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

DECEMBER 9 | SERIES 2025

STREAM A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | EPISODE 59

Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso

On episode 59 of A Culture of Possibility, co-hosts 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. We were moved to explore this by the prevalence of “cancel culture” in the US and to an extent, the UK.

Once a phenomenon of the left, now strongly influential on the right, people are singled out and vilified for things they said or did decades earlier, or they become targets of persistent, angry campaigns aimed at shaming or ostracizing them for using objectionable language or disagreeing with those in power.

Core to community-based arts is the idea that when people speak for themselves, representing their truths, they may influence others to listen deeply and reach a more loving or just understanding.

These days, how much do people believe positive change is possible? How much are people’s ideas of possibility constrained by certainty that our pasts over-determine our futures?

We support freedom of expression and believe in redemption. Can people like us influence cultures that don’t?

Shadow World: anatomy of a cancellation

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. DECEMBER 5 | SERIES 2025

STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 81

Arlene Goldbard | Owen Kelly

This month Owen Kelly discusses Arlene Goldbard’s new book, a novel titled The Intercessor, and asks why she chose to write this unusual kind of novel at this particular time.

The novel offers a linked series of short stories, each foregrounding one character from a group whose stories eventually interlock. All of the characters have political, social or spiritual issues which come to seem less like categories than like different coloured lenses through which we can approach the world.

The novel explores the Jewish Renewal movement, among other themes, without wanting its audience limited to Jews or even less to Jews with an interest in the Jewish Renewal movement.

Arlene explains how this specific writing began, how the novel grew from the initial writing, and what she hopes the published book might achieve.

Arlene on Wikipedia

Arlene’s website

Arlene Goldbard: Clarity (2004)

Arlene Goldbard: The Wave (2013)

Arlene Goldbard: The Intercessor (2025)

Jewish Renewal, described on Wikipedia

Adin Steinsaltz: The Thirteen Petalled Rose

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Laura Raicovich about Fall of Freedom, which begins on the day this podcast drops. NOVEMBER 21 | SERIES 2025

STREAM A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | EPISODE 58

Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso | Laura Raicovich

On episode 58 of A Culture of Possibility, 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, described as “an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation,” “activating a nationwide wave of creative resistance.”

Artists and organizations are invited to participate by hosting public events of any size. We’ll talk about the organizers’ hopes and their sense of why and how art can resist authoritarianism.

Since this podcast goes out on November 21, it could not be timelier. Listen to the podcast, go to miaaw.net to get the links, and then look and see what is going on where you are!

Fall of Freedom website

Download the Fall of Freedom Toolkit