Peter Renshaw

Paulo Lameiro

On episode 66 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Paulo Lameiro, a musician, educator and musicologist, based in his hometown of Leiria, Portugal. A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY EPISODE 66 | JULY 17 | 2026   PARTICIPANTS Arlene Goldbard | Paulo Lameiro | François Matarasso   COMMENTARY Paulo Lameiro is a portuguese musicologist, educator, communicator and creator from Leiria. After a brief career as a Baritone, with solo performances at the São Carlos National Theatre in Lisbon, he dedicated himself to teaching and took on the administration of several music schools, including the Conservatório Nacional de Lisboa (Lisbon National Conservatory), the Orfeão de Leiria (Leiria Choral Society) and the SAMP arts school in the village of Pousos. It’s from this village, where he was born, that he has been developing, since 1992, projects of artistic production and education for early childhood, with special reference to Cradle of Arts, Musicians on Nappies and Concerts for Babies.  Recently, he became interested in organizing artistic practices with the community, with special reference to projects such as Opera in Prison, with inmates, New Springs for the elderly, Il Trovatore or the Roma of the Lis with Romani communities. He was a founding member and part of the first Scientific Council of the Institute of Ethnomusicology of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. For decades, he has led Concertos para Bebes (Concerts for Babies), an amazing ongoing series of interactive performances by professional musicians, created to engage very young children in music. The center of his work currently involves collaboration with communities including incarcerated youth and Romani communities.    REFERENCES About Paulo Lameiro https://rhi-think.com/person/266/Paulo-Lameiros [https://rhi-think.com/person/266/Paulo-Lameiros] Concertos para Bebes website https://www.concertosparabebes.com/en/ [https://www.concertosparabebes.com/en/] Concertos para Bebes YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/iapapaprrr [https://www.youtube.com/iapapaprrr] Paulo Lameiro on Radio Ara: setting up a music project in prison https://www.radioara.org/episodes/dive-in-with-eme-paulo-lameiro/ [https://www.radioara.org/episodes/dive-in-with-eme-paulo-lameiro/]

Reverse Centaurs Live!

In this month’s episode of Parallel Streams we listen to an episode of Cory Doctorow’s weekly podcast, in which he has a live (and lively) discussion with Angie Coiro about his new book The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.   PARALLEL STREAMS EPISODE 07 | JULY 10 | 2026   PARTICIPANTS Angie Coiro | Cory Doctorow | Owen Kelly   COMMENTARY Cory Doctorow’s website says that he “is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of dozens of books, most recently ENSHITTIFICATION: WHY EVERYTHING SUDDENLY GOT WORSE AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (nonfiction); and the novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Born in Toronto, Canada, he lives in Los Angeles and London”. He also works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and has a daily newsletter, a weekly podcast, and several websites. In a recent episode of the podcast he put out a discussion he recorded at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park as part of his book tour. That is what we are listening to today.   REFERENCES Cory Doctorow’s daily link blog https://pluralistic.net [https://pluralistic.net] Cory Doctorow’s book and podcast website https://craphound.com [https://craphound.com] The Reverse Centaur book website https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621575/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/ [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621575/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/] An hour-long excerpt from the audiobook https://craphound.com/podcast/2026/05/17/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/ [https://craphound.com/podcast/2026/05/17/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/] The discussion at Kepler's Books on video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/live/cWN6XBa73xA [https://www.youtube.com/live/cWN6XBa73xA] Book review by Dorian Lynskey at The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/22/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-by-cory-doctorow-review-the-real-price-of-artificial-intelligence [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/22/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-by-cory-doctorow-review-the-real-price-of-artificial-intelligence] Book review by NerdyNerdyBooks on Substack https://nerdynerdybookbook.substack.com/p/book-review-the-reverse-centaurs [https://nerdynerdybookbook.substack.com/p/book-review-the-reverse-centaurs]

Summer Reading: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Sophie Hope recently read James Agee and Walker Evans classic documentary book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. She persuaded Owen Kelly to read it too, and in this episode they examine the book from several viewpoints: as a public art project, as ethnography, as literature, and as an historical document.   Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse Episode 88 | July 3 2026   PARTICIPANTS Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly   COMMENTARY According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Us_Now_Praise_Famous_Men]“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew out of an assignment that Agee and Evans accepted in 1936 to produce a Fortune article on the conditions among sharecropper families in the American South during the Great Depression. It was the time of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs designed to help the poorest segments of the society. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping families mired in desperate poverty. They returned with Evans's portfolio of stark images - of families with gaunt faces, adults and children huddled in bare shacks before dusty yards in the Depression-era nowhere of the deep south - and Agee's detailed notes. His piece was rejected by the editors at Fortune; but the following year the magazine gave Agee permission to publish his Alabama research in a book. The manuscript was accepted for publication by Houghton Mifflin in 1939 and appeared two years later”. In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss the book, questioning Agee’s motives and the work that results from his eight week’s with the three tenant families.  Owen Kelly suggests that a reader wanting a view of poverty during the New Deal period that seeks to change the world through its writing might learn more from the trilogy of novels written by John Dos Passos and known collectively as USA; first published in one volume in 1937.   References James Agee (author) and Walker Evans (photographer), And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (originally published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1941; Penguin Classics, 2006 [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57522/let-us-now-praise-famous-men-by-james-agee-walker-evans-intro--blake-morrison/9780141188492]) Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, available to borrow from the Internet Archive [https://archive.org/details/bwb_S0-EAC-301]  USA, available to borrow from the Internet Archive  [https://archive.org/details/bwb_S0-DIH-783] The 42nd Parallel, the first volume of USA is also available to borrow from the Internet Archive [https://archive.org/details/42ndparallelusa0000john] for those wanting to try a sample first.  Christina Davidson, Let Us Now Trash Famous Authors, Atlantic (2010): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/let-us-now-trash-famous-authors/307994/ [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/let-us-now-trash-famous-authors/307994/] John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934): https://ia902908.us.archive.org/28/items/deweyjohnartasanexperience/DEWEY%20John,%20Art%20as%20an%20Experience%22.pdf [https://ia902908.us.archive.org/28/items/deweyjohnartasanexperience/DEWEY%20John,%20Art%20as%20an%20Experience%22.pdf] Grant Kester, Breaking and Entering: Poverty and Aesthetic Violence in Let us Now Praise Famous Men, FIELD Journal (2023) https://field-journal.com/issue-25/breaking-and-entering-poverty-and-aesthetic-violence-in-let-us-now-praise-famous-men/#_ednref35 [https://field-journal.com/issue-25/breaking-and-entering-poverty-and-aesthetic-violence-in-let-us-now-praise-famous-men/#_ednref35] Dale Maharidge (author), Michael Williamson (photographer), And Their Children After Them, Seven Stories Press (2020) https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/And-Their-Children-After-Them-by-Dale-Maharidge-author-Michael-Williamson-photographer/9781609809812?srsltid=AfmBOorkVujGhdZD8KFnVvxSeqnHvW9UQ5ZmD5Df7sPpc1I76aHh544o [https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/And-Their-Children-After-Them-by-Dale-Maharidge-author-Michael-Williamson-photographer/9781609809812?srsltid=AfmBOorkVujGhdZD8KFnVvxSeqnHvW9UQ5ZmD5Df7sPpc1I76aHh544o]

Peter Renshaw

In July 2024 we interviewed the educator Peter Renshaw, who has been a huge influence on the development of socially engaged practice and research at Guildhall and the initiatives we’ve heard about in this podcast series so far: Leadership, PACE, The Institute for Social Impact Research in the Performing Arts and Disrupt. Peter has written extensively on music, education and socially engaged practice and is an influential figure in the worlds of community music and collaborative practices.  Echoes and the Unsaid  EPISODE 06 | JUNE 26 | 2026   HOSTS Jo Gibson | Sophie Hope   COMMENTARY  In the first part of this conversation we hear from Peter about a seminal experience he had in 1961 visiting refugee camps in Austria when he was a student and his experience as principal of the Menuhin School where he introduced music students performing in schools, hospices and prisons and coal mines.  Peter then moved to Guildhall in 1984 to set up the Performance, Communication Skills course. We hear about his ability to get external funding to set up that course, about the staff Peter got involved to run the course in the early days and the necessary allies and partners he connected with to support the development of the programme.  We end this episode with Peter inviting Sean Gregory into the conversation. Sean was a student of the course in  1989 and is now Vice-Principal & Director of Innovation and Engagement at Guildhall.  We’ll hear more from Sean and Peter in episode 7.    REFERENCES Menuhin School https://www.menuhinschool.co.uk/ [https://www.menuhinschool.co.uk/] The Society for the Promotion of Educational Reform Through Teacher Training (SPERTT / SPERTTT) https://www.proquest.com/openview/20d1005ac955a54bc50241aaf1f28439/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1820949 [https://www.proquest.com/openview/20d1005ac955a54bc50241aaf1f28439/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1820949] Dame Cicely Saunders, palliative care pioneer https://www.kcl.ac.uk/cicelysaunders/about-us/cicely-saunders [https://www.kcl.ac.uk/cicelysaunders/about-us/cicely-saunders] Carl Rogers, humanistic psychology https://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/carl-r-rogers [https://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/carl-r-rogers] Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_London_Education_Authority [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_London_Education_Authority] John Hosier, principal of Guildhall (1978-89) https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/apr/03/guardianobituaries [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/apr/03/guardianobituaries] Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s The Arts in Schools report written by Ken Robinson (1982) https://cdn.gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/1989/01/The_Arts_in_Schools.pdf [https://cdn.gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/1989/01/The_Arts_in_Schools.pdf] Sally Bacon and Pauline Tambling’s Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s  The Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future (2023) https://www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Arts-in-Schools-full-report-2023.pdf [https://www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Arts-in-Schools-full-report-2023.pdf] Peter Brinson – Director of UK and British Commonwealth Branch,Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 1972-82 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-peter-brinson-1614720.html [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-peter-brinson-1614720.html] Helena Gauntt https://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/staff/helena-gaunt [https://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/staff/helena-gaunt]

Restoke: an update from Clare Reynolds

On episode 65 of A Culture of Possibility, François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard interview Clare Reynolds, codirector of Restoke, to find out what has happened since they last spoke to her in Episode 3.   A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY EPISODE 65 | JUNE 19 | 2026   PARTICIPANTS Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso | Clare Reynolds   COMMENTARY Clare Reynolds works as the codirector of Restoke, a community arts organization in Stoke-on-Trent, in the north of England.  We interviewed Clare five years ago, in the third episode of this podcast, and have now returned to find the organization thriving with National Portfolio funding from Arts Council England, a wonderful building, and significant new work with young people.  Clare talks about Restoke’s processes, including Holding Lightly, and its work on scaffolding hope in times when hope may be hard to find.   REFERENCES Restoke https://www.restoke.org.uk/ [https://www.restoke.org.uk/] Clare Reynolds interview on Episode Three of A Culture of Possibility in March, 2021 https://www.miaaw.net/e/restoke/ [https://www.miaaw.net/e/restoke/] Power Project report on Restoke’s youth theater https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58d51b5359cc687828bf115c/t/685073fc56a13c48bc943201/1750103039433/PP+Report+WEB+%281%29.pdf [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58d51b5359cc687828bf115c/t/685073fc56a13c48bc943201/1750103039433/PP+Report+WEB+%281%29.pdf] Arlene Goldbard writes about Clare Reynolds & Restoke https://arestlessart.com/2021/03/19/a-culture-of-possibility-3-clare-reynolds-on-restokes-work-in-staffordshire/ [https://arestlessart.com/2021/03/19/a-culture-of-possibility-3-clare-reynolds-on-restokes-work-in-staffordshire/]