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MESKLA Podcasts



The podcasts see conversations among speakers whose research or lived experienced touches on the project themes of extraction, fractured culture and identity. They are available to listen via standard podcast platforms and through this webpage.

Photo credit: Joe Blackman

Guests include: Dr Stephanie Pratt; Angeline Morrison; Angela Piccini and Kayle Brandon; Amanprit Sandhu, Georgia Gendall, Libitia Sibungu, Liam Jolly, and Jowdy Davey of Lowender festival & Gorsedh Kernow.

Please note all podcasts were recorded over June, July & August 2022. These podcasts were recorded in different locations and with a range of equipment. As such the sound quality varies and at times external factors are more present than ideal in the recordings.

Govenek a'm beus hwi dhe omlowenhe goslowes orto/ I hope you enjoy listening

Podcast #1: A Conversation with Bards Pol Hodge, Jenerfer Lowe & Mark Trevethan


Language, authenticity, commodification of culture and the Celtic revival are amongst topics discussed when Sovay is joined by Grand Bard, Pol Hodge, Deputy Grand Bard, Jenefer Lowe and Cornwall Council’s Principle Culture Lead, Mark Trevethan, for the first episode in the MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh 2022 podcast series.


Podcast #2: A Conversation with Artists Parts 1 & 2 with Libita Sibungu, Georgia Gendall & Liam Jolly





PART 1 - Liam & Georgia



PART 2 - Libita
AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
The push and pull of connection to place - belonging, othering, disconnection, discrimination and barriers imposed by others. Pace and space, drekly does it, wildness, rough edges, more commodification, and what just is.

Artists Libita Sibungu, Georgia Gendall, &  Liam Jolly share their experiences of growing up in Cornwall & becoming artists. They also talk about how their relationship to Cornwall has shifted over the years and how it plays out in their work.

We had planned to all be in a room together to have this conversation. But we were meeting on one of the hottest days of the year, when a storm brought the first rain for weeks and disrupted rail and road travel and took out some mobile masts. In very Cornish fashion we were disrupted by weather, and we couldn’t all be in the same place, so we recorded the conversation in two parts.

For Part 1, I am joined by Georgia and Liam. Georgia is an artist, gardener, baker and member of the band ShagRat. Georgia has set up projects such as The Allotment Club, Residency in Shed and Forced Collaboration. Liam is an artist, curator and member of the band Disco Rococo. Liam also set-up and runs the Redruth gallery, Auction House.

In Part 2 I am joined by Libita, an interdisciplinary artist, working with writing, drawing, performance, photography, print, and sound to build environments that weave decolonial narratives into immersive installations and poetic arrangements. 

For more information on the guests please visit the PEOPLE page


Podcast #3: A Conversation about Extraction with Prof. Emma Gilberthorpe & Dr. Hilary Orange



In this third episode of the MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh podcast series I am joined by Dr Hilary Orange & Prof. Emma Gilberthorpe who share some of their thoughts and research about the impacts of extraction industries on communities around the world, and the relationship of this labour to identity and sense of place and belonging.

Emma Gilberthorpe is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research is concerned with the social and cultural aspects of development. Her main area of research examines the parameters of social organisation, kinship and exchange in contexts of large-scale resource extraction (mining and oil/gas extraction). She is particularly interested in the implications of the cultural incompatibilities that exist between large-scale, capitalist corporations and small-scale societies. The majority of her work has focused on the social, economic, political and environmental impacts of mining (Ok Tedi) and oil extraction (Kutubu) in Papua New Guinea. She has also conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Guinea, West Africa and managed projects in Zambia.

Dr. Hilary Orange is Senior Lecturer in Industrial Heritage at Swansea University. She is also the Chair of the ‘CHAT’ group (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory). Her doctorate (UCL Institute of Archaeology) considered public perceptions of Cornish mining landscape and she has published on industrial heritage, public archaeology, Cornish identity and the heritage of popular music. Hilary’s most recent publications include a chapter on Cornish landscape in the volume ‘Transcending the Nostalgic: Landscapes of Postindustrial Europe beyond Representation’ (2021) and a chapter on Rock music memorial roots and routes in London (2021).


Podcast #4: A Conversation about Land, Language & Fractured Culture with Dr. Stephanie Pratt & Jowdy Davey



In this fourth podcast I am joined by Dr Stephanie Pratt - Dakota and Anglo-American Art Historian, and Jowdy Davey - Director of Lowender Peran Festival.  Steph and Jowdy both share aspects of their research which covers intangible cultural heritage and representation of indigenous peoples through colonial gaze. Through our conversation we explore fracturing and healing of cultures, the importance of language, remembering that we too are ancestors, and relearning relationships with land and cultural identity.

Stephanie is a member of the Dakota Nation, and became the first Cultural Ambassador for her Tribal Council at the Crow Creek Dakota Reservation in South Dakota, USA in 2015. She is a member of the Grandmother’s Society based at Fort Thompson, South Dakota, which promotes the understanding and preservation of Dakota and Lakota culture and language. Her book, American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840 was the first study of its kind. Currently, she is at work on a second book which will examine how Native North Americans made images of those who came to their lands and how those newcomers imaged Native North Americans in turn.

Jowdy is a Director of Lowender Peran, with a young family dominated by powerful females growing up to understand and celebrate their own dual Breton/Cornish heritage. Jowdy has recently led the commission of an exercise mapping Cornwall’s intangible cultural heritage, identifying where support is needed for traditions, and most importantly the communities that bear them, to thrive. 

Podcast #5: A Conversation with Performers, with Ellie Allen, Becky Bordeaux & Passman



In this fifth podcast I'm joined by Ellie Allen, caller for ceilidh band Splann. Becky Bordeaux actress, performer and production assistant with Rogue Otherworld and Luke Passey otherwise known as Passman, one half of Hedluv + Passman.

We talk about Redruth, living, working and growing up in Kernow, nightlife housing and the cost of living; community and the intangible nature of local knowledge; tourism, stereotypes and TV; gentrification, the diaspora and responsibilities of being contemporary Cornish performers.

Podcast #6: A Conversation about Tourism, Commodification & Class with Dave Beech



In this sixth podcast, I'm joined by Dave Beech, an artist and writer from a working class background. We talk about tourism, class and colonial gaze; how culture and lifestyle is commodified and purchased, and the potential impacts of this.

Dave is reader in art and Marxism at University Arts London, and is author of the books Art and Labour (Brill 2020), Art and Postcapitalism (Pluto 2019) and Art and Value (Brill 2015). Beech worked in the collective Freee (with Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan) between 2004 and 2018. He has recently had exhibitions as a solo artist in UNO gallery, New Orleans, Loft 8 gallery, Vienna and Exeter Phoenix.



Podcast #7: A Conversation About Art Working & Colonial Legacies, with Association of Unknown Shores



In this seventh podcast I am joined by artists Kayle Brandon and Angela Piccini of Association of Unknown Shores.

Association of Unknown Shores, formed in 2018, is an interdisciplinary social practice art project and platform for the research, production and commissioning of art and cultural works. The project explores the hidden nature of persistent material and remembered traces of the enforced cultural exchange between what we now know as the UK and Canada. Working with the legacies of Martin Frobisher’s 16th-century attempt to colonise Nunavut.

A collective of disaporic artists, Association of Unknown Shores turns the unknown back on itself to critique the worn colonial ‘discovery’ trope.


Podcast #8: A Conversation About Cornish Life & Lifestyle Cornwall with Dr Joanie Willett and Natasha Carthew



For this eighth podcast I invited Dr Joanie Willett to talk about lifestyle culture and socio-economic situations in Cornwall, Joanie in turn invited Natasha Carthew to join her in this conversation.

Natasha Carthew is a working-class writer from Cornwall. Her new book Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir of Poverty, Nature and Resilience, is a powerful exploration of rural poverty and a story of hope, beauty, and fierce resilience. Undercurrent publishes with Coronet/Hodder & Stoughton in April 2023.

Natasha is well known for writing on Socioeconomic issues and has written extensively on the subject of how authentic working-class voices are represented in literature. She is Founder and Artistic Director of The Working Class Writers Festival and The Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers in association with Octopus/Hachette.

Joanie is a senior lecturer in Politics with the University of Exeter, and Co-Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies. Joanie’s research about social and economic development in Cornwall is a deeply personal topic for her, beginning with an awareness that many of her contemporaries felt that there was little future in Cornwall for their children.

Podcast #9: A Conversation About Fractured Cultures & The Power of Stories with Angeline Morrison



For this ninth podcast, I visit Cornwall based songwriter vocalist, choir leader, researcher and writer Angeline Morrison for a conversation at her home, with a small intervention from her cat, Ted.

Angeline is actively concerned with raising awareness about the hidden historic black presence in the UK. And has recently released her acclaimed album, The Sorrow Songs, Folk Songs of Black British Experience on Topic Records. We join the conversation with Angeline about to tell us about her research for this album.



Podcast #10: A Conversation About Place, Art & Cultural Capital with Amanprit Sandhu 



For this tenth podcast, and the last in this MESKLA series, I am joined by Amanprit Sandhu.

Amanprit is a London based curator and educator with a focus on expanded exhibition practices, pedagogy and widening participation in the arts and arts education,  and collaborative approaches to working.  She is currently working as a Senior Lecturer on the Fine Art programme at Chelsea College of Arts, London.

Amanprit and I discuss the terms 'place-making', 'cultural capital' and 'social mobility' - what do they mean exactly, and for whom? We consider art’s role and relationship with these terms, and with the communities and land they are used in connection to.  Through the conversation we consider personal senses of responsibility, and how thinking and behaviours can begin to shift.

We refer to this text by Vanessa Watts - Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go On a European World Tour!) which Stephanie Pratt of Episode #4 introduced us to.
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