Innholdsfortegnelse for 25-05-20 i The Big Issue

LIVESTREAM Dear Class of 2020 High school and college graduation is an important ritual in young lives, particularly in America. With ceremonies cancelled around the world this summer, YouTube have used their not inconsiderable muscle to pull together a special multi-hour online live event in their stead, featuring a dazzling array of celebrity guest speakers. Whether you’re graduating this year or not, tune in to hear inspirational speeches from the likes of the Obamas, BTS, Lady Gaga, Malala Yousafzai, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga and many more. YouTube, June 6, from 8pm WATCH We Are One: A Global Film Festival Let the living room rug become your own red carpet, as 20 top film festivals around the world including Cannes, Sundance and Tribeca get together during lockdown to curate a special…

A hand up... Proceeds from sales of this magazine are being used to tide over our vendors until they can get back to work on their pitches. Not a handout… In ordinary circumstances our vendors buy magazines for half the cover price and sell at full price, keeping the difference. They earn a legitimate income, and gain skills. With your support now, we will continue to do so once the crisis has passed. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

Our cover created by the totemic Ralph Steadman, the veteran agent provocateur of political satire, is shortlisted in the final 10 out of the hundreds that were put forward. The image is one of Boris Johnson, reimagined as the Brexit debate swirled and proroguing kicked in. What innocent days they now seem! A public vote decides the winner, and to help us beat competition from the likes of Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Wired, we are asking you to cast your vote at ppacoveroǽtheyear.co.uk every day. The victor will be announced at a virtual awards ceremony on June 30, when we will also discover if Big Issue editor Paul McNamee has triumphed in the Editor of the Year category. The PPA nomination follows a big win in the FStech Awards for our…

The Prime Minister stood at a podium and announced to the nation that we are past the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak. Other nations of the UK will ease restrictions at different rates, but for many across the country the impact of the crisis is only just beginning to be felt. More than four million people are claiming Universal Credit – April seeing the biggest surge in unemployment benefit claims since records began – after the economic shutdown pushed huge numbers out of work. The shockwaves will be felt for months. That’s why, while governments look at easing restrictions, everyone chipping in to do their bit for others is as vital as it was when the country locked down in March. We’re shining a light on the people tirelessly lifting…

Short stories have a mountain to climb. They have to work twice as hard as novels to grab their readers, persuade them to invest in characters they know won’t be around for long, and leave behind a conviction that something meaningful has occurred in a brief encounter. From Richard Ford’s great friend and mentor Raymond Carver to Bryan Washington, Teffi to Lucy Caldwell, the best short story writers are not just master craftspeople, they are infinitely patient ruminators on human interaction. Most fiction lovers prefer the long satisfying immersion of a novel, which must rankle; novelists only need one idea, maybe even just one good character (lazy old Joyce!). Short story writers need to be up to their ears in promising premises, juggling a huge cast of characters. It’s a…

The Uncertain Kingdom is an anthology of 20 short films from 20 directors exploring the biggest issues in these troubled times, including climate change, migration and homelessness, starring the likes of Alice Lowe, Mark Addy and Hugh Dennis. Some of the directors tell us about their films and how they build a unique and urgent portrait of our nation today Strong is Better than Angry by Hope Dickson Leach I came up with this story when taking body combat classes, which were helping me deal with all the frustrations and anger I felt during the initial MeToo revelations. I felt that we were, for the first time, seeing women get publicly angry and it was cathartic, but I was questioning what happened to all this anger that we were generating.…

As someone who is self-taught, I’ve had to cobble things together myself when it comes to an education in the arts and gathering knowledge about children’s illustration. Below are six of the key things I’ve learned that have proved invaluable to me so far on this journey. Hopefully they help you on your journey too. 1: Do your research Illustration is a huge field with rules and a system of working attached to it. Get into the habit of researching everything, as this will help you with your work and you career progression. Whether it’s finding online resources, news or info about your field and those within it, or references for work, you need to develop the habit of researching and reading about illustration as much as creating it. 2:…

NEED HELP? Why not get together with other Big Issue readers @BigIssue; @bigissueuk; facebook.com/bigissueuk Get the answers in next week's mag! Good luck 01. What's the name of Italy's longest river? 02. In what year did the Russian Revolution begin? 03. According to the philosopher Nietzsche “without…… life would be a mistake" (love, music, trust, or children)? 04. What does OPEC stand for? 05. What is the main ingredient of tofu? 06. How many seconds are in a day? A) 60,000 B) 24,156 C) 86,400 D) 66,870 07. How many ‘official’ lakes are there in the Lake District? 08. Which legendary British band’s classic line-up have the first names Ian, Gary, John and Alan? 09. How many individual Grand Slam tennis tournaments has Andy Murray won? 10. He’s been nominated…

WEEK 9 WALKING YOU THROUGH THE PLANK Exercises do not get any simpler than the old-fashioned forearm plank – it doesn’t require any equipment, just the floor and the weight of your body, and you don’t even have to move once you’re in position. And yet, it’s easy to get this deceptively gruelling routine wrong if you don’t set yourself up right. Let Motivator show you how in three easy steps. 1. Find a solid surface, lie on your front with your fists clasped, elbows pushed into your sides by your ribs, forearms on the ›loor and toes tucked under. 2. Push your body up so that it’s resting on your forearms and feet and hold a straight line from heels to head. Squeeze the muscles in your backside and…

Bobby Child and Michael Tolland are quite right, as is John Bird [May 14-20]. We don’t want to return to how things were, but when I think of ‘normality’ I do not think of the environmental/economic/political situation, all of which needs much improvement. I think of being able to see friends face to face without observing a two- metre distance, to visit a friend who lives 50 miles away, to go to the cinema and the theatre, attend church, sing in choirs, etc etc. I dare say that many people think of normality as doing the things they would normally do – including perhaps campaigning for better conditions for the needy. Of course we can still do that online and maybe many of us do. I volunteered to phone people…

We teamed up with the national 100 per cent-green electricity and lower carbon gas provider a year ago on a mission to tackle fuel poverty, support local communities and advocate for renewable energy. The partnership gave readers the chance to power their homes with the special Big Issue tariff while raising vital funds to support the most vulnerable in society at the same time. Every time a customer switches to Bristol Energy’s two-year fixed Big Issue Super Green Tariff, Bristol Energy donates up to £30 to The Big Issue (£15 per fuel). Now, a year aǽter launching, the proceeds from the partnership have generated more than £30,000 for The Big Issue, which will go towards our mission to dismantle poverty at a crucial time in our history, while we support…

Alice in Alice in Wonderland is certainly changed by her fall down a hole. She learns so much, it would seem, about the crazy Victorian and adult world outside the hole. So many systems and oddities, so many weird uses of resources. So many crazy people in positions of power. I’m sure someone has written about Alice recently with reference to Covid-19 and the lockdown. It seems such an obvious link: a world that is so different from the norm, a world transformed. Almost a dream world and not a world at all. I will only ask the question that if Alice fell down that hole, what did she do with her knowledge about the machinations of Victorian society, the weirdness of its oppressive systems? Did she go out and…

You’ve got a day. To write 500 words. About something in the news. Through the prism of your faith. But don’t preach. Or say anything that might offend. Make sure your words contain enough theology to satisfy the remit. Stay true to your faith. While remembering the majority of people out there don’t share it. There is no ‘we’ on Thought for the Day. Don’t be platitudinous. Speak words as though addressing one person. But deliver them to six million. You’ll be live on Radio 4. In the middle of the most influential political news programme in the country. Read it in under three minutes. Ideally, two minutes and 45 seconds. Be ready for feedback. Expect criticism. Even hostility. You’ll get paid £90 a pop. Don’t give up the day…

Time is running out for young artists to enter our Spring Cover Competition to win a bundle of 80 classic kids’ books from Puffin. Entries need to be emailed to editorial@bigissue.com Size: A4 (210mm wide x 297mm high). Must be a high-quality scan/photo Theme: Heroes! Closing date: June 5 See bigissue.com for more details Puffin is celebrating 80 years of inspiring children to dream big in 2020. For further details please visit puffin.co.uk/DreamBig and follow Puffin’s social channels for regular updates: Twitter/Facebook: @PuffinBooks, Instagram: @puffinbooksuk #PuffinDreamer…

‘Love is everything. Be strong, keep fighting’ JEFF KNIGHT, 54 PITCH WAS: The Canteen, Stokes Croft, Bristol Much-loved vendor Jeff Knight has a message for his customers from lockdown – and The Big Issue is helping him deliver it to the outside world after we managed to get him a phone. The veteran Bristol vendor, who has been selling the magazine for two decades, has been spending the lockdown in his campervan which the local community rallied around to help him buy last year. Friends and customers raised £7,000 so he could buy his new dream home on wheels, a mark of how well-regarded Jeff is in the city. He’s known for his upbeat attitude and singing while he is on his pitch, and he told us in a My…

Good health! The Big Issue has always been a great magazine and I’m sorry to admit I didn’t buy it regularly before this crisis. My subscription has proven essential during the last few weeks and I just want to thank you for continuing to produce such an excellent, inspiring magazine that is certainly helping me through these difficult times. In fact the whole family love it. My three-year-old daughters (twins) screamed with delight to see Zog on the cover [May 7-13] coming through the letterbox yesterday morning. They also loved the music man John Bird wrote about a few weeks ago [April 23-29]. With the Royal Mail being under the same pressures as everywhere else, my issues arrive a little irregularly, so I found myself reading Issue #1407 on the…

Last week, Spain did something quietly remarkable. They proposed rolling out a form of Universal Basic Income. The scheme comes with a caveat. It’s not quite universal. To begin with, around 100,000 most in-need families will get the money rather than the entire population. Each adult will receive 462 euro a month. That’s around £100 a week. It is intended, said the Spanish social security minister, to offer “a permanent safety net for the most vulnerable” as they emerge into the financial insecurity of a post-Covid world. The sums involved to do this are not huge, not in the terms of public spending we’ve become used to in recent weeks. It’s around 3bn euro a year. The issues and arguments around UBI are clear. How can it be right just…

hen I became homeless, I was successful. I had performed at Shakespeare's Globe theatre and in the West End. I may have been an unknown theatre actor, but, as an actor working regularly, I was a successful one. Until I found myself without a home and with no money of my own. As an actor you have good and bad spells. My career had been going pretty well until I took a job touring America. When I returned, it took time to remind people I was available. For four months – actually a short time for an actor to be out of work – I couldn’t book any jobs. You may ask why I hadn’t prepared for this moment. The honest answer is that I had. But I only saved…

“It’s been tough going since lockdown,” says long-time regular Street Art contributor John. “I’ve been through severe bouts of depression in isolation, but the art and the writing have been a tremendous saving grace, helping to keep me sane and safe. “I have been going around the block once a day and sometimes found things in the street which I have used for art materials. Studio Voltaire and the 240 Project sent me out some sketch books and oil pastels, it was wonderful to receive them. “I have been on the phone to a Zoom creative art group run by the 240 project, St Mungo’s and Cafe Art. I’ve been getting support phone calls too. Michele, who is a music therapist at Islington Mind, has been putting the images and…

01 Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault The first in Renault’s trilogy about Alexander the Great is as perfect as historical fiction can get. I fully expect never to read a better novel set in the past. Books two and three are of a similar standard. 02 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks Faulks is known to get angry when this book is placed into the historical fiction genre, but I don’t care. Quite magnificent, beautifully written, it is one of a tiny handful of novels that I have read and reread. 03 The Boat of Fate by Keith Roberts Little known, sadly, and possessed of the worst cover money can buy, nonetheless this Roman Britain-based novel is sublime, in the main because of its fine portrayal of human relationships. 04 Killer…

As the summer festivals and gigs schedule continues to be bulldozed by cancellations and bleak news stories speculate that live music may not be allowed to return proper until well into 2021, you could be forgiving for wondering if, much less when, you might again enjoy the privilege of standing in a crowd crammed backside-to-crotch with strangers, being occasionally pelted with showers of what you hope is warm beer. Ah, memories. But if there is cause for cautious optimism then it’s to be found in the continued release of new albums, whether in defiance of the current state of things, or to actively give us some respite from it. As someone who looks after two small kids by day and works nights and weekends, listening to music is about the one…