Issue 41 | February 2026

Author

Owen Kelly
February 04, 2026

Welcome to the February 2026 edition of Miaaw Monthly, courtesy of Beehiiv.com.

We will be getting the new site, hosted behind the scenes at Podbean.com, but still available publicly and worldwide at miaaw.net, together this month. We still have to add the background pages, figure out a clearer navigational structure, and tidy up the older podcasts to fit the new format. That, or most of that, will be completed by the start of March.

This month we continue our reinvigorated weekly schedule, as we said we would. Here, then, come a list of the podcasts for February 2026.

PODCASTS FOR FEBRUARY 2026

Friday February 6

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 83

In November 2025 Sophie Hope gave a presentation at a conference called Collaborative Futures, organised in Dublin by Create.

In this episode she brings the conference organiser, Damien McGlynn, together with two participants, Megan Atkinson and Silver Kezir, to discuss the program and the outcomes and the possibilities inherent in the idea of collaborative futures.

Friday January 9

Parallel Streams | Episode 2

In last month’s newsletter we quoted from a piece that David Rovics had written about creativity and AI. This month we continue the discussion.

Owen Kelly introduces an episode of his weekly podcast. that looks at the political and cultural impacts of AI. The episode is called Of Babies, bathwater and AI, and it looks at the growth of AI from a number of perspectives and then plays some of the music David Rovics, and Ai Tsuno, his artificial band, have created using his lyrics, his years of experience as a musician and the Suno application.

Friday January 16

A Culture of Possibility | Episode 61

In episode 61 of A Culture of Possibility co-hosts Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with Eugene van Erven, a founder of ICAF, the International Community Arts Festival based in Rotterdam.

We covered the last iteration at length in a limited series of podcasts, and now the 10th edition is coming right up in March. Eugene discusses his journey and the way the festival has developed.

Friday January 23

Echoes and the Unsaid | Episode 2

In the second episode of Echoes and the Unsaid Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope start their story in earnest. This episode is called DISRUPT and for the moment that’s all we know about it. They know a lot more, and we will find out exactly what in a few weeks’ time.

THOUSAND WORDS

Landing in the Indian Ocean

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

The Herds

Accoring to their official website The Herds offered a “groundbreaking public art and climate initiative designed to inspire action and renew our bond with the natural world. From April to August 2025, life-size puppet animals stormed through city centers on a 20,000km journey from Kinshasa in the Congo Basin to Nordkapp in the Arctic Circle, fleeing climate disaster.

Their “journey began in Kinshasa, DRC, on the banks of the mighty Congo River. In April 2025 they emerged from the forests of the Congo Basin - the ‘lungs of the world’. They forged a powerful path through the sun-drenched avenues of San Fernando, Madrid, Marseille, Paris and Venice and on to the bustling streets of London and Greater Manchester. Thousands met us in the streets to experience public art that comes face to face with the climate crisis.”

In Rotterdam this Spring The Herds will appear at ICAF 2026.

On the afternoons of Friday 27 and Saturday 28 March, public events will take place as part of the ICAF programme, alongside a lecture on climate for professionals and students, and a dedicated educational programme for primary schools. In this way, ICAF say,, The Herds lives not only in the streets, but also in neighbourhoods, schools and conversations that continue beyond the festival.”

Taking Back Our Data

Zines never died. They just retreated into the background and some of them went digital. Kelly Baker has created a zine called Taking Back Our Data, based on a conversation with René Pérez. She describes the zine like this:

What are proactive measures we can all take to protect ourselves and our data? I am not interested in spreading fear or stoking anxiety. I would instead offer this as an invitation for all of us to become better informed digital citizens.

You may, like me, initially feel overwhelmed and not know where to start. But I believe we don’t have to let perfection be the enemy of good when it comes to digital security. Here’s how.

You can find the zine online by clicking here. The zine comes with the nifty ability to let you scroll through it right onscreen. You can also download and print a paper version, and there are folding instructions for this.

The zine, whose full title is Taking Back Our Data: Digital Security for Artists & Activists constitutes the 6th action in the USDAC’s Vital Conversations series. You can catch up with previous actions by clicking here.

Old news and new reading

The start of last month saw a lot of copyrighted material come to the end of its protected life and enter the public domain. Among the newly available out-of-copyright material you can find a number of books. Standard Ebooks have produced a list of 20 of the best books entering the public domain in 2026.

Who, you might ask, are Standard Ebooks? Interestingly, they are “a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks are already believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing the entirety of each ebook file into the public domain. All the ebooks we produce are distributed free of cost and free of U.S. copyright restrictions.”

You can find out more at the Standard Ebooks website.

Is Sealand a real country?

You may never have wondered about this. Or the question may have caused you sleepless nights. If you fall into the second category then you should be relieved to know that the Sealand government have now produced a detailed answer to this question.

The answer, unsurprisingly, comes out as a resounding “yes”.

If you don’t know anything at all about Sealand, then you should know that it exists as a marine fort, built as a wartime defence and then abandoned, 4 miles off the English coastline. It became a micronation in the late 1960s and has existed ever since.

And yes, micronations are a real thing. (Depending on what you mean by “real”.)

And next month…

The March edition of Miaaw Monthly will appear in your inbox on Wednesday, March 4 with the first podcast of the month arriving just two days later.

It’s exactly like this month except one month later!