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- Issue 30 | March 2025
Issue 30 | March 2025
Owen Kelly
March 05, 2025
Welcome to the March 2025 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of our still shiny provider Beehiiv.com.
We are continuing our current schedule: publishing each issue on the first Wednesday of the month, and for the second month in a row the first Wednesday arrives neatly before the first Friday and all seems well.
And, as usual, we continue to hope that you will send us something that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or something that you want to suggest for the podcasts, by emailing us at [email protected]. We will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and hunt down the topics you want to hear in the podcasts.
PODCASTS FOR MARCH 2025
Friday March 7
Special Edition: Young Landscapers Collective | Episode 2
In 2023, YLC created The Stage of Possibility – a vibrant, democratic space designed, built and curated to showcase stories and voices from the National Forest at Timber Festival. In this episode they share their experiences of the National Forest. through the songs they made and performed.
Friday March 14
Ways of Listening | Episode 16
Hector MacInnes was born and grew up on the Isle of Skye. His projects are deeply rooted in an ongoing interrogation of belonging, identity, legitimacy and lived experience of the more-than-urban. In this episode he talks to Hannah Kemp-Welch about a project he has been working on in HMP Inverness.
Friday March 21
A Culture of Possibility | Episode 50
In episode 50 Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about a remarkable book, Engineers of the Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook, first published in 1983 and still extremely influential.
Friday March 28
Social Making Special Edition | Episode 7
Drawing on topics raised at the symposium and in previous episodes Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch discuss the future of socially engaged art with Kim Wide and a surprise guest.
HOUSEKEEPING
There are still a few things we need to do to finish our transition to Beehiiv.com, and we intend to do these during March.
Firstly the miaaw.net website no longer gives access to the newsletter archive. This has happened because we can no longer export the newsletter as html and insert it into the site. Instead we will have to do something else, and working out the best something else to do has kept us awake at nights for almost two months. Hopefully we will find a solution that does not involve doing everything twice, and then sleep easy.
And, we have noticed that we could improve the signposting of the special editions in the miaaw.net website. This has become clear as we have gathered more of them. This involves reanimating our php skills, and this will happen shortly.
A THOUSAND WORDS
Shrew from London Women’s Liberation Workshop (courtesy of Mayday Rooms)
THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
Mayday Rooms
Mayday Rooms are “an archive, resource space and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. Our building in the centre of London contains an archive of historical material linked to social struggles, resistance campaigns, experimental culture, and the expression of marginalised and oppressed groups”.
For International Women's Day they are highlighting Shrew magazine as our Archive of the Month.
In their current newsletter they explain that “Shrew was an influential feminist magazine of the early years of the British women’s liberation movement. It acted as the outward-facing publication of the London Women’s Liberation Workshop – the umbrella organisation that co-ordinated small women’s groups across London, formed in 1969. Unlike the London Women’s Liberation Workshop Newsletter, Shrew ‘was identified as the publication that would represent Women’s Liberation ideas to women outside the movement’
You can subscribe to their newsletter by going to the Mayday Rooms website.
Theory into practice
Owen came across a monthly newsletter from This Occasional Society recently when he found their free music sampler on Bandcamp. They release their music on a “pay as much as you want” basis, and will feature in an upcoming Friday Number 5.
If you have any interest in people walking the walk - actually making culture that fits how they think culture should be made - then the This Occasional Society newsletter is well worth looking at. Not only does it contain news about what they are up to, but they also gather information from elsewhere, that you are probably not going to come across otherwise. Here are some more or less representative example of this from their March newsletter.
“Beepboop Tapeloop” hello friends! Happy 303 day! this occasional society update on the music front, nothing much to report, however, the society is delighted to share that the t.o.s. monthly newsletter will now also be seen on the NHAM news section (more about NHAM below). here is your exclusive ‘unvarnished, work in progress, music sketch’. NB plans are afoot to move away from Gdrive as the repository for these. the next newsletter will be with you 4.4. as ever, if you want anything included in the ‘updates from friends of the society’ section, just let us know. updates from friends of the society NHAM is an online magazine-style platform aiming to help draw connections between indie musicians, fair distribution platforms and listeners, under a shared ethos. It brings together releases, videos, news, reviews, online radio & events details, from a multitude of independent sources as well as a monthly mixtape, which can be heard (amongst other places) on AudioInterface.org (see how it all interconnects…) As a primer for the thinking and approach underpinning this type of independent but overlapping activity, Prince Lucija (DRAGX̶FUNK) penned this great, detailed explainer & toolkit for the #BeYourOwnPlatform ethos. Speaking of which, Mirlo - the collectively owned music platform - is looking for submissions for a new fundraising compilation. Deadline is 15 March. Related to the above, it’s ‘Bandcamp Friday’ on 7 March, so, if you can, support the artists you love, but note also that Mirlo have a function where artists decide what % revenue to share with Mirlo, so kind of like it’s Bandcamp Friday every day. In live news, Gribbles is playing in Whitby on 21 March at Flowergate Hall, Whitby with ‘Duty’ in a gig organised by wavelength electronic music club. To whet your appetite, you can check out some rehearsal videos here. Another society friend, Samatha Dubs has a new ep out called ‘hauntings’ - hitting that experimental electronic sweet spot again, it’s six brief meditations on eavesdropping, room notes, love, funk, magic and hidden meanings. it has taken me until i was typing this to realise that Fast Ghost consistently releases a brilliant free/PWYW acid techno track literally every month. this, despite downloading & featuring them previously & remixing one of the tracks! Oh dear. anyway - they’ll be releasing another banger in a few days. Long time society favourites, The Lonely Bell & Socool have a joint recent release on Moolakii Club Audio Interface. Another Kind of Earth is two slices of extended ambient beauty. Delighted to see Warrington Runcorn Newtown Development Plan are playing Portsmouth as part of their September Tour. Tickets to that one already purchased. Finally, it was mentioned last month, but it feels worth shouting again about the BleepThree night in Dorking, 28 March, featuring Secret Nuclear & Simon Heartfield amongst others. See you there. |
You can find their website here where you can subscribe to their monthly newsletter as well as download their smplr ep.
THE MIAAW REVIEW
The second edition of The Miaaw Review will contain one or two full length essays, and will appear on Wednesday April 15, 2025.
This issue will contain an essay from Owen Kelly on the urgent need to sort ouot our digital relations. He promises that this will not remain merely theoretical but will propose practical steps to replace US based Big Apps with services based in the EU, where privacy is not yet a dirty word.
If you would like to receive a copy of the second edition of The Miaaw Review in the middle of April then please subscribe by clicking this link.
This will take you to a web page where you can enter your email address. At the cost of having to enter it manually you will receive our guarantee that we will never spam you, sell your address, give it away, or even admit to having it.
Once you have done this then you will also get access to the first edition, and all subsequent ones.