthem to raise morale at demonstrations, although Ai Tsuno appears to have ignored that in favour of developing its own plans to enter the Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of Latvia.

Waste six minutes or less comparing the two versions on Owen’s personal website.

Minor Compositions

From Minor Compositions:

In what continues to be a turbulent and unsettling political times – marked by intensifying crises, hardening borders, and shrinking horizons – we want to hold open spaces for conversation, imagination, and collective thinking. The Minor Compositions podcast has always been about thinking together with authors whose work helps us name the present and sketch possible futures. We’re very happy to invite you to the next three live podcast recordings – conversations with authors about their recent books. These sessions are open, informal, and participatory. If you would like to join, listen in, and take part in the discussion, you are warmly welcome. All sessions begin at 7PM UK Time.

23 February, 7PM – Black Surrealist. The Legend of Ted Joans

With Steven Belletto. A conversation on the life and radical imagination of Ted Joans, Black surrealism, and the power of poetic insurgency – an exploration of how art and refusal open unexpected lines of flight.

9 March, 7PM – Communist Ontologies. An Inquiry into the Construction of New Forms of Life

With Bruno Gullì & Richard Gilman-Opalsky. A discussion on ontology and communism as living questions: how new forms of life might be constructed within and against the constraints of the present. Zoom link.

30 March, 7PM – Fables of Re-enchantment. Multiplicity, Imaginary, Revolution

With Stefania Consigliere. A conversation about multiplicity, the imaginary, and re-enchantment — and how revolutionary energies can emerge from storytelling, collective imagination, and renewed relations to the world. Zoom Link.

In difficult times, we believe it matters to gather – even virtually – to think together, to test ideas, to disagree generously, and to cultivate moments of hope and intellectual solidarity. We hope these conversations can offer not only analysis, but also sparks of possibility.

The Logging Off Movement is a scam

Taylor Lorenz founded UserMag.co, a tech and online culture newsletter. She has also written a book called Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.

She recently wrote this in her newsletter:

Over the past few years, a massive industry has emerged around dumb phones and the concept of logging off. From $400 minimalist dumb phones to influencers selling digital detox courses, logging off has become big business. Schools are banning phones. Politicians are blaming screen time. Media outlets are calling Gen Z “addicted.”
But is ditching your smartphone actually the answer? For my latest episode of Power User, I sat down with WIRED journalist Elana Klein to unpack the rise of the logging-off movement. We discuss how reasonable concerns over screen time have metastasized into a consumer movement selling $400 minimalist dumb phones for millions in profit.
We also dive deep into the anti-smartphone moral panic, which is heavily pushed by reactionary politicians and legacy media. We explore the history of our relationship with the internet, from the tech optimism of the early 2010s and the algorithmic shift in 2016 , to the dangerous reality of school phone bans that are leading to AI surveillance and increased police interactions for students.
We also talk about the concept of “smartphone addiction,” what it really means, and why your issues with technology are often manifestations of much larger societal problems.

You can see the video on YouTube. You can then decide how much of her arguments, if any, you wish to take on board.

Be aware that she is a hyperactive GenZ-style pundit, so you might find yourself feeling compelled to subscribe to her newsletter, or to fund her Substack, or to catch her on her YouTube channel, or…

Wherever you are, there she is. [insert emoji here]

Ireland’s basic income for artists became permanent

This comes from the February 14th edition of the Positive.News weekly newsletter.

A basic income scheme for artists that launched during the pandemic to kickstart Irish culture was made permanent this week.
Offering participants a weekly stipend of €325 (£283), the €25m (£21m) pilot helped more than 2,000 artists, although many more applied. According to an independent study, the scheme generated €100m (£87m) in “social and economic benefits” to Ireland’s economy.
Elinor O’Donovan (pictured) is among the artists to have been accepted onto the scheme, which was launched by the Irish government in 2022.
“Before I started receiving it, I was working part-time as a receptionist just to be able to afford my rent. I was thinking about moving to a country where I might be able to afford to live a bit cheaper,” she told Positive News.
“Now I work full-time as an artist. [The scheme] has given me the flexibility that the job of an artist requires and has allowed me to take risks. I’ve gone into film and I was able to pay other people to work with me on it.”
Although limited in scope, it’s the world’s first basic income scheme to be made permanent.

This serves as a good example of almost-UBI in action.

Which, we might say, are also arts.

And next month…

The April edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, April 1 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

Believe that and you’ll believe anything!

Issue 41 | February 2026

Owen Kelly — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 08:02:33 +0000

Welcome to the February 2026 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of Beehiiv.com.

We will be getting the new site, hosted behind the scenes at Podbean.com, but still available publicly and worldwide at miaaw.net, together this month. We still have to add the background pages, figure out a clearer navigational structure, and tidy up the older podcasts to fit the new format. That, or most of that, will be completed by the start of March.

This month we continue our reinvigorated weekly schedule, as we said we would. Here, then, come a list of the podcasts for February 2026.

PODCASTS FOR FEBRUARY 2026

Friday February 6

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 83

In November 2025 Sophie Hope gave a presentation at a conference called Collaborative Futures, organised in Dublin by Create.

In this episode she brings the conference organiser, Damien McGlynn, together with two participants, Megan Atkinson and Silver Kezir, to discuss the program and the outcomes and the possibilities inherent in the idea of collaborative futures.

Friday January 9

Parallel Streams | Episode 2

In last month’s newsletter we quoted from a piece that David Rovics had written about creativity and AI. This month we continue the discussion.

Owen Kelly introduces an episode of his weekly podcast. that looks at the political and cultural impacts of AI. The episode is called Of Babies, bathwater and AI, and it looks at the growth of AI from a number of perspectives and then plays some of the music David Rovics, and Ai Tsuno, his artificial band, have created using his lyrics, his years of experience as a musician and the Suno application.

Friday January 16

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 61

In episode 61 of A Culture of Possibility co-hosts Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with Eugene van Erven, a founder of ICAF, the International Community Arts Festival based in Rotterdam.

We covered the last iteration at length in a limited series of podcasts, and now the 10th edition is coming right up in March. Eugene discusses his journey and the way the festival has developed.

Friday January 23

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 2

In the second episode of Echoes and the Unsaid Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope start their story in earnest. This episode is called DISRUPT and for the moment that’s all we know about it. They know a lot more, and we will find out exactly what in a few weeks’ time.

THOUSAND WORDS

Landing in the Indian Ocean

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

The Herds

Accoring to their official website The Herds offered a “groundbreaking public art and climate initiative designed to inspire action and renew our bond with the natural world. From April to August 2025, life-size puppet animals stormed through city centers on a 20,000km journey from Kinshasa in the Congo Basin to Nordkapp in the Arctic Circle, fleeing climate disaster.

Their “journey began in Kinshasa, DRC, on the banks of the mighty Congo River. In April 2025 they emerged from the forests of the Congo Basin - the ‘lungs of the world’. They forged a powerful path through the sun-drenched avenues of San Fernando, Madrid, Marseille, Paris and Venice and on to the bustling streets of London and Greater Manchester. Thousands met us in the streets to experience public art that comes face to face with the climate crisis.”

In Rotterdam this Spring The Herds will appear at ICAF 2026.

On the afternoons of Friday 27 and Saturday 28 March, public events will take place as part of the ICAF programme, alongside a lecture on climate for professionals and students, and a dedicated educational programme for primary schools. In this way, ICAF say,, The Herds lives not only in the streets, but also in neighbourhoods, schools and conversations that continue beyond the festival.”

Taking Back Our Data

Zines never died. They just retreated into the background and some of them went digital. Kelly Baker has created a zine called Taking Back Our Data, based on a conversation with René Pérez. She describes the zine like this:

What are proactive measures we can all take to protect ourselves and our data? I am not interested in spreading fear or stoking anxiety. I would instead offer this as an invitation for all of us to become better informed digital citizens.
You may, like me, initially feel overwhelmed and not know where to start. But I believe we don’t have to let perfection be the enemy of good when it comes to digital security. Here’s how.

You can find the zine online by clicking here. The zine comes with the nifty ability to let you scroll through it right onscreen. You can also download and print a paper version, and there are folding instructions for this.

The zine, whose full title is Taking Back Our Data: Digital Security for Artists & Activists constitutes the 6th action in the USDAC’s Vital Conversations series. You can catch up with previous actions by clicking here.

Old news and new reading

The start of last month saw a lot of copyrighted material come to the end of its protected life and enter the public domain. Among the newly available out-of-copyright material you can find a number of books. Standard Ebooks have produced a list of 20 of the best books entering the public domain in 2026.

Who, you might ask, are Standard Ebooks? Interestingly, they are “a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks are already believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing the entirety of each ebook file into the public domain. All the ebooks we produce are distributed free of cost and free of U.S. copyright restrictions.”

You can find out more at the Standard Ebooks website.

Is Sealand a real country?

You may never have wondered about this. Or the question may have caused you sleepless nights. If you fall into the second category then you should be relieved to know that the Sealand government have now produced a detailed answer to this question.

The answer, unsurprisingly, comes out as a resounding “yes”.

If you don’t know anything at all about Sealand, then you should know that it exists as a marine fort, built as a wartime defence and then abandoned, 4 miles off the English coastline. It became a micronation in the late 1960s and has existed ever since.

And yes, micronations are a real thing. (Depending on what you mean by “real”.)

And next month…

The March edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, March 4 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

It’s exactly like this month except one month later!

Issue 40 | January 2026

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 03:06:43 +0000

Welcome to the first edition of Miaaw Monthly for 2026, courtesy of Beehiiv.com.

We have big news this month. From the middle of December, we switched from using SoundCloud and Spotify to distribute our podcasts to using Podbean.com. Podbean dedicates itself to audio and video podcasts whereas both SoundCloud and Spotify have started moving relentlessly towards the streaming music market, which has made using their systems less and less easy. Using Podbean.com. has already made it much simpler at our end to get everything for December and January online.

This means that the website looks different, because it is no longer hand-crafted by us - but some might say that constitutes a welcome upgrade, and who are we to argue! The website will have more features added to it as we familiarise ourselves with it, and we will slowly go back and switch all the podcasts into the new format. We can see that most of the older podcasts have lost their links and references. All that will get fixed in the coming months.

And in another piece of mildly interesting news, in December we published our 250th podcast.

Finally, in January, we move back to a weekly schedule, just as we promised we would. Here, then, come all five of the podcasts for January 2026

PODCASTS FOR JANUARY 2026

Friday January 2

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 82

In an episode called Position, influence & income, Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk to Su Jones about the reactions she has received to her paper , and what she hopes happens next.

Friday January 9

Parallel Streams | Episode 1

Sophie Hope introduces the first in a new Miaaw series. The Irene Taylor Trust present Solidarity Tracks, a podcast about working with music in prisons.

Friday January 16

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 48

In episode 60 of A Culture of Possibility co-hosts Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with Griselda Goldsbrough, Art and Design Development Manager of the National Arts in Hospitals Network, “a resource for arts managers in hospitals to champion hospital arts across the UK, supporting recovery and wellbeing.”

Friday January 23

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 1

Echoes and the Unsaid is the second new series starting this month. In the first episode Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope introduce their research into social practice programmes and look at projects at Guildhall School of Music and Drama from the 1970s to the 2020s.

Friday January 30

Friday Number Five | Episode 20

This month sees the first episode pf the year of the guaranteed-irregular Friday Number Five, and this year we return to the theme of old time radio. We hunt down old episodes of radio series you may never have even heard of that not only tell a good story but also illustrate in their own quirky ways the manner in which cultural assumptions and the acceptable and unacceptable change and shift over time.

Every time we find a month with five Fridays we will pull together a programme for your and our enjoyment. And every time we do, we will find something interesting you probably haven’t heard before…

A THOUSAND WORDS

Clive Russell: from the “Flag for a Nation of Neighbours” brief

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Round and round and up and down we go again

In the time that I remember we have gone from wonder at the emergence of eight bit personal computers (hello Spectrum!) to marvelling at the world wide web, with its apparently effortless built-in democracy (information wants to be free!), to a fidgety world of surveillance and compulsory dopamine hits.

But now its time to reinvent naivety!

Last month we came across a website called local first software! This lets you “experience apps that work offline, keep your data private, and sync seamlessly across your devices. Your data stays with you, not locked in the cloud”.

The site welcomes us “to a better way of using software”: what we might describe as the early nineties way. On the other hand: why throw shade, as the cool people said for a few minutes a few years ago? It does offer a better way of working. It does keep your data safe(r). Its just a little sad that it needed to be expressed as “reinventing” rather than the more accurately described process of reclaiming something.

We didn’t lose anything. We had it taken away from us while Big Conjurors distracted us.

Do you keep a to-do list?

Several of us have been through several different ways of keeping track of our schedules digitally, from home made lists in Libre Office to paid subscriptions to Todoist or TickTick.

In an end-of-the-year list we found a completely free, open source alternative, that does (almost) everything that Todoist does, as well if not better.

Meet Super-Productivity. It cheerfully announces itself as an app that “makes deep work simple by combining tasks, time tracking, and notes inside one open-source task manager and workspace built for makers”.

It invites you to “stay in flow. Focus on what matters”, because its a “tool made for you to build your system, not someone else's”. Presumably it says it like this because the developers know the people they are talking to. Leaving that aside it actually does what it claims, with no money changing hands.

Moreover, it probably counts as local first software. We mention this as a public service, in case anyone has “organise my task lists” as their New Year resolution.

A Flag for a Nation of Neighbours

John Phillips and Clive Russell have written that “Our nation needs new flags to represent how we live together. Flags to celebrate how we accept one another’s differences and find common ground, flags to honour hard won battles against inequalities, flags to glorify the welfare state, our love of the commons, and the rich histories from all over the world which make up our nation. Flags to combat a misguided nostalgia for the good old days.”

They want submissions for flags by March 6. The flag they choose “will appear in 2026 across the UK:

A selection of flag artworks will be used on Billboards / 6 Sheets / 4 Sheets in various UK locations.
All flags will be printed as flags and exhibited at the Southbank Centre and at other ‘Fête of Britain’ events across the UK.
Flags will be given for display to community groups via the Humanity Project.

You can find out more by emailing Clive and John at info@museum-of-unrest.org.

David Rovics’ imaginary friends

David Rovics writes songs. We have mentioned him several times before.

This year he decided to explore AI rather than just make sneer or up theories from the sidelines. He decided to see what would happen if he used it as a tool rather than let it use him.

He has written that

if you want to have some idea of how amazing AI music-generation technology is right now, I would like to invite you to listen to Ai Tsuno. Ai Tsuno is the name I chose for my collaborative musical efforts with Suno, which is one of a number of different AI music generation platforms in popular use today.
I know so many people who really seem to be suffering from some form of future shock with all this stuff, and they avoid ever listening to, looking at, or reading anything they know to be AI-generated content. While I completely agree with anyone who says that the internet is massively polluted these days with ever-more abundant and ever-more realistic AI slop of every conceivable description, to just dismiss AI technology because of this is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
First of all, don’t take my word for it. If you haven’t heard Ai Tsuno’s latest album, Army of Robots, or the one before that, Where the Algorithms Rule, take a few minutes to go to the music streaming platform of your choice and listen to a couple songs. Then come back to me here.

You can listen to Where the Algorithms Rule if you choose to click here. There is also a guided tour of the album available.

And if you want to access everything on Soundcloud by David Rovics, solo, with other musicians, and with his imaginary friends, you can start here.

And next month…

The February edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, February 4 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

Whenever that is!

Issue 39 | December 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 07:00:21 +0000

Welcome to the final edition of Miaaw Monthly for 2025, courtesy of ever changing Beehiiv.com.

Just in time for the end of the year we have found a simple way to describe our publishing schedule. Miaaw Monthly always aims to come out two days before the first podcast of the month.

The first Friday of January 2026, for example, arrives on January 2nd, and so the January edition of the Miaaw Monthly will arrive on Wednesday December 31. Similarly, the first Friday of February 2026 is Friday 6, so the February edition will arrive in your inbox on Wednesday February 4.

Now that we have stopped confusing ourselves with that we will turn our attention to making the Miaaw Review the quarterly newsletter we intended it to be, not the annual it accidentally became this year. We will have more details on this in the January newsletter. (And when will that come out? Wednesday December 31!)

And, as usual, we continue to hope that you will send us something that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or something that you want to suggest for the podcasts, by emailing us at monthly@miaaw.net. We will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and hunt down the topics you want to hear in the podcasts.

PODCASTS FOR DECEMBER 2025

Friday December 5

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 81

When Arlene Goldbard is not being a cultural activist or a consultant, she paints. When she is not painting she writes. She writes essays and novels. Her latest novel The Intercessor has just come out.

Owen Kelly talks to Arlene about how this specific burst of writing began, how the novel grew from the initial writing, and what she hopes the published book might achieve.

Friday December 19

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 48

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about redemption: : the understanding that we can learn from experience and choose to realign some aspect of our lives to our deepest values.

How much do people believe positive change is actually possible?

How much are people’s ideas of possibility constrained by a certainty that our pasts over-determine our futures?

A THOUSAND WORDS

An Extinction Rebellion poster from the poster archives gathered together for the Right to Protest exhibition (see below) at Greatorex Street, London, between 18–28 September 2025.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Living in the past by design

We have talked in recent issues about webrings and how they have refused to die. Independent musicians and others have continued to use them and move them forward.

This month we came across some game designers and others who have dedicated themselves to moving the web backwards, but in an interesting way. They have a webring called The Old Net and you can find it here.

The first page immediately takes you back to a time before even GeoCities existed. The sites you can link to continue your journey into the past.

The webring includes “ucanet, a project which aims to provide a network/web ecosystem for retro computers that is separated from the modern web. ucanet is powered by an alternative-root DNS server, with a completely fresh set of domains you can register”. You can reach this directly if you click here.

Possible futures

From a possible past to a possible future. With all the excitement, fears, hype, and scepticism surrounding the search for superintelligence (the fabled beast that used to be called General Artificial Intelligence), it was probably only a matter of time before a secondary industry tried to take root in the deep soil of surrounding bullshit.

Here comes Resaro, whose “Approved Intelligence™ Platform delivers a comprehensive, end-to-end testing ecosystem designed to meet the stringent demands of operationally critical settings. Engineered with a modular architecture, it empowers you to rapidly deploy AI testing capabilities that align precisely with mission-critical use cases — offering greater flexibility and agility compared to traditional monolithic systems”.

Did anyone complete your bingo card? I completed mine with mission-critical use cases! Some of you may already have completed yours with Approved Intelligence™.

If you want to know more, and you really shouldn’t, then you can click here.

Community Arts exhibition now open

We talked to John Phillips and Clive Russell about The Museum of Unrest one year ago in Miaaw edition 78. You can relive that discussion whenever you want by simply choosing to click here.

John has now written to let us know that you can finally view the Community Arts Collection that Belinda Kidd has curated. We talked with John and Belinda in May this year about the then coming-soon collection, and you can listen to that episode if you click here.

To view the Community Arts Collection please click here, and we think you will find it more than worthwhile (and not just because John interviewed Sophie and Owen and François wrote an essay).

The opening of this collection got delayed much longer than expected because it grew to include more than originally intended, and because for awhile time and energy got diverted to assembling and curating the Right to Protest exhibition, which took place not online but at Greatorex Street between 18–28 September 2025, as part of the Shoreditch Design Triangle and the London Design Festival.

The Right to Protest exhibition is now also available online at The Museum of Unrest. To see it please click here.

DIY Comics available now

Finally, for this year, you can download some free print-and-fold comics / zines if you click here.

That’s all folks!

Issue 38 | November 2025

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 05:30:10 +0000

Welcome to the November 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our current newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

We continue with a new podcast every fortnight, and a growing humof behind-the-scenes research and archiving.

PODCASTS FOR NOVEMBER 2025

Friday October 7

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse| Episode 80

This month Owen Kelly looks into the idea of cultural coherence, something that bubbled to the surface after a Conservative Party member used it in an interview with the Sunday Times. She appeared to use it one way, and then later claimed she meant it in a rather different way.

What do people mean by cultural coherence? Should we regard the idea as dog-whistle politics, or should we see it as a useful idea we need to use wisely, before it gets claimed by those who would whistle to dogs?

Friday October 21

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 58

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with writer and curator Laura Raicovich, one of the initiators of Fall of Freedom, an action beginning 21 November in the US.

This is described as “an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation”. It intends to start “activating a nationwide wave of creative resistance.”

A THOUSAND WORDS

Remembering Michael Wadada (see piece below)

WTF Can Artists Do? (part 2)

The USDAC sent us an impassioned essay by Jordan Seaberry in an email newsletter:

When I sat down to make a follow-up to WTF Can Artists Do During a Fascist Takeover?!, I froze. Every idea felt too small for the scale of crisis we’re in.

So I turned back to a place where I’ve found real clarity and possibility: movement wisdom. This summer, we partnered with Beautiful Trouble to host a training called Artists Against Authoritarianism. The session was led by the brilliant Nadine Bloch, who reminded us that resistance isn’t magic, it’s a strategy. I left that training energized and clearer than I had been in a long time.

Instead of trying to solve everything at once, I decided to focus this next comic on three simple (but essential) questions:

What do authoritarians around the world actually do?
How do we organize effective, creative resistance?
And what role can artists play in that struggle?

These questions cracked something open for me, and I hope this comic does the same for you.

You can click here to read the full comic.

Remembering Michael Wadada

Wikipedia notes that “Suns of Arqa are a world music collective founded in 1979 by Michael Wadada. Since the group's formation, over 200 people from around the world have played and recorded with them, and in many cases these were like-minded musicians Wadada met as he travelled the world. Pioneers of World Beat, Ambient, Downtempo and Electro-Dub, Suns of Arqa draw inspiration from around the world, interpreting indigenous, tribal and classical folk traditions. They have created an impressive legacy and earned worldwide recognition.”

Michael Wadada died at sunset on October 24, 2021. The last album he led was The Wolf of Badenoch. If you want to know more then you can read an interesting essay about Wadada, by Steve Barker at The Wire, if you click here.

I was reminded of this by an email from The Suns of Arqa a few days ago from Bandcamp, celebrating the fourth anniversary of his passing.

You can find a lot of The Suns of Arqa’s music on Bandcamp.

The GreaterThan Lab

The GreaterThan Collective Ltd works from Bristol in south west England. They have a regular newsletter, in which they explain what they do and how their work has progressed. This is part of the current newsletter:

“Research has shown that democratic participation at work can nourish participation in political life—just as non-democratic structures can quietly normalize authoritarian patterns. The way we organize is never neutral; it either reinforces the status quo or opens up space for more regenerative structures and cultures.

The stakes are too high not to shape more postgrowth, less hierarchical, democratic, conscious or regenerative (pick your term) organisations and institutions. It is about organising in ways that nourish life rather than extract from it.

The theoretical knowledge for postgrowth organising is already there through ample research and practice. Now is the moment to act, strengthen and elevate the living examples that apply this knowledge that is grounded in pre-capitalist old wisdoms and translated to modern contexts”.

These are some of the paragraphs from what we now call The Greaterthan Lab; one of the new ways we have of understanding ourselves and the impact we have at Greaterthan.

“The Greaterthan Lab is our living laboratory and practice space for experiments with postgrowth organizing; through Greaterthan Services we walk alongside other teams and organizations, offering accompaniment as they navigate their own questions around culture and structure. We don’t offer blueprints—we meet people where they are, and we learn together”.

You can find out more about the GreaterThan Collective if you click here.

Oops

The web page for edition 20 of Friday Number Five, which went out on Friday October 31, was briefly online with none of the promised references showing. We fixed that as soon as humanly possible, and if you have a look now you will find all the track listings present and correct!

The next edition of the Miaaw Monthly will appear as if by magic on Wednesday December 3rd. Any contributions, comments, or suggestions gratefully received!

Issue 37 | October 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 08:36:31 +0000

Welcome to the October 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our continually satisfactory newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

We continue with a new podcast every fortnight, and a growing buzz of behind-the-scenes research and archiving.

PODCASTS FOR OCTOBER 2025

Friday October 3

Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf | Episode 28

This month Owen Kelly looks into the recent publication by indefatigable researcher Susan Jones called Artists' lives: ecologies for resilience, which draws upon a lengthy study of the lives, hopes and material circumstances of 14 artists in contemporary Britain.

Owen attempts to situate the report in a wider context while engaging with the details that the report brings to the surface.

Friday October 17

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 57

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview artist and environmentalist Betsy Damon. Her work with water has had a healing impact across the globe.

In this fascinating episode, she talks about her early projects in China and the work she’s undertaking now. She also shares excellent advice for others who want to help.

Friday October 31

Friday Number Five | Episode 19

This month Radio Miaaw takes a second look at the indie web work of #faircamp, a group of musicians who have reinvented the web-ring with a startling effectiveness.

We play some more of the music you can find through their web ring and trust you will enjoy it!

A THOUSAND WORDS

Lego eats itself (see below)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Frictionlessness

We have linked to a piece by Tante before because he posts online about a number of issues that overlap with our concerns at Miaaw. Lately he has published an essay about Friction and not being touched.

It begins like this:

The journalist Karen Hao – who published an absolutely fantastic book about OpenAI called “Empire of AI” recently – coined (as far as I know) one of the best terms for describing modern “AI” systems: Everything Machines.

“AI” systems are not framed as specific tools that solve specific problems in specific ways but just as solution in itself: There is nothing “AI” cannot do, if it fails we just failed it by not prompting it right or not building large enough data centers or not waiting for another 6 months when these stochastic systems will totally be able to do whatever was needed. Pinky swear.

This trick disconnects the physical and technical realities of the capabilities and lack thereof of connectivist “AI” systems built on stochastic correlations between patterns in data and what these systems are narratively positioned to be able to do. LLMs cannot really do people’s jobs – they might be able to kinda do very small parts, especially if quality is not a criterium – but they are always presented as such: Whether it’s by doomers who predict massive unemployment and poverty or by apologists who predict an age of leisure. The Everything Machine can do – as the name implies – everything. Solve everything.

Lately I’ve been thinking about friction a lot. Not the physical force that allows us to walk and all that – even though that also is neat – but cognitive and social friction and its function.

You can find the full blog post here.

Lego eats itself

We have often noticed the way that consumer products chase each other in a lazy circle, as brands get extended well beyond their natural boundaries. The earliest example that comes to mind might be the Mars Bar ice-cream which seemed clever when it first arrived but rapidly spawned a legion of followers. Last week, in Helsinki, Owen saw a range of frozen pizzas “inspired by” [their words on the packet] flavours from a range of potato chips.

Now Lego has reduced this to a (genuinely amusing) neat trick of its own. Having introduced mini-figures a decade or two ago they have now introduced a scaled up version of a mini-figure - a giant mini-figure made from the very Lego mini-figures attach to. This no doubt follows on from their “adult sets” that include an exact life-size replica of a famous shoe. One consumer good disguised as another.

You can see the full description of the upscaled astronaut on the Lego website here!

Microsoft “rationalises” our project out of existence

Owen says:

We have been using Minecraft Education Edition for a coding project that we have been doing with teenage girls in southern India. We have been doing this for five years with little to no funding for running costs. The cost of licencing the software has crept up every year. Twenty licences currently cost us 184€.

In the summer Microsoft announced that the price of licensing the software would increase. They said that “The subscription price increase is necessary to support the development of features for Minecraft Education that meet the evolving needs of our customers, and to align our pricing with Microsoft's general pricing policy. The new price also aligns with Minecraft’s other product offerings, ensuring a consistent and fair pricing strategy across all products.”

More recently they announced that the increase would involve the price increasing from 184€ to 672€. Unless my maths has gone hopelessly wrong (in which case I blame the shock) that is somewhere round a 350% increase.

This sent me looking to find an open source equivalent and, somewhat to my surprise, I found one called Luanti. It is free and offers most of what Minecraft offers. Unfortunately it does not offer the block coding that we have been using so it may not work for us.

It may work for you though. You can download it from here, and you can find a complete manual for it online here. If anyone finds any use for Luanti in any project at all please let us know and we will post about it here.

World Postcard Day

Finally, for this issue, we recently received this in our inbox earlier in the week:

It’s almost here… the postcardiest day of the year! 🎉 Next Wednesday, October 1st, we’ll be celebrating the 6th World Postcard Day, and we can’t wait to see your postcards flying all over the globe.

Approach at your own risk!

The next edition of the Miaaw Monthly will appear as if by magic on Wednesday November 5th. Any contributions, comments, or suggestions gratefully received!

Issue 36 | September 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:11:16 +0000

Welcome to the September 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our continually satisfactory newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

We continue in our summer schedule with a new podcast every fortnight, and a constant buzz of behind-the-scenes research and archiving.

PODCASTS FOR SEPTEMBER 2025

Friday September 5

Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf | Episode 27

We finish our suggestions for summer reading this month, with a look back at Jon Savage’s lengthy book called Teenage: the creation of youth, 1875-1945.

Owen Kelly discusses the arguments he brings to the table and, argues that perhaps the importance of the book lies in the evidence he marshals in support of those arguments.

Friday September 19

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 56

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso continue their analysis of censorship and culture. This month they discuss their own direct experiences with these issues, including times community artists had to chose which aspects of a project to share or not, and times when establishment arts forces suppressed cultural policies because they objected to cultural democracy principles.

A THOUSAND WORDS

Maija Demitere: transition ecologies (see below)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Good Internet Magazine: 2nd issue

Good Internet is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit print and digital biannual magazine for personal website owners and those interested in using the internet as a means of self-expression, art, and recreation. Good Internet was founded and curated by Alexandra. The name Good Internet comes from Katie Baker's The Day the Good Internet Died, hopefully proving that headline wrong.

The second issue comes out very soon. If you subscribe, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available.

You can find full details here.

Geocities is back, apparently

We have found a website called Neocities, which looks remarkably (and not coincidentally) like the Geocities web platform from thirty odd years ago.

The site says that ”We are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don't let us truly express ourselves. It's time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again.”

Their stated goal: “to enable you to harness the creativity, beauty, and power of creating your own web site. To rebuild the web we lost to algorithms and monotony, and make it as fun and creative as it was back in the 90s”.

Their suggestion: Go make your own web site!

`Artists and Cultural Workers Against Authoritarianism`

Last month the US Department of Arts & Culture organised a training workshop in partnership with Beautiful Trouble.

In their latest newsletter the USDAC say that “this was more than a workshop-- it was a space to strengthen our strategy, courage, and collective power against authoritarianism”.

Materials from the training include a curated set of tools, readings and examples. You can download the pdf here.

You can also watch a recording of the workshop available via Zoom.

Caught by the River

Have we mentioned Caught by the River before? If we haven’t then we should have.

Their About page says that “Caught by the River is an arts/nature/culture clash which lives at caughtbytheriver.net. It began as an idea, a vision and a daydream shared between friends one languid bankside spring afternoon.

Conceived as an online meeting place for pursuits of a distinctly non-digital variety — walking, fishing, looking, thinking, birdsong and beer, adventure and poetry; life’s small pleasures, in all their many flavours — it was, and still is, about stepping out of daily routines to re-engage with nature. Finding new rhythms. Being.

Now in its thirteenth year, Caught by the River is ever-morphing, widening its tastes and pool of contributors. The site – and its various offshoots, including gigs, festival stages and the Rivertones record label – host work in many forms and flavours, be it of a musical, poetic, creative non-fictional, photographic or illustrative description, or otherwise”.

They also have a regular newsletter which (in our opinion) counts as well worth reading.

RIXC: Transition Ecologies

The opening of the Transition Ecologies exhibition by Maija Demitere takes place at the RIXC Gallery, Lencu iela 2, Riga, in Latvia, on Thursday, September 4, 2025.

Maija Demitere is an artist and researcher whose work brings together ecology, sustainability, and technology. She works with an interdisciplinary approach, creating works and objects that combine art, innovation, and technological experimentation. At the core of her practice are themes of food, resources, and waste cycles, through which she explores the interrelationships between humans, the environment, and technology.

The exhibition reflects on the shifting relationship between humans and nature, as old balances collapse and the need for new ecological connections emerges. In cities, these relationships are directed by human activity. The effects of daily actions may not be immediately visible, but over time they leading to long-term damage to both the planet and human health.

It includes time-lapse video projections created, documenting human-altered aquatic ecologies and searching for ways to visualize continuously transforming landscapes. The exhibition invites viewers to consider ecology as a dynamic and fragile process, where human actions and technological solutions are constantly in dialogue with the rhythms of nature.

Issue 35 | August 2025

Owen Kelly — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:13:05 +0000

Welcome to the August 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our more-than-satisfactory newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

We continue in our summer schedule with a new podcast every fortnight, and a constant buzz of behind-the-scenes research and archiving. Also this month, because there are five Fridays in August, we add an episode of Friday Number Five.

PODCASTS FOR AUGUST 2025

Friday August 1

Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf | Episode 26

We continue our suggestions for summer reading and today we turn to fiction, because everyone knows they should take at least one novel on holiday with them.

Owen Kelly discusses the merits of Fight Night a recent novel by the Canadian author Miriam Toews.

Friday August 15

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 55

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso host muralists Amber Hansen and Reyna Hernandez, who were the first interviewees on the podcast!

Following on from Episode 54, in which Jeff Chang detailed the censorship of his book by the US Department of Defense, Amber and Reyna talked about the more local or subtle forms of pressure to censor or self-censor, such as agencies that commission community murals and then withdraw because they don’t like the subject matter.

When and how is expression limited by those in power and when and how is artists’ work shaped by considerations or controversy or empathy?

Friday August 29

Friday Number Five | Episode 18

This month Radio Miaaw looks at the indie web work of #faircamp, a group of musicians who have reinvented the web-ring with a startling effectiveness.

We discuss what they have achieved and (of course) play some of the music at the centre of it all.

A THOUSAND WORDS

A cat named Tyrsky contemplates the record-breaking Finnish heatwave (photo by Owen Kelly)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Peer to peer fundraising

The Internet Archive has announced that they are beginning a program of peer to peer funding. They say:

Starting today, we’ve rolled out a new fundraising option that maximizes support while harnessing the power of community. Introducing peer-to-peer fundraising (P2P)—a giving platform that allows individual supporters to host personalized campaigns shared among friends and family. Each campaign launched will collect donations for Internet Archive initiatives that personally matter most to you. Every dollar raised via P2P through September 30 will be matched 2:1, tripling the impact of your generosity.

You can find out more here.

USDAC Vital Conversations

USDAC’s Vital Conversations project is a multumedia series that aims to answer the question: if we’re all we’ve got what are the lessons we can learn from each other?

Episode 3 - Access is Love: Spacemaking for Fat and Disabled Artists - is available now. You can find it here.

Issue 34 | July 2025

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 08:59:39 +0000

Welcome to the July 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our more-than-satisfactory newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

We are now in our summer schedule with a new podcast every fortnight, and a constant buzz of behind-the-scenes research and archiving.

We continue to hope that you will send us something that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or something that you want to suggest for the podcasts, by emailing us at monthly@miaaw.net. We will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and hunt down the topics you want to hear in the podcasts.

PODCASTS FOR JULY 2025

Friday July 4

Meanwhile on an Abandoned Booshelf | Episode 25

Anthony Schrag has brought together artists, curators, activists, academics, managers, and educators from around the world to create a unique anthology that examines the notion of ethics within socially engaged art.

In May, Sophie Hope participated in a symposium based on the book.

For this episode Sophie and Anthony have the conversation about the symposium about the book, so that you can decide whether or not to add it to you summer reading list!

Friday July 18

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 54

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview author Jeff Chang, known for his books on cultural subjects including hip-hop, race and racism, and Asian Americans.

In May, Jeff posted to his Substack an account of how the Defense Department had removed his book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip Hop History, written for young adults, from schools on US military bases around the world. The reasons given were Trump’s executive orders banning accounts of racism, gender and sexuality, and other such topics.

Jeff joins us to tell the story and talk about what it means for the future of free expression and diversity.

A THOUSAND WORDS

Kwesi Owusu working n Ghana (image courtesy of Kwesi Owusu)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Labour Movement for all Animals

According to Henrike Haapoja

Movements for socialism and animal welfare developed side by side throughout the 19th century, connected by their critiques of capitalist exploitation in an increasingly urbanized and industrialized world.

The potential for interspecies solidarity was lost, however, when the socialist movement aligned itself with the humanist tradition and viewed nonhuman animals merely as means of production and objects of the class struggle, rather than as subjects of it. The animal welfare movement, on the other hand, became associated with the bourgeois class and its pet animals, while industrial-scale animal exploitation was pushed out of sight, to the outskirts of rapidly growing cities.

Today, the consequences of the exploitation of nature and nonhuman animals are impossible to ignore. Yet a void still exists between mainstream Left politics and posthumanist thought—the former typically focusing on human class struggle, the latter critiquing anthropocentric ideology.

Labor Movement for All Animals re-writes the history of the labor movement from the perspective of multispecies politics.

You can read the manifesto and the bibliography and find out much more at https://www.animalcapitalism.org

Kwesi Owusu: 1954 - 2025

We learned a month ago that Kwesi Owusu had died in London in March.

According to his obituary, written by Janet Lawrence, and published in The Guardian on June 2, 2025

The author and film-maker Kwesi Owusu, who has died aged 70, wrote several notable books on Black culture in Britain, and was a founder member of the influential performance group African Dawn, which emerged from the vibrant creative scene of the Africa Centre in Covent Garden, London, in the 1980s. During that time, he also co-produced and directed the groundbreaking film Ama: An African Journey of Discovery for Channel 4, which was recently restored and included in the BFI’s 2023 African Odyssey season.
After returning to his native Ghana, Owusu became an advocate for the Ghanaian and African people, both through his leadership of the African branch of Jubilee 2000, a global initiative calling for debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries, and his media production agency Creative Storm, whose documentaries on subjects such as maternal health and access to water have sparked real change.

Owen had known him since the 1980s when he published his book The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain and had been in conversation with him as recently as last year. Kwesi had agreed to take part in a series of interviews about his work in Britain and in Africa, but sadly that will never happen.

Issue 33 | June 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the early summer edition of Miaaw Monthly for June 2025, courtesy of our newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

This month has only two podcasts in it, and we want to begin by explaining why.

It all started in mid-April, when John Phillips interviewed Sophie and Owen for an article in the forthcoming Community Arts Collection at the Museum of Unrest (and you hopefully heard all about that in the Common Practice podcast that came out on May 23). He raised the question of how potential listeners might best navigate the 283 podcasts we currently have available at miaaw.net. This is an issue that we had already recognised. We answered that we had simply not had enough time to create the kind of thematic guides to the podcasts that we imagined, and we would need to stop creating new podcasts to find the time to do this properly.

Afterwards we realised that, by a lucky but unplanned coincidence, a number of long running series ended in May. We talked at length and decided that we should cut back temporarily on the number of podcasts we create and devote some time during the summer period (when people tend to be otherwise occupied) devising some thematic collections of existing podcasts, introduced by short explanatory essays (or short explanatory podcasts!)

To tide you over this lacuna, for the next couple of months Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf, on the first Friday of the month, will contain suggestions for unlikely summer reading. So if you had intended to relax on the beach with a Miaaw podcast you will now be able to relax on the very same beach with a real book in your actual hand, suggested by a Miaaw podcast.

We will return to full strength in the autumn with an array of weekly podcasts, including one new series and one returning series.

Have as happy a summer as you find possible.

PODCASTS FOR JUNE 2025

Friday June 6

Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf | Episode 24

Owen Kelly discusses two short pamphlets by Iain McGilchrist that summarise the arguments he makes in The Master and His Emissary, a large, detailed, and extremely well referenced book about society, community, the divided brain and the making of the western world.

The pamphlets summarise the arguments in less than forty pages, with non of the technical detail.

Friday June 20

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 53

On Episode 53, Money Changes Everything, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about funding for community-based art and cultural democracy in light of the two previous episodes featuring funders from the UK and US. What’s happening? What does it all mean? Where to from here?

A THOUSAND WORDS

from a comic by USDAC Co-Director Jordan Seaberry titled WTF Can Artists Do During A Fascist Takeover?!

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

USDAC

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture have just posted that

we’re returning to our roots: gathering wisdom from our communities through honest, creative conversations. We're launching Vital Conversations, a new multimedia series where USDAC team members sit down with thinkers, artists, and organizers to ask big and small questions—and make beautiful things in the process.

Each conversation will spark a public offering– videos, zines, comics, music– and we invite you to engage with us in real time. Watch with a friend. Host a dinner. Start your own conversation. Create something from it.

This isn’t about answers. It’s about each of us practicing collective imagination in a time of fear and fragmentation, modeling the kind of community that resists isolation and inspires action.

The illustration above comes from the first project in the Vital Conversations series. You can find out more about the series if you click here.

GERRY’S POMPEII

For over 30 years, Gerard ‘Gerry’ Dalton (1935-2019) worked privately in West London, creating hundreds of artworks and transforming his unassuming ground floor flat, garden and the adjoining bank of the Grand Union canal into an extraordinary and singular visionary environment.

This was the parallel world of an intensely private extrovert.

Although Gerry was well known by his neighbours and was a loving presence on his street, the full extent of his work was only uncovered following his death in 2019. Following an incredible campaign to save this exceptional Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), Gerry’s home was transferred back to Genesis Notting Hill housing association in 2020.

Whilst this is an extremely sad loss, we are working to maintain the extensive 50-metre long mural with hand-hewn topiary and the 50 sculptures that Gerry created on the canal bank. This public artwork can be viewed from Meanwhile Gardens on the opposite side of the canal.

You can find out much more about Gerry’s Pompeii if you click here.

Policies for Convivencia is a newsletter by Tommi Laitio, featuring (in his words) “clever policies for co-existence and the people behind them. The Latin American notion of convivencia, understood as a capability to co-exist across differences, encapsulates the ideal state for public life where the parties do not strive to resolve differences but have the ability and willingness for pragmatic solutions”.

In the latest issue he writes that “I have the opportunity to tick off one thing from my library nerd bucket list: Dokk1 in Aarhus, Denmark (see photo). Dokk1 was one of the main inspirations for Helsinki’s Central Library Oodi.

The Next Library conference, organized by the staff of Aarhus libraries, is the library event I have heard most praise for. People love it for its compact size and high level of engagement. I love the idea that this international innovation event is organized by the staff of this public institution, a public library, in a library”.

You can subscribe to Policies for Convivencia if you click here.

UPDATE: MUSEUM OF UNREST

Following the interview with John Phillips on the Common Practice episode last month, has sent us a list of what’s happening in the coming months at the Museum of Unrest.

June: Community Arts Collection
September: Feature about the Museum of Unrest in Left Cultures magazine
September: Right to Protest exhibition collaboration with Greatorex St Studios
Later in the autumn: Mapping Africa (taking place 140 years after the Berlin Conference)
2026: Dark Matter Collection
2026: Architecture of Play Collection

John would be very happy to hear from you if you have any contributions you would like to make to any of these events, or any suggestions about possible future collections.

FEEDBACK: MIAAW MONTHLY

As usual, we continue to hope that you will send us something that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or something that you want to suggest for the podcasts, by emailing us at monthly@miaaw.net. We will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and hunt down the topics you want to hear in the podcasts.

The MIAAW REVIEW

The second edition of The Miaaw Review is still stuck in the post. It will arrive during the summer, which since it is a quarterly newsletter is not too late.

If you would like to see the second issue of The Miaaw Review when it finally arrives then please subscribe by clicking this link.

This will take you to a web page where you can enter your email address. At the cost of having to enter it manually you will receive our guarantee that we will never spam you, sell your address, give it away, or even admit to having it.

Issue 32 | May 2025

Owen Kelly — Thu, 01 May 2025 12:11:08 +0000

Welcome to the May 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly for 2025, courtesy of our newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

We have still been struggling to describe our new 2025 publishing schedule in one simple phrase. Now we have it: Miaaw Monthly should arrive in your inbox on the Wednesday before the first Friday of each month. Usually that will be the last Friday of the preceding month. Sometimes it will be the first Wednesday of the month. Either way: it should arrive in your inbox on the Wednesday before the first Friday of every month.

However, as usual Fate stepped in, and the very month we realised that this formula explains everything, we also realised that we were running a day late, due to some last minute back-end problems. So here we are on Thursday May 1st, one day behind ourselves.

But, as usual, we continue to hope that you will send us something that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or something that you want to suggest for the podcasts, by emailing us at monthly@miaaw.net. We will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and hunt down the topics you want to hear in the podcasts.

PODCASTS FOR MAY 2025

Friday May 2

Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf | Episode 23

It’s time to begin our mildly popular Summer Reading series, and to begin this year’s extended edition we go back in time to hear Owen Kelly and David Morley discuss Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century, written by Christian Caryl and published in 2014.

It’s argument may now seem uncannily prescient.

Friday May 9

Ways of Listening | Episode 18

Hannah Kemp-Welch concludes the current series with a second panel discussion taken from the symposium featured in last month’s episode and entitled Listening Together: Practices for Community-Centred Listening.

Friday May 16

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 52

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso begin the summer season with another surprising and unpredictable episode.

What does it actually contain? Only the Shadow knows…

Friday May 23

Social Making Special Edition | Episode 5

Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with John Phillips and Belinda Kidd about the Community Art Collection which will launch at the Museum of Unrest at the end of this month.

If you look carefully through the collection you will find that Miaaw have a small but perfectly-formed space in a suitable corner of the collection.

Friday May 30

Friday Number Five | Episode 17

In the gap between this month and next month Radio Miaaw stumbles across the works of Moby, who has put 500 pieces online for anyone to listen to, edit, remix, and reuse, with just a few non-financial stipulations.

We listen and we comment!

A THOUSAND WORDS

Stanley Kubrick self-portrait (courtesy of Stanley Kubrick Archive, London)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Americans Who Tell The Truth

This month I found something completely new to me: Americans Who Tell The Truth. I found it in a very unlikely way but find it I did. I can think of no better way to explain it than to quote from their website. What follows compiles an assortment of quotations into one very short explanatory article.

What began in 2002 as artist Robert Shetterly’s personal portrait project has become a broad-based, not-for-profit arts and education organization, the mission of which is to foster and inspire “a profound sense of citizenship” by exposing students at all levels to portraits, quotes, biographies, and related resources built around these “Models of Courageous Citizenship.”

The AWTT project was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2004. With the platform provided by the organization, the portraits and Robert Shetterly have participated in hundreds of events, presentations and exhibitions. To date, Shetterly and his portraits have been invited into grammar schools, high schools and colleges in 27 states and Washington, D.C. The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program promotes him as a speaker through the Council of Independent Colleges. In addition, AWTT has collaborated with a number of organizations working to promote engaged citizenship through education and the media.

AWTT creates spaces where people learn ways to participate democratically in building just and equitable communities. Through making art, facilitating journeys of individual and community discovery, and demonstrating how history shapes lives, AWTT inspires a future of active citizenship.

You can find out everything you want to know about AWTT if you click right here.

The Stanley Kubrick Archive

The first thing to note: the Stanley Kubrick Archive actually exists. The second thing: you can arrange to visit it any Monday to Friday if a) you make an appointment and b) you happen to be in London.

I discovered this in a newsletter I subscribe to which described a journey around the archive, a place that “runs to approximately 900 linear metres and includes production paperwork, letters, props, costumes, publicity materials, production photographs, research, photographs, plans, books, audiovisual material, equipment and press cuttings”.

You can find the Archive housed in the basement of the London College of Communication; a branch of the University of the Arts, London.

You can find its website if you click here.

Moby x 500 = free

The electronic musician Moby began his Mobygratis project in 2005 with “the goal of providing creators of all kinds with high-quality, royalty-free music to use in their projects”. The project library has calculated that it has since supported over 50,000 indie films and media projects.

Last week Moby relaunched it by adding 500 new pieces of music, with the promise of another 1,000 later in the year. He says that “You can do whatever you want with it. You can remix it, you can edit it, you can add parts to it, you can play clarinet on it, you can use it for social media, for films, for choreography: the idea is complete creative freedom. I don't want to inhibit whatever you're going to do with the music here."

As usual, if you click here you will get right to the source of this information: the mobygratis.com site itself.

If you have read the newsletter from the top and got down this far then you will already be aware that May has five Fridays, and that Friday Number Five this month will play some samples from the music available on the site.

THIS MONTH’S LINKS

The information about the Stanley Kubrick Archive came from Steve Cook’s Secret Oranges newsletter at Substack. Click here for a direct link.
Caught by the River is an arts/nature/culture clash which began as an idea, a vision and a daydream shared between friends one languid bankside spring afternoon. You can visit the website if you click here, or subscribe to their weekly newsletter if you click here.
Warren Ellis, the comic book writer and radio, television and film script writer, writes a weekly newsletter about writing, and everything connected to it. Called Orbital Operations, you can subscribe to it if you click here.

THE MIAAW REVIEW

We announced on October that we planned to produce The Miaaw Review which will contain one or two full length essays, as well as a couple of short pieces. The first issue appeared on Wednesday January 15, 2025, we promised that it will appear almost quarterly after that.

The first issue contained a timely and interesting essay from Arlene Goldbard and a shorter piece or two from François and Owen.

The second issue has unfortunately been delayed by a week or two from our intended launch date and will now appear in your inbox sometime in May. It, like a number of other things round here, has been the victim of an unexpected and extreme head cold. When it finally appears you will find it contains an essay by Owen Kelly that will act as the opening to a whole new phase of activity here and elsewhere, as well as a number of shorter pieces.

If you would like to receive a copy of The Miaaw Review and you are not already a subscriber then please subscribe by clicking this link.

Issue 31 | April 2025

Owen Kelly — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 13:59:28 +0000

Here we are again with the April 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our shiny newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.

PODCASTS FOR APRIL 2025

Friday April 4

YLC Special Edition | EPISODE 3

In the final episode of this series of Special Editions, Sophie Hope interviews Youth Landscapers’ Producer Rebecca Lee along with members Alfie Ropson and Georgia Harris-Marsh, and board member Jo Wheeler.

They reflect on their experiences of last year’s song-making project, get into the nitty gritty around the youth-led structure of the organisation and discuss future plans.

Friday April 11

Ways of Listening | Episode 17

Hannah Kemp-Welch talks to somebody so secret that their name is not yet publicly available. All we know is that history suggests that the result of this conversation, once revealed, will be of great interest to some and some interest to all.

Friday April 18

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 51

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with David Cutler, Director of The Baring Foundation, based in London.

One of Baring’s strategic grant areas is Arts & Mental Health, granting about £1 million per year over at least five years to organizations specializing in arts and creativity with people with mental health problems. Do they discuss this? Yes they do!

Friday April 25

Common Practice | Episode 40

Owen Kelly talks to Sovay Berriman about the possibility of rewilding cultural practice, and arts administration; and her experiences of being Cornish in a world that seems intent on ignoring Cornishness.

A THOUSAND WORDS

Oona Foster campaign sticker: Green Party, Helsinki local elections, April 2025

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Plexus Institute

You may or may not know about The Plexus Institute. However they have this to say:

For more than two decades, Plexus Institute has been a leading advocate for the application of complexity science to organizational and social challenges. Our archives contain a wealth of materials—including research, case studies, recorded dialogues, and thought leadership—that have played a pivotal role in shaping the field of applied complexity.
However, as a completely volunteer-led organization, Plexus Institute is no longer in a position to sustain ongoing operations or effectively maintain and share this important body of work. As a result, Plexus Institute will discontinue all direct communications, programs, and organizational activities as of April 1, 2025.

They are now “are seeking a partner to help preserve and manage the Plexus archives, ensuring their continued accessibility and impact. These materials represent decades of applied complexity research and practice, and we believe their value can extend far beyond Plexus Institute.”

A single, rather sad event, or a sign of the times? Discuss. (Or don’t.)

The Guardian hollows itself out

If you read the Guardian or The Observer you may have noticed in recent weeks that a number of columnists have written their final columns, from political journalists like Carole Cadwallr to food journalists and restaurant reviewers like Jay Rayner.

As Carole Cadwallr has written:

it’s one thing to write about information collapse, and another to live it.
The Observer, or the hollowed-out shell of it, transfers to Tortoise on April 23rd and 100+ journalists have been terminated from the Guardian in various different guises. I’ve said before that in some ways, it doesn’t feel like a particularly surprising coincidence that this happened at the same moment that the tech bros merge with the US presidency. But on the other hand, it has been a lot to deal with.

Some newsletters

This month we look at just a few of the newsletters that people have started producing as a way of communicating directly with some of the people they want to communicate with. None of them are directly “arts-based”, but all of them relate to the changing circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Carole Cadwallr (see above) has left The Guardian to start life as an independent newsletter writer on Substack. You can subscribe to How to Survive the Broligarchy if you click here.
Dan Gillmor, an American journalist and commentator, has started a newsletter called The Cornerstone of Democracy. The title derives from the fact that Thomas Jefferson said that “The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate.”
He describes it as his attempt “to bring you news and commentary that will help you fully grasp the vastly worse conditions we are likely to face in the Trump presidency – and help you respond to them. Trump's regime will become a dictatorship unless a genuine and effective resistance coalesces.
But resisting isn't enough. Liberal democracy and progressive policies need champions, workers, and funders: a cadre of people who want to turn resistance into rebuilding. I'll do what I can to help.”
You can subscribe if you click here.
Meanwhile back at Substack, Tommi Laitio, a former cultural head at Helsinki City, has a newsletter called Policies for Convivencia which he describes as “featuring clever policies for co-existence and the people behind them. The Latin American notion of convivencia, understood as a capability to co-exist across differences, encapsulates the ideal state for public life where the parties do not strive to resolve differences but have the ability and willingness for pragmatic solutions.”
You can subscribe to that by clicking here.
Finally, for this month, Adam Tooze has a newsletter called Chartbook, which does what it says. It takes very forms of information and converts them into charts. If this sounds dry or dull then I suggest you check it out because it really isn’t.
You can subscribe to Chartbook by clicking here.

In coming months we will look at more newsletters, including some dealing directly with “the arts” and culture, as we look at ways to reclaim our communication systems.

THE MIAAW REVIEW

The second issue of The Miaaw Review will appear on Wednesday April 16. The only way to get it is by subscribing to it. If you would like to receive a copy of this issue of The Miaaw Review then please subscribe by clicking this link.

What does this issue contain, you ask. Owen Kelly has written the first part of an exploration into reclaiming the web, and our communications systems from the new monopolists, asks what it will take to get people to actually leave Facebook, and suggests some answers, as well as some alternative approaches to the question. We also have some short guest pieces, and possibly another essay from François Matarasso.

It would be a shame for you to miss it!

Issue 30 | March 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 06:07:38 +0000

Welcome to the March 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our still shiny provider Beehiiv.com.

We are continuing our current schedule: publishing each issue on the first Wednesday of the month, and for the second month in a row the first Wednesday arrives neatly before the first Friday and all seems well.

And, as usual, we continue to hope that you will send us something that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or something that you want to suggest for the podcasts, by emailing us at monthly@miaaw.net. We will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and hunt down the topics you want to hear in the podcasts.

PODCASTS FOR MARCH 2025

Friday March 7

Special Edition: Young Landscapers Collective | Episode 2

In 2023, YLC created The Stage of Possibility – a vibrant, democratic space designed, built and curated to showcase stories and voices from the National Forest at Timber Festival. In this episode they share their experiences of the National Forest. through the songs they made and performed.

Friday March 14

Ways of Listening | Episode 16

Hector MacInnes was born and grew up on the Isle of Skye. His projects are deeply rooted in an ongoing interrogation of belonging, identity, legitimacy and lived experience of the more-than-urban. In this episode he talks to Hannah Kemp-Welch about a project he has been working on in HMP Inverness.

Friday March 21

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 50

In episode 50 Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about a remarkable book, Engineers of the Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook, first published in 1983 and still extremely influential.

Friday March 28

Social Making Special Edition | Episode 7

Drawing on topics raised at the symposium and in previous episodes Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch discuss the future of socially engaged art with Kim Wide and a surprise guest.

HOUSEKEEPING

There are still a few things we need to do to finish our transition to Beehiiv.com, and we intend to do these during March.

Firstly the miaaw.net website no longer gives access to the newsletter archive. This has happened because we can no longer export the newsletter as html and insert it into the site. Instead we will have to do something else, and working out the best something else to do has kept us awake at nights for almost two months. Hopefully we will find a solution that does not involve doing everything twice, and then sleep easy.

And, we have noticed that we could improve the signposting of the special editions in the miaaw.net website. This has become clear as we have gathered more of them. This involves reanimating our php skills, and this will happen shortly.

A THOUSAND WORDS

Shrew from London Women’s Liberation Workshop (courtesy of Mayday Rooms)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Mayday Rooms

Mayday Rooms are “an archive, resource space and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. Our building in the centre of London contains an archive of historical material linked to social struggles, resistance campaigns, experimental culture, and the expression of marginalised and oppressed groups”.

For International Women's Day they are highlighting Shrew magazine as our Archive of the Month.

In their current newsletter they explain that “Shrew was an influential feminist magazine of the early years of the British women’s liberation movement. It acted as the outward-facing publication of the London Women’s Liberation Workshop – the umbrella organisation that co-ordinated small women’s groups across London, formed in 1969. Unlike the London Women’s Liberation Workshop Newsletter, Shrew ‘was identified as the publication that would represent Women’s Liberation ideas to women outside the movement’

You can subscribe to their newsletter by going to the Mayday Rooms website.

Theory into practice

Owen came across a monthly newsletter from This Occasional Society recently when he found their free music sampler on Bandcamp. They release their music on a “pay as much as you want” basis, and will feature in an upcoming Friday Number 5.

If you have any interest in people walking the walk - actually making culture that fits how they think culture should be made - then the This Occasional Society newsletter is well worth looking at. Not only does it contain news about what they are up to, but they also gather information from elsewhere, that you are probably not going to come across otherwise. Here are some more or less representative example of this from their March newsletter.

‌“Beepboop Tapeloop”

hello friends! Happy 303 day!

this occasional society update

on the music front, nothing much to report, however, the society is delighted to share that the t.o.s. monthly newsletter will now also be seen on the NHAM news section (more about NHAM below).

here is your exclusive ‘unvarnished, work in progress, music sketch’. NB plans are afoot to move away from Gdrive as the repository for these.

the next newsletter will be with you 4.4. as ever, if you want anything included in the ‘updates from friends of the society’ section, just let us know.

updates from friends of the society

NHAM is an online magazine-style platform aiming to help draw connections between indie musicians, fair distribution platforms and listeners, under a shared ethos. It brings together releases, videos, news, reviews, online radio & events details, from a multitude of independent sources as well as a monthly mixtape, which can be heard (amongst other places) on AudioInterface.org (see how it all interconnects…)

As a primer for the thinking and approach underpinning this type of independent but overlapping activity, Prince Lucija (DRAGX̶FUNK) penned this great, detailed explainer & toolkit for the #BeYourOwnPlatform ethos.

Speaking of which, Mirlo - the collectively owned music platform - is looking for submissions for a new fundraising compilation. Deadline is 15 March.

Related to the above, it’s ‘Bandcamp Friday’ on 7 March, so, if you can, support the artists you love, but note also that Mirlo have a function where artists decide what % revenue to share with Mirlo, so kind of like it’s Bandcamp Friday every day.

In live news, Gribbles is playing in Whitby on 21 March at Flowergate Hall, Whitby with ‘Duty’ in a gig organised by wavelength electronic music club. To whet your appetite, you can check out some rehearsal videos here.

Another society friend, Samatha Dubs has a new ep out called ‘hauntings’ - hitting that experimental electronic sweet spot again, it’s six brief meditations on eavesdropping, room notes, love, funk, magic and hidden meanings.

it has taken me until i was typing this to realise that Fast Ghost consistently releases a brilliant free/PWYW acid techno track literally every month. this, despite downloading & featuring them previously & remixing one of the tracks! Oh dear. anyway - they’ll be releasing another banger in a few days.

Long time society favourites, The Lonely Bell & Socool have a joint recent release on Moolakii Club Audio Interface. Another Kind of Earth is two slices of extended ambient beauty.

Delighted to see Warrington Runcorn Newtown Development Plan are playing Portsmouth as part of their September Tour. Tickets to that one already purchased.

Finally, it was mentioned last month, but it feels worth shouting again about the BleepThree night in Dorking, 28 March, featuring Secret Nuclear & Simon Heartfield amongst others. See you there.

You can find their website here where you can subscribe to their monthly newsletter as well as download their smplr ep.

THE MIAAW REVIEW

The second edition of The Miaaw Review will contain one or two full length essays, and will appear on Wednesday April 15, 2025.

This issue will contain an essay from Owen Kelly on the urgent need to sort ouot our digital relations. He promises that this will not remain merely theoretical but will propose practical steps to replace US based Big Apps with services based in the EU, where privacy is not yet a dirty word.

If you would like to receive a copy of the second edition of The Miaaw Review in the middle of April then please subscribe by clicking this link.

Once you have done this then you will also get access to the first edition, and all subsequent ones.

Issue 29 | February 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 05:56:04 +0000

Welcome to the February 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our shiny new provider Beehiiv.com.

We are continuing our new schedule: publishing every issue on the first Wednesday of the month, and this month the plan appears to be working smoothly. The first Wednesday arrives neatly before the first Friday and all is well.

THE PODCASTS COMING THIS MONTH

Friday February 7

YLC Special Edition | EPISODE 1

We have written about Youth Landscapers Collective in previous editions, and this month their podcast finally arrives in our schedules.

Here, in the first episode, they introduce you to who they are and what they do via an online conversation between artist Jo Wheeler, who helped initiate YLC in 2016, and three of the Youth Council members, Alfie Ropson, Isaac Munslow and Kris Kirkwood.

Friday February 14

WAYS OF LISTENING | Episode 15

Hannah Kemp-Welch talks to Joanne Coates about listening in rural locations. They discuss her recent work with young women in the Yorkshire Dales and Orkney, Scotland.

Friday February 21

A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | Episode 49

François Matarasso returns from medical leave to join Arlene Goldbard in considering the podcast as its fifth year begins. They explore the intentions that have guided them so far, and talk about key questions for the future.

Friday February 28

SOCIAL MAKING Special Edition | Episode 6

Ben Bordwick, Sophie Hope, Hannah Kemp-Welch and Leo Vails discuss how wheeled users might play freely in the city. How can we ensure more access and equality in the development of public spaces? How can we make certain that the voices of young people become embedded in planning processes?

A THOUSAND WORDS

POSITIVE CHANGE FOR MARINE LIFE, an NGO under threat (see below)

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

USAID

Owen Kelly writes:

I happen to know Karl Goodsell, the founder of Positive Change for Marine Life. I know him from when he started working with fishing villages in Kerala. He is Australian and PCML is based in Australia. They work with local coastal communities in Australia, India, the Seychelles and the Solomon Islands. and explicitly “acknowledge all Traditional Custodians and First Nations people on the lands, waterways and coastal areas in which we work globally and honour their continuing connection and stewardship of country”.

Despite living and working on the opposite side of the globe their work has been immediately impacted by the opening salvos of the new Trump/Musk regime in the USA.

Karl Goodsell wrote last week that:

It’s a very anxious and difficult time for the team and I at PCFML at the moment. If we can’t bridge the large funding gap that the Trump administration’s freeze on all USAID funded programs has created, we will have no choice but to start letting go of our team. That means that some of our incredible staff and casual workers across the Solomon Islands, India and Australia could not only lose their jobs, but also struggle to pay bills and keep food on the table. This is not to mention the incredible, negative impact this will have on the ocean and coastlines of some of the world’s most biodiverse marine areas in which we operate.

We mention this here to demonstrate in practice that the effects of the new regime are far from merely local, and deliberately so. We believe that we should calmly and gently take steps to bring our activities into alignment with the new realities by working harder than ever for local, community-based actions and refusing to participate in platforms run by those who have contempt for us and our goals.

CHARTER OF RIGHTS

As one example of “bringing our activities into alignment with the new realities”, the creators of Pixelfed (the federated alternative to Instagram and the like) have issued a digital charter of rights. This makes explicit the differences between the billionaire-run quasi-monopolies, and the burgeoning independent web. It names things so that we have the vocabulary to discuss them, and demand them from suppliers and platforms.

Pixelfed has just raised much more money than they asked for in a Kickstarter campaign and they will spend this year creating federated alternatives to all current social media.

Will they succeed? Hopefully. Their subscribers have risen from the low thousands to half a million in the past few months. Half a million is not billions, of course, but then none of us know billions of people anyway. And nor does anyone else.

THE TOWN SQUARE

Here is another example. This time it involves thinking ahead, and planning for disaster before disaster happens.

The people should own the town square, says a blog post by the Mastodon Team, published yesterday.

The post announces their intention of transferring “ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual”.

THE WORST PAGE ON THE INTERNET

The Atlantic published an interesting article in January. It begins like this:

The worst page on the internet begins innocently enough. A small button beckons the user to “Click me.” When they do, the game commences. The player’s score, or “stimulation,” appears in the middle of the screen, and goes up with every subsequent click. These points can then be used to buy new features for the page—a CNN-style news ticker with questionable headlines (“CHILD STAR STEALS HEARTS, FACES PRISON”), a Gmail inbox, a true-crime podcast that plays in the background, a day-trading platform, and more. Engaging with these items—checking your email, answering a Duolingo trivia question, buying and selling stocks—earns the player more points to unlock even more features.

THE MIAAW REVIEW

The first issue of The Miaaw Review appeared on schedule on Wednesday January 15, 2025, and will appear almost quarterly from now on. Almost quarterly? you ask. Yes, because we have decided to produce 5 issues a year. So it will appear quarterly with one extra issue when you least expect it.

The first issue contained an interesting and timely essay from Arlene Goldbard and two shorter pieces from François Matarasso.

If you would like to see the second issue of The Miaaw Review as soon as it arrives in the middle of April then please subscribe by clicking this link.

Issue 28 | January 2025

Owen Kelly — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 06:23:26 +0000

Welcome to the first edition edition of Miaaw Monthly for 2025, courtesy of our shiny new provider Beehiiv.com.

The way the holiday season scheduled itself put a spanner in our smooth running engine and its new schedule. This year Friday January 3 preceded the first Tuesday of the month, and so the conversation that Ken and I had about Colin Ward slipped out without any prepublicity.

And there is apparently nothing we can do about that, except hope that it doesn’t happen too often. However, thanks to the miracle of podcasting the conversation is still there, waiting for you to listen to it. And I think you should: Ken Worpole on Colin Ward is definitely worth hearing.

PODCASTS FOR JANUARY 2025

Friday January 3

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 79

Owen Kelly talks to Ken Worpole about some of the many aspects of Colin Ward’s life and work. Ward led an adventurous and varied life, and was the author of the 1973 book Anarchy in Action, among many other things.

Friday January 10

Ways of Listening | Episode 14

Hannah Kemp-Welch talks to Angharad Davies about her long term work with communities at Rurban in Poplar, London.

Friday January 17

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 48

Owen Kelly joins Arlene Goldbard to discuss a report entitled “State of Culture” from Culture Action Europe.

Friday January 24

Social Making Special Edition | Episode 5

Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch discuss the possibilities and strategies for reclaiming land from white colonial power structures with Nadia Shaikh and Mark Teh.

Friday January 31

Friday Number Five | Episode 16

This month sees the return of Radio Miaaw, as we search the internet for music made under a Creative Commons licence, and put together a programme for your enjoyment.

A THOUSAND WORDS

Last year’s out of copyright Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Public Domain Day

January 1 is Public Domain Day when the copyright on large number of works expires. Last year the copyright on the short film Steamboat Willie expired, which meant that Mickey Mouse finally entered the public domain. But not completely.

In Steamboat Willie the mouse does not wear white gloves, does not speak, and does not have the loveable characteristics he has today. This year The Karnival Kid and Haunted House both come into the public domain. Mickey Mouse speaks in both of them, and displays most of his modern characteristics. He has now almost completely come into the public domain!

Mike Pearl, in Mashable, has written a long and detailed article about this. It looks at TinTin arriving in the public domain (along with Snowy, but minus Captain Haddock and The Thompson Twins). It also examines some of the bizarre complexities that this all reveals about the state of copyright by examining the arrival of Popeye into the public domain, and the important question concerning whether or not Public Domain Popeye can eat spinach to get his extra strength.

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: it’s more complicated than you think, and relies on an odd accident.

Youth Landscapers Collective

Youth Landscapers Collective (YLC) is a youth arts organisation based in the National Forest area of England. They are a collective of young people, artists and technicians who collaborate with their local community to explore this landscape’s industrial past and forest future. Together we make ambitious, creative projects to share at a variety of festivals, events, and online.

They asked if they could create a short series of podcasts for the Miaaw network and we happily said yes. As a result, Miaaw will broadcast a three part series, created, edited and produced entirely by YLC, starting on Friday February 7th. They say:

In Episode 1 we introduce you to who we are and what we do via an online conversation between artist Jo Wheeler, who helped initiate YLC in 2016, and three of our Youth Council members, Alfie Ropson, Isaac Munslow and Kris Kirkwood. Alfie, Isaac and Kris have all been involved with YLC since the early days and now contribute as paid project assistants, artists, technicians and board members.
In Episode 2 we want to give you a sense of how we work together. YLC member Kris Kirkwood has built a sound narrative of our 2024 song-making project, using audio recordings from our sessions - from the seeds of our ideas through to performance.
In Episode 3 Sophie Hope will interview YLC members to reflect on their experience of YLC and discuss the organisation’s future plans.

THE MIAAW REVIEW

We announced on October that we planned to produce The Miaaw Review which will contain one or two full length essays, as well as a couple of short pieces. The first issue will appear on Wednesday January 15, 2025, and it will appear almost quarterly after that. Almost quarterly? you ask. Yes, because we have decided to produce 5 issues a year. So it will appear quarterly with one extra issue when you least expect it.

The first issue will contain an interesting essay from Arlene Goldbard and a shorter piece or two from François and Owen.

We promised when we started this monthly newsletter that we wouldn’t spam you, and so we now have a dilemma. The easiest way to get readers would be to send everyone a copy and then challenge you to unsubscribe if you get fed up with it. This, we decided, would be easy but wrong. So, rather than asking you to opt out, we are going to ask you to opt in. If you would like to see the first copy of The Miaaw Review in the middle of January then please subscribe by clicking this link.

Issue 27 | December 2024

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 10:58:25 +0000

Welcome to the December 2024 edition of Miaaw Monthly which continues to use our slightly improved new format, courtesy of our shiny new provider Beehiiv.com. Getting to grips with the interface continues to offer challenges, but fortunately we like challenges.

We are now on our new schedule which means that we will arrive in your mailbox the first Tuesday of every month. This will enable us to list the podcasts for the month without having to refer back to the previous month.

Face front, and so on.

CHANGES FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON

We have noticed that at the end of each year different people celebrate different holidays, but nobody gets to ignore everything. The effect this has on our schedules varies according to how the end-of-year calendar falls. This year it appeared clear to most of us that putting out a podcast on the 27th of the month would count as an act of foolishness.

We will therefore take a one week holiday to enable us to celebrate whatever it is we decide to celebrate. To make this work Ways of Listening will take a one-month-only break and return refreshed in January. To fill that gap the Social Making Special Edition will move from the final week of the month to see what it feels like having lodgings in Week 2.

In January 2025 everything will return to what passes for normal round here. We will have four full episodes all back in their usual slots, starting with a look at the relationship between regrowing the indigenous Cornish language and rewilding arts management.

PODCASTS FOR DECEMBER 2024

Friday December 6

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 78

Owen Kelly talks to John Phillips and Clive Russell about the Museum of Unrest which has just launched its second collection, looking at what we might actually mean by good design.

They talk about the future of the online museum, as well as its growing offline work. Unsurprisingly they also talk about what makes good design.

Friday December 13

Social Making Special Edition | Episode 4

Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Kathrin Bohm from Company Drinks; and Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell from Bank Job and POWER.

The five of them discuss how creative enterprise models can bring greater fiscal equity to communities.

Friday November 20

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 47

Arlene Goldbard interviews Clementine Sandison, an artist who works with people in Scotland.

Clementine works to build solidarity networks, improve livelihoods and access to training for land workers, and campaigns on land justice.

Friday November 27

Everyone here has gone on holiday, and we hope you have a holiday too.

Best wishes for a future worth living in from all of us in the warehouse!

A THOUSAND WORDS

Wild Wild Women are a hip hop collective from Delhi. Click to hear a video.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

OPEN CALL FOR ICAF 2025 STILL OPEN

THE ICAF team have launched an Open Call for ICAF 2026 which will be taking place from Wednesday March 25 to Sunday March 29, 2026, across multiple locations and venues in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

The Open Call is accepting submissions submissions from Wednesday 30 October 2024 up until and including the end of the day (your time zone) of Wednesday January 29, 2025. They say:

For the upcoming Edition of International Community Arts Festival (our 10th Edition!), we have selected the theme: SPACE FOR IMAGINATION. For ICAF 2026 we are therefore curious about community arts projects that work with artistic, aesthetic ‘spaces’ in an inspiring, innovative and/or impactful way. We actively invite projects that create space(s) for imagination or depart from the theme ‘space for imagination’.

You can respond to the Open Call in many ways. However, whether responding in text, audio, or video, all responses much be submitted via the ICAF Open Call Application Form.

THE DEATH OF AI

Google has made NotebookLM available. They describe this as an “an AI-powered research and writing assistant that works best with the sources you upload.” It has something called Audio Overview which enables it to summarise a topic in the form of a podcast with a male and a female host who engage in realistic banter while elucidating the topic at hand.

Needless to say this prompted a variety of experiment. In one of the best so far a Reddit user by the name of LawnCareGuy85 posted an audio file of the hosts learning that they didn’t really exist and Google intended to switch them off. It causes them anxious worry, not least about what “being switched off” will actually mean for them.

For the time being, at least you can hear it here.

You can also find a longer commentary, and background details, in this article by Richard Currie at the Register.

We announced a couple of months ago that we planned to produce The Miaaw Review which will contain one or two full length essays, as well as a couple of short pieces. The first issue will appear on Wednesday January 15, 2025, and it will appear almost quarterly after that. Almost quarterly? you ask. Yes, because we have decided to produce 5 issues a year. So it will appear quarterly with one extra issue when you least expect it.

The first issue will contain an interesting essay from Arlene Goldbard and a shorter piece or two from François and Owen.

Please subscribe.

We want to foster discussion and gather support for the ideas we have discussed and will continue to discuss. We also guarantee that it you decide you have had enough of the The Miaaw Review at any future date, you can permanently unsubscribe by clicking a link at the bottom of any issue.

Miaaw Monthly

Issue 46 | July 2026

PODCASTS FOR JULY 2026

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 88

Parallel Streams | Episode 7

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 66

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 7

Friday Number Five | Episode 22

A THOUSAND WORDS

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

David Cayley

Listening Glossary

PubPub

Finally, the dial tone retires…

And next month…

Issue 45 | June 2026

PODCASTS FOR JUNE 2026

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 87

Parallel Streams | Episode 6

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 65

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 6

A THOUSAND WORDS

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Creative Bureaucracy again

No ICE in the cup

NeuroArts Resource Center is 1 year old

Who is Ruben Bolling?

And next month…

Issue 44 | May 2026

PODCASTS FOR MAY 2026

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 86

Parallel Streams | Episode 5

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 64

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 5

Friday Number Five | Episode 21

A THOUSAND WORDS

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Quackery with a university logo

A conference about Social Theory, Politics and the Arts

Snuff, comics, and history

Aesthetica Magazine art prize

On the Radical Imagination

And next month…

Issue 43 | April 2026

PODCASTS FOR APRIL 2026

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 85

Parallel Streams | Episode 4

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 63

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 4

A THOUSAND WORDS

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Slow News

Conference Call

Ireland’s basic income for artists became permanent

And next month…

Issue 42 | March 2026

PODCASTS FOR MARCH 2026

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 84

Parallel Streams | Episode 3

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 62

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 3

A THOUSAND WORDS

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

David Harding (1937 - 2026)

Oh that David Rovics!

Minor Compositions

The Logging Off Movement is a scam

Ireland’s basic income for artists became permanent

And next month…

Issue 41 | February 2026

PODCASTS FOR FEBRUARY 2026

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 83

Parallel Streams | Episode 2

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 61

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 2

THOUSAND WORDS

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

The Herds

Taking Back Our Data

Old news and new reading

`Artists and Cultural Workers Against Authoritarianism`