In this ninth episode of ‘Ways of Listening’, socially engaged artist and PhD researcher Alex Parry explores workshop practices in depth. Alex’s bio describes her long-term interest in ‘how things form communities’. She has a history of working in public spaces, creating events and objects that encourage collective experiences.

In a conversation with Hannah Kemp-Welch Alex describes her overlapping interests in collective organising with artistic practices, and how this led to a formative project, intervening in the structure of the seminar to disrupt the usual power dynamics. Alex questions - how do we respond to non-participation? Could there be richness in refusal? 

Together with Hannah, Alex discusses the tensions between the requirement or desire to plan a workshop, and creating space to really listen and respond to the room.

Alex Parry - Resisting the Plan

The General Election of June 2017, and the massive Labour surge under Jeremy Corbyn's socialist leadership, has provided a new sense of optimism for those hoping for an end to utilitarian approaches to culture and swingeing cuts to arts funding. This month, Juliet talks to Loraine Leeson, Hassan Mahamdallie and Hilary Wainwright about the concept of cultural democracy, the recent The World Transformed conference and the Arts for Labour initiative. What are Jeremy Corbyn's arts policies, and how are they informed by the anti-austerity movement? What has been learned from the Greater London Council's arts programmes of the 1980s, or the Attlee government's cultural policies? How did writers and thinkers such as William Morris, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams establish a long British tradition of 'cultural democracy', and what can we take from them in the 21st century?

WORKS REFERENCED:

Campaign to save The Cinema Museum: www.cinemamuseum.org.uk

'A Creative Future for All' - https://www.policyforum.labour.org.uk/news/a-creative-future-for-all
The Great Exhibition of the North - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-43324069

The Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company - http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/gay-sweatshop/
LORAINE LEESON, Art : Process : Change (2017) - https://www.routledge.com/Art--Process--Change-Inside-a-Socially-Situated-Practice/Leeson/p/book/9781138670631
KEN LOACH, The Spirit of '45 (2017) - http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-spirit-45
HASSAN MAHAMDALLIE on William Morris - https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1996/isj2-071/mahamdallie.htm
WILLIAM MORRIS, News from Nowhere (1890) - https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/17/guardian190-william-morris-news-from-nowhere
HILARY WAINWRIGHT, A New Politics from the Left (2017) - https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/persuasive-points-on-new-politics-from-the-left

Cultural Democracy

Episode 1 of of the first series of Meanwhile In An Abandoned Warehouse, a discussion about cultural democracy in theory and practice. All the episodes with additional commentary and linked references at http://miaaw.net

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse - series 1

Cultural Democracy in Practice

An interpretation of urban decay. Mix of field recordings, voice, synthesis, narrative soundscapes and elements of pop.

Alex Parry - Resisting the Plan

miaaw.net

Related tracks