VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN! Let’s end with a bit of hope and imagine together what we might build together. If we start to shift our creativity towards communities and away from capitalism. It’s a long road ahead, but we’ve got to start somewhere!
In this final episode, we talk about the importance of spaces to gather and talk about ideas. There’s lots wrong with universities, but they did give us a space to get together and talk about things that we cared about, deeply, over time. How many other places in society can we do this? Clay studios, that’s where!
Let’s face it, zoom isn’t going anywhere, but the importance of face to face organising cannot be forgotten. Holding spaces for community and discussion is even more important as our governments come for drag story time and police our reading lists. How we might start to create these spaces with values at their core, where we start to practice ways that challenge capitalism and the capitalistic ideas of extraction and exhaustion and individualism that we’ve been indoctrinated into? Definitely not tying myself to Marx, but he did suggest that as capitalism emerges as a failed economic system, the failed state would erupt into violence. He also said that we must go through capitalism to get to the other side, and that this violence would be an indicator that capitalism was in its death throws. …Seen any violence lately?
At a point when it feels like a kind of Russian roulette as to which will do us in first, war or climate catastrophe, surely it’s time to start imaging and enacting what might be on the other side?
Contributors:David Raileanu, director of Red Ink Community Library https://www.redinkri.org/thestoryLiz Welch, director and founder of Anyhow Studio https://www.anyhowstudioprovidence.com/
Clay Commons was written and produced by Eva Masterman, editing supported by Travis Roush. This podcast was supported by Newcastle University, and the Northern Bridge AHRC Consortium. Artwork created by Kelly Jade
Audio credits:
- "Ambience, Children Playing, Distant, A.wav" by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org
- "Ambience, Seaside Waves, Close, A.wav" by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org
