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On Episode 49 of A Culture of Possibility, 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. You are invited to respond with comments and suggestions. What do you need from the podcast?

Joanne Coates practises as a socially engaged artist, using photography to ask questions about rurality and wealth inequality. Her work explores gender, class and disability, drawing on her lived experience. Projects often involve participation and varying levels of collaboration with communities. In this episode, we speak about Jo’s recent work with young women in the Yorkshire Dales and Orkney,...

Youth Landscapers Collective (YLC) is a youth arts organisation based in the National Forest area of England. We’re a collective of young people, artists and technicians who collaborate with our 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. In the past nine years w...

Most months have four Fridays, and we know what to do with them. We put out a podcast: a different but related one for each Friday in the month. Sometimes, however, a month has five Fridays, and then we do something different - usually celebrating sound in one way or another. This month we have the first Friday Number Five of 2025 and we start another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of m...

This episode addresses the question: how can we reclaim land from white colonial power structures? In it Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Nadia Shaikh and Mark Teh, who both made presentations at Social Making 5. Nadia Shaikh “joined Right to Roam in 2021 after 14 years in the nature conservation sector, convinced that mainstream 'nature protection' wasn't involving people in a meanin...

This month, Owen Kelly joins Arlene Goldbard to discuss a report entitled “State of Culture” from Culture Action Europe, which describes itself as "the major European network of cultural networks, organisations, artists, activists, academics and policymakers. As the only intersectoral network it brings together members and strategic partners from all areas of culture. Culture Action Europe is the...

Angharad Davies is an artist and architectural researcher, and a member of public works. Her research examines the communities that exist around local, publicly accessible spaces. She believes in architecture as biography, and writing as an architectural process. In this episode, we hear about her long term work with communities at Rurban in Poplar, London, and the activities and approaches they u...

Owen Kelly talks to Ken Worpole about just some of the adventures of Colin Ward during his adventurous and varied life.   JANUARY 3 | SERIES 2025 STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 79   PARTICIPANTS Owen Kelly | Ken Worpole COMMENTARY In London, on March 29, 2010, The Daily Telegraph published an obituary that began like this. “Colin Ward, who has died aged 85, was Britain's lead...

François Matarasso is taking a break for medical treatment. We hope he will rejoin us very soon. On episode 47 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard interviews Clementine Sandison, an artist who works with people in Scotland to build solidarity networks, improve livelihoods and access to training for landworkers, and campaigns on land justice. Clementine works as co-Director of Alexandra Pa...

This episode addresses the question: should embedding creative enterprise models be a fundamental approach to sustaining the future of Socially Engaged Art? Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Kathrin Böhm from Company Drinks, a community space and cultural enterprise based in Barking and Dagenham; and Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell from Bank Job and Power Station, based in the London Bo...

The Museum of Unrest acts as a not-for-profit educational project to support artists designers and communities engaged in art and design linked to social and environmental justice. The project is an online continuation of an organisation that has supported art and social engagement since 1975 when it opened in west London as Paddington Printshop and subsequently became londonprintstudio. Faced wit...

Some months have five Fridays, and when this happens add an extra podcast to our normal schedule. In 2021 we played music licensed under creative commons licences; in 2022 we excavated four old radio shows; and in 2023 we looked back at four early classics from Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse. This year we have found another podcast that we think might interest you: one published under a Creat...

As part of the fifth edition of Social Making: “the UK’s only biennial symposium dedicated to socially engaged art practice, co-creation, and place-making” Kim Wide and Anurupa Roy led a workshop exploring the implications of jugaad. Kim Wide works as the founder and director of Take A Part. Anurupa Roy works as an award-winning puppet designer and director of puppet-based theatre. The BBC has des...

In episode 46 of A Culture of Possibility, while François Matarasso is taking a break for medical treatment, Arlene Goldbard interviews Libby Lenkinski, Founder and President of Albi.org, “a new fund, institute and lab that uses cultural vehicles to establish paradigm-shifting narratives by and about Palestinians and Jews”. Albi does many things. It supports film and TV projects. It aims to influe...

Nisha Duggal is an artist working across various mediums, exploring expressions of freedom in the everyday. She is interested in the transformative qualities of making and doing, engineering situations that uncover deep-seated primitive impulses to connect. In this episode, she tells us about Held, a multi-platform project in which she guided people to make pairs of simple, clay sculptures formed...

Owen Kelly looks at three things that seem to have occurred over the last few months: 1. The failure of cultural democrats in Britain to present a manifesto, policy proposals, or cultural programme to the incoming Labour government; 2. Our collective failure to write our own narrative, and thus our reliance on perpetually opposing the dominant narrative; 3. Our continuing acceptance of just-in-tim...

Take A Part organises Social Making: “the UK’s only biennial symposium dedicated to socially engaged art practice, co-creation, and place-making”. For the fifth edition of the symposium Take A Part moved from their base in Plymouth to host the event in Bristol. It took place at Brix on October 10 and 11, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch record...

In episode 45 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso continue a discussion they began in episode 42. They talk about words that are used in our fields of work: how they are used, why, and the impact they may have. This time, they focus on community, its use and misuse; intuition, discernment, and truth, three related words that hint at the search for clarity; and ident...

Paul Crook is an artist, and also head of Communities and Learning at South London Gallery. We talk about his work with young people in both community art and gallery education settings, and creative strategies to facilitate listening. Paul uses mind maps to think with young people about artworks and programmes; one young person comedically calls him a ‘Democracy Scheduler’.

Sara Selwood has worked in the publicly-funded cultural sector for over 40 years in various capacities, including as editor of the cultural policy journal Cultural Trends since it was first published in 1994. Having started out as an artist, she was an art historian and gallery director before becoming a cultural analyst and working as researcher, editor, academic and consultant. Sara Selwood has...

Guildhall De-Centre focuses on the support structures, networks and collaborations that form the basis of socially engaged practices by developing a community of researchers, practitioners, producers, teachers and administrators at Guildhall School. Sophie Hope talks to Sean Gregory and Jo Gibson about the new De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research. They discuss the roots of this ini...

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with William Frode de la Foret, Art Director of Cork Community Art Link in Ireland for the past 30 years. Cork Community Art Link “work with people to create a sense of community identity and collective pride enabling people to learn more about themselves and the world around them all the while having fun”. Their work aims to engage people “both as parti...

Arc Theatre is an Essex-based company that uses Forum Theatre and participatory drama activities to consider tough issues with audiences. Originally founded in 1984, Arc specialises in producing and performing original, live theatre, and delivering interactive, multi-media awareness programmes. They work with children and young people in schools and with groups ranging from pensioners to asylum se...

According to their web site, “Take A Part are the UK's leading socially engaged art (SEA) organisation, dedicated to supporting, furthering and sustaining SEA practice, community co-creation and community embedding placemaking in the UK. We take a community-first approach to culture, supporting areas and people underrepresented and underserved in our society to develop cultural confidence, advocac...

Every year some months have five Fridays, and every time this happens we find something to do there: something out of our normal schedule. We try to adopt an annual theme. In 2021 we played music licensed under creative commons licences; in 2022 we found four old radio shows; and in 2023 we looked back to four early episodes of Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse. This year whenever we find oursel...