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

This month Owen Kelly looks at some of the deeper meanings of Katie Lam’s recent remarks on cultural coherence.

NOVEMBER 7 | SERIES 2025

STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 80

Owen Kelly

In this episode Owen Kelly looks into the idea of cultural coherence, something that bubbled to the surface after Katie Lam, a member of parliament for the Conservative Party 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 claim for ourselves, before it gets claimed by those who would whistle to dogs…

Sam Leith: In Defence of the Rules-based Order, in The Spectator

Tali Fraser: The Tories and the search for cultural coherence on ConservativeHome

The Sustainability Directory

In this episode we explore Faircamp again, trying to find something to celebrate halloween. Then we take a peep at what we can find at Tribe of Noise. OCTOBER 31 | SERIES 2025

STREAM Friday Number Five | EPISODE 19

Owen Kelly

Today (or tonight, depending on where you are) we have the final Friday Number Five of 2025. At the end of January we started another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences; a theme we last explored four years ago. This month have another dive into the contents you can find while exploring the Faircamp web ring. This covers a wide range of music so if one piece doesn’t grab you then rest assured: something different will be along in a minute or so.

Since today is Halloween we also try to find some suitable music, fail, and see what we can find at Tribe of Noise instead.

The Faircamp website

The Faircamp webring FAQ

Johann Bourquenez: Diminished Epicness & more

Blix Byrd, including Skinning a Tiger

Voodoo Economics, the EP

Nightmother: The Beach Boys In My Room

A Companion of Owls: Sketches for Aural Ataraxia

Ruby Louise Rose: projects, downloads, works in progress

Helen Bell at Faircamp

Helen Bell at Bandcamp

Helen Bell: Molecule

Olive: Halloween Party v2.0 at Tribe of Noise

Rob Dell Music: I do believe in Christmas at Tribe of Noise

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Betsy Damon whose work with water has had a healing impact across the globe. She talks about her work from early projects in China to her current undertakings. OCTOBER 17 | SERIES 2025

STREAM A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | EPISODE 57

Betsy Damon | Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso

Betsy Damon is an internationally-recognized artist whose public work and living systems, such as the Living Water Garden, have received widespread acclaim.

In 1991 Damon founded Keepers of the Waters,[23] a nonprofit organization that serves as an international community to encourage "art, science and community projects for the understanding and remediation of living water systems." The nonprofit is run with a collaborative approach and was started with the support of the Hubert Humphrey Institute.

In 2006, Damon, alongside a group of artists, scientists, and funders, met in Vancouver and created a summary report for UNESCO titled Art in Ecology – A Think Tank on Arts and Sustainability. UNESCO had commissioned a report in advance of this meeting titled Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary EcoART Practice, of which the meeting and summary report were a result.

She is the author of Water Talks: Empowering Communities to Know, Restore, and Preserve their Waters.

On episode 57 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Betsy Damon.

Her work with water has had a healing impact across the globe and 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.

Betsy Damon’s website

Betsy Damon’s CV

Betsy Damon in Wikipedia

Susan Jones works as an independent arts researcher and writer who holds specialist knowledge and insight about the social and political environment for artists and contemporary visual arts.

She has just completed her independent qualitative and longitudinal study Artists' lives: ecologies for resilience, formed around case studies of 14 visual artists from three English regions. She has been working on it for the last two years.

She argues that successive policies since have marginalised artists’ position in the infrastructures and ‘ecology’ of the arts. Arts policy’s ‘market economy’ approach has the effect of undermining its stated aspirations to demonstrate equity and inclusion across the arts.

Owen Kelly reviews a pre-publication version of the report, and comments on it. He notes that, rather than “the usual suspects”, the report has been sup­port­ed by Axisweb, CAMP: con­tem­po­rary art mem­ber­ship plat­form, and Cre­ative Land Trust.

On episode 56 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso offer their third podcast in a series about censorship and related issues, following on episode 54 with writer Jeff Chang and episode 55 with muralists Amber Hansen and Reyna Hernandez.

Arlene and François talk about 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.

It’s not only art that’s vulnerable, but also ideas about art and culture!