Creative Success = Financial Balance with Flexible Budget Plans As a creative individual, dealing with irregular income can be daunting. In this episode of From "Creative Passion To Profit", titled "How Creatives Can Budget for Regular Income," I, Mahmood, tackle one of the biggest challenges faced by those in the arts and creative worldābudgeting. Have you ever felt the high of being fully booked and having commissions flying off the shelves, only to be met with silence and income droughts the following month? You're not alone. But here's the good news: with a little planning, you can smooth out those financial ups and downs. In this episode, I'll share three simple steps to help you build a budgeting system that fits your lifestyle and supports your creative ambitions. You'll learn how to determine your essential baseline expenses, create a financial buffer for quiet months, and implement a flexible yet simple budgeting method that allows you to thrive creatively and financially. You'll also have some homework tasks... Timestamped Summary: [00:00:00] Introduction to challenges of budgeting with erratic income. [00:00:58] Step 1: Determine your baseline expenses. [00:02:12] Step 2: Build a financial buffer for quieter months. [00:03:46] Step 3: Apply a simple, discipline-based budget system. [00:04:58] Homework: Calculate baseline expenses and track income. Mentioned in this episode: Training Training Training Find out more about Budgetwhizz Find out more about Budgetwhizz Budgetwhizzā¦
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?
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 Joās 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.ā¦
Youth Landscapers Collective (YLC) is a youth arts organisation based in the National Forest area of England. Weāre a collective of young people, artists and technicians who collaborate with our local community to explore this landscapeās 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 weāve worked with over 50 groups and individuals, including a beekeeper, ex-miners, scouts, Derbyshireās 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.ā¦
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 .ā¦
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 ājoined 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 campaignās operations, events, and work on social justice.ā Mark Teh āis 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 Londonā. 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.ā¦
This month, Owen Kelly joins Arlene Goldbard to discuss a report entitled āState of Cultureā 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 FranƧois 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.ā¦
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.ā¦
In London, on March 29, 2010, The Daily Telegraph published an obituary that began like this. āColin 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 Associationā. His life covered a lot of different territory from architecture to education. He lived āan 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 aidā. In his 1973 book Anarchy in Action he wrote āThe 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 separatismā. 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.ā¦
FranƧois 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.ā¦
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 Bƶhm 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.ā¦
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 with Covid and rising costs the londonprintstudio facilities closed in 2020 but gave birth to the Museum of Unrest. The first collection went online in January 2024 and included commissioned articles, interviews and links on the topic of artistsā and activistsā museums. The second collection went online last month. Curated by Clive Russell it asks the question: what might we mean by āgood designā? In this episode Owen Kelly talks to John Phillips and Clive Russell about their work, the museum, and where it might all lead.ā¦
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 Creative Commons licence that somehow connects to things here at Miaaw. This month we go to the heart of enshittification, and listen to episode 438 of Cory Doctorowās own podcast. He takes Tiktok as an example and lays out his theory of enshittification, using that as an example. His podcast varies between reading extracts from his novels, reading extracts from his books, and pulling together his thoughts on current cultural and political issues. Many other episodes will prove worth your time, and he has them all stored at archive.org.ā¦
As part of the fifth edition of Social Making: āthe UKās only biennial symposium dedicated to socially engaged art practice, co-creation, and place-makingā 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 described jugaad as āan untranslatable word for winging itā. The word exists in Hindu, Urdu and Punjabi and describes using whatever you have to hand to make something you need; a process of frugal improvisation. In this episode Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch talk to them about the workshop; about the nature of jugaad, as a global practice of subversion by radical practice,; the collective politics that fuel jugaad; and what it might actually mean in an English, or European, context. Note: Social Making iteration 5 took place at Brix on October 10 and 11, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.ā¦
In episode 46 of A Culture of Possibility, while FranƧois Matarasso is taking a break for medical treatment, Arlene Goldbard interviews Libby Lenkinski, Founder and President of Albi.org, āa new fund, institute and lab that uses cultural vehicles to establish paradigm-shifting narratives by and about Palestinians and Jewsā. Albi does many things. It supports film and TV projects. It aims to influence the creative industries, expanding the space for critical voices in cultural production to thrive and be true vehicles for change. It also supports a cohort of flagship artists working in diverse fields.ā¦
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 from the space within the palms of their hands. The crafting enabled her to connect and share conversations about place, land and belonging with participants.ā¦
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-time āarguing-againstā, rather than developing long term strategies based on āarguing-forā. Owen proposes we look at how the IEA moved privatisation from the shadows to the mainstream and work out how we can play the long game ourselves. He illustrates some of the possibilities with two examples: the ICAF festival and The Museum of Unrest. He finishes by going wildly off-piste with a brief discussion of the secular benefits of henotheism in an apparent digression that turns out to play a central role in his argument.ā¦
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