Episode 63 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso discuss cultural policy as it really is, and not as policy makers would like you to think of it.

The presentation was recorded live at a session at the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam a few weeks ago.

EPISODE 63 | APRIL 17 | 2026

Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso have hosted the A Culture of Possibility podcast for over five years but they have never met face to face - until they finally met late last month at the ICAF Festival in Rotterdam. They had been invited to give two joint workshops: one on cultural policy and community arts, and one on ethics and community arts.

In this episode, we listen to the first part of the first workshop - the initial presentation - exactly as it happened. At the actual event this was followed by an interactive feedback session. Here you are invited to conduct your own experiment at home.

Please note that you may hear a few microphone problems at the beginning of the presentation, and some extraneous noise from time to time; but not very much, and certainly not enough to distract from what Arlene and François have to say.

ICAF Rotterdam https://icafrotterdam.com/

François: A Restless Art https://arestlessart.com/

François: A Selfless Art https://aselflessart.com/

Arlene on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlene_Goldbard

Arlene’s website https://arlenegoldbard.com/about-2/

In the fourth episode of Parallel Streams we listen to episode 52 of Ferment Radio, with Kirsty Hendry and Aga Pokrywka.

Ferment Radio is “a podcast series that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet”.

EPISODE 03 | MARCH 13 | 2026

Kirsty Hendry | Owen Kelly | Aga Pokrywka

Ferment Radio has produced more than 50 episodes “that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet”.

They do this because, argue, “Pollution, drought, floods, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change... We are experiencing the consequences of human’s alterations of the Earth’s ecosystems. There is no pristine world. We are living on a broken planet”.

They are Aga Pokrywka and her guests, and their starting points are more diverse than you can imagine, although they all link back to the process of fermentation.

Ferment Radio https://fermentradio.com

Super Eclectic https://supereclectic.team

Super Eclectic shop https://holvi.com/shop/supereclectic/

Temporary Democracy: https://www.miaaw.net/e/temporary-democracy-in-a-cultural-space/

Sandor Katz: feminist and queer theories of fermentation https://www.miaaw.net/e/common-practice-ferment-radio/

Play that Fungi Music! https://www.miaaw.net/e/play-that-fungi-music/

Life on Mars https://www.miaaw.net/e/common-practice-life-on-mars/

Show me your kitchen https://www.miaaw.net/e/podcasting-ferment-radio/

Rebekah Cupitt and Owen Kelly discuss the possibility of artificial general intelligence; the nature of Claude, and the relationship (if any) between artificial intelligence and creativity.

They also discuss the meaning of the word excode.

APRIL 3 | 2026 | EPISODE 85

Rebekah Cupitt | Owen Kelly

Rebekah Cupitt has a BA (University of Queensland, Australia) and an MA in Social Anthropology (Stockholm University, Sweden) and holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction specialising in Mediated Communication. Rebekah's research focuses on the people who use technology in their everyday lives and the socio-cultural aspects of technology relevant to its design.

More specifically, Rebekah examines the ways in which technology influences communication in Swedish Sign Language and how it then becomes an active participant in performances of deaf (and hearing) identity in technology and media-rich organisational contexts.

Rebekah's research takes a post-human and anti-normative approach to techno-utopias which often haunt human-computer interactions and therefore have implications for design.

In this episode she talks with Owen Kelly about a series of topics she discussed recently at a lecture she gave in the BIDA+ Critical AI series at Birkbeck, University of London. Her talk was entitled Piercing the veil of authority in techno-utopian and AGI-driven futures, although the discussion heads in slightly different directions.

Anthropic’s blog post about Claude wanting to blog https://www.anthropic.com/research/deprecation-updates-opus-3

The Register’s comment on this https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/26/anthropic_claude_opus_3_blog/

Claude’s Corner on Substack https://substack.com/@claudeopus3

Bringjord, S. and Ferucci, D 1999 Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, A Storytelling Machine. Psychology Press. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BDJ5AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Buolamwini, J. 2024 Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. Random House

Chan, A.S. 2013 Networking Peripheries. Technological Future and the Myth of Digital Universalism. The MIT Press.

Shane Legg, co-founder of DeepMind (now GoogleDeepMind) on AGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3u_FAv33G0