Jay is more than just the host of All About Change podcast. He is a lawyer and international activist, who has focused his life’s work on seeking social justice by advocating for the rights of people with disabilities worldwide. On the special episode of All About Change, Mijon Zulu, the managing producer of the "All About Change" podcast, is taking over hosting duties to interview Jay Ruderman about his new book, his activist journey, and why activism is even more important today. Episode Chapters (0:00) intro (02:38) How does one choose a cause to go after? (03:33) Jay’s path to activism (07:50) Practical steps a new activist can take (09:24) Confrontation vs trolling (17:36) Learning from activists operating in different sectors (19:20) Resilience in activism (22:24) Reflections on Find Your Fight and goodbye For video episodes, watch on www.youtube.com/@therudermanfamilyfoundation Stay in touch: X: @JayRuderman | @RudermanFdn LinkedIn: Jay Ruderman | Ruderman Family Foundation Instagram: All About Change Podcast | Ruderman Family Foundation To learn more about the podcast, visit https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/ Looking for more insights into the world of activism? Be sure to check out Jay’s brand new book, Find Your Fight , in which Jay teaches the next generation of activists and advocates how to step up and bring about lasting change. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy your books, and you can learn more about it at www.jayruderman.com .…
Miaaw.net: four monthly series, one a week, audio essays, conversations and discussions about cultural democracy and the commons. Week 1: Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse Week 2: Genuine Inquiry Week 3: A Culture of Possibility Week 4: Common Practice What is cultural democracy? How can we move towards it? How likely are we to achieve it? What does it have to do with "the arts"? What does it have to do with a post-digital future? What does it have to do with the commons?
Miaaw.net: four monthly series, one a week, audio essays, conversations and discussions about cultural democracy and the commons. Week 1: Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse Week 2: Genuine Inquiry Week 3: A Culture of Possibility Week 4: Common Practice What is cultural democracy? How can we move towards it? How likely are we to achieve it? What does it have to do with "the arts"? What does it have to do with a post-digital future? What does it have to do with the commons?
Owen Griffiths describes himself as “an artist, workshop leader and facilitator. Using participatory and collaborative processes, his socially engaged practice explores the possibilities of art to create new frameworks, resources and systems.” From 2017-2019 he acted as co-director of Gentle/Radical, a community arts and social justice project based in Cardiff. He also leads several long-term projects. Lucy Elmes works as a Contemporary Art Curator and Producer based in Plymouth. She leads the Curatorial Programme at Take A Part, strengthening the socially engaged art sector by connecting communities with artists to co-create impactful projects. Kim Wide MBE founded, and acts as CEO and Artistic Director of, Take A Part in 2008. Hailing from Canada, Kim started her work in museums and collections at the City of Toronto and Government of Ontario Art Collection before moving to the UK in 2003. In this concluding episode of the Social Making special editions Owen, Lucy and Kim discuss with Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch. They talk about the ways in which socially engaged art becomes part of larger social, politcal, educational and cultural streams, and how the role of the artist needs regular renegotiation. They look at their current practices, identify stress points and look forward to their possible futures.…
In episode 50 of “A Culture of Possibility,” Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about a remarkable book, Engineers of the Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook. First published in 1983, it’s both an account of a novel and exciting approach to community performance and a how-to manual for anyone who wants to use or adapt its tools and methods. The book conveys the spirit and generosity of the British community arts movement during those years, and gives François and Arlene a good excuse to reminisce about the impact of this innovative and influential work in Europe and the U.S.s for the future. You are invited to respond with comments and suggestions. What do you need from the podcast?…
Hector MacInnes works in socially engaged art, sound and research. His practice includes spoken word, sonic fiction, installation, text, tech, music, radio, speculative design and organising things, often in collaboration with other artists and a diverse range of communities. Hector was born and grew up on the Isle of Skye, and his projects are deeply rooted in an ongoing interrogation of belonging, identity, legitimacy and lived experience of the more-than-urban, themes he’s brought to his practice-based doctoral research into the concept of the field, anthropocene rurality, and the ‘New Weird’. In this episode, Hannah Kemp-Welch talks in depth about a project Hector has been working on in a prison (HMP Inverness), and the particular sonic environment in which this work is situated.…
Youth Landscapers Collective 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. In this episode 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. Here’s a bit of context about the project, to help set the scene: In 2023, YLC created The Stage of Possibility – a vibrant, democratic space designed, built and curated by YLC to showcase stories and voices from the National Forest at Timber Festival. The project connected us back to the creative and resourceful communities that grew from the former coalpits and pipe works of this area. In 2024 we wanted to strengthen that connection and also perform together on the stage too! We created a set of locally inspired songs, in a project we called: WAYANNAEYINANYONNIT (A Big Story). Working with artists Rebecca Lee and Jessica Harby and our community we sought out the hidden stories of our local area, finding them in discussions with former mining engineer, pipe worker, and co-founder of Moira Replan Graham Knight, research visits to Moira Furnace Museum and The Magic Attic Community Archive, and sharing our own personal experiences. From Graham we learned stories of injustices small and large in the mine - the disappearance of cakes sent down for overtime workers and the tragic death of a young co-worker in an accident. From Clyde at Magic Attic we learnt local dialect and the definition and pronunciation of our title: WAYANNAEYINANYONNIT. More than anything we responded with heart to what it must have felt like to take part in each of these stories and what it's like to be living here today, many of our houses built over the unfilled mining tunnels. The songs we made and performed share our experience of the National Forest, as the past, present and future overlap, canaries sing, children climb on the lime kilns, new words are shouted, and we make sure we're all alright.…
This episode addresses two questions. 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? Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch discuss with Ben Bordwick and Leo Valls who both made presentations at Social Making in October 2024. Note: Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, 2024, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.…
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, Scotland. Alongside and intersecting with her practice, Jo works as a part-time farm labourer and runs a project called Roova, bringing together artists and communities to forge connections in rural landscapes.…
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 we’ve worked with over 50 groups and individuals, including a beekeeper, ex-miners, scouts, Derbyshire’s official fungi recorder, potters, photographers, a mushroom grower, narrowboat restorers, museum curators, community archivists, forestry workers, amateur radio enthusiasts, musicians, kiln workers, historians, wildlife recorders, filmmakers, charcoal makers, bird watchers and folk singers. Over that time our youth members have grown in confidence and skills, developing experience and commitment to shape and direct where Youth Landscapers Collective goes next. In this episode 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.…
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 music issued under Creative Commons licences which we last did four years ago. We will pick a theme for each edition. In this episode we showcase a range of music available on Tribe of Noise , based in Amsterdam and one of the longest running independent platforms for Creative Commons licensed musics. You can find full episode notes with links to all the music at miaaw.net .…
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 meaningful way and that the connections between enclosure, land ownership and our devastating biodiversity loss were too big to ignore. She now lives in Scotland where she enjoys roaming free, rock pooling and kayaking. She covers the campaign’s operations, events, and work on social justice.” Mark Teh “is a performance maker, researcher, and curator based in Malaysia. His practice is situated primarily in performance, but also operates via exhibitions, education, social interventions, writing, and curating. He is a member of Five Arts Centre, and graduated with an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London”. In this episode Hannah, Mark, Nadia and Sophie discuss the different ways in which Right To Roam in England and the artists associated with Five Arts Centre in Kuala Lumpar approach the theory and practice of reclaiming land for democratic use. Note: Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, 2024, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.…
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 political voice of the cultural sector in Europe...." The group was new to both of us, but since CAE says of itself that "we take care of the cultural ecosystem," cultural democracy is one of the tags on its website, and a few posts mentioning François Matarasso appear, we decided to study the 163-page report so you don't have to! Tune in to find out what the political voice of the European cultural sector is thinking and saying these days.…
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 use to build relationships with local residents.…
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 leading anarchist, a pioneer of adventure playgrounds and a champion of allotment holders and tenant co-operatives; he was the former editor of Anarchy magazine and an unlikely holder of the post of education officer of the Town and Country Planning Association”. His life covered a lot of different territory from architecture to education. He lived “an anarchism rooted in everyday experience, and not necessarily linked to industrial and political struggles. His ideas were heavily influenced by Peter Kropotkin and his concept of mutual aid”. In his 1973 book Anarchy in Action he wrote “The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism”. Ken Worpole knew Colin Ward well for many years, and has contributed a chapter to a new book, Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchism , celebrating his life, thought, and work. In this episode he talks with Owen Kelly about some aspects of these.…
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 Park Food Forest, a community greenspace in the East end of Glasgow where volunteers produce food, cook and share meals, organize community celebrations, and explore notions of commoning and how to steward public land.…
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 Borough of Walthamstow. All three of them participated in Social Making iteration 5. Company Drinks works as a long term project in which each step of the production, distribution, and planning operates as a public space. They have produced drinks from handpicked ingredients for ten years now, and use social enterprise models as part of their arts practice. Power Station grew out of a previous project called Bank Job that took over a high street bank and attempted to create an equitable local economy. Power Station works towards making a street in Waltham Forest into a collective power station, with long term plans to create a borough wide, communally owned solar power company. Note: Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.…
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