Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/10/2023 i The Big Issue

Does short-lived English poet John Keats – dead at 25 – belong with the creative youngsters of the last century who passed away when young? With actor James Dean (24), and pop stars Jim Morrison (27) and Jimi Hendrix (27); or does he rub shoulders with Karl Marx? Yes, Marx the very protean father and grandfather of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and virtually every radical oppositional and revolutionary group of the last hundred years. Which is exactly what author Anahid Nersessian of The University of California in Los Angeles has the front to suggest in her new book, which I’ve just read and am now writing about, and am flummoxed by. It is a worthy subject, but because I am outside academia and serious critical reading,…

Six years have passed since the Grenfell Tower fire. Yet until justice is served and legislation passed, the survivors, the bereaved and the wider North Kensington community can have little peace. This tragedy in which 72 people died continues to dominate so many lives, just as the wreckage of the tower still dominates the skyline. Popular culture has been trying to get to grips with the enormity of the tragedy, which has come to be seen as powerfully emblematic of the failures of austerity and the dangers of deregulation. A new verbatim play, Grenfell: in the words of survivors, created from interviews by Gillian Slovo and directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike is opening at the National Theatre. We went to its Southbank headquarters to ask Lloyd and Simpson-Pike…

As a child, Zakia was drawn to the shapes and colours of the natural world around her in Dhaka, Bangladesh where she grew up. It was this passion for the wonders of the landscape that led her to pick up pencils and brushes, playing with colour and shapes to capture moods and express feelings. Recently she began working with mosaic, quickly developing her work from rigid, linear forms, governed by shape of the tiles, to more expressive shapes, using broken ceramic and found objects. Creative expression brings her a real sense of joy and a deeper attachment to the world and to others. Zakia seeks to challenge herself through the making of complex, thoughtful and unique artworks. Zakia submitted this artwork via the 240 Project, an activity centre empowering West…

Susanna Hoffs, former lead singer of The Bangles, is 64 years old but looks about 40. She never fancied Botox or surgery so her youthful appearance must be down to good genes, a teetotal lifestyle and a continued creative passion which has seen her recently write her first novel. This Bird Has Flown is a romantic comedy about a one-hit wonder trying to navigate her post-fame career and love life. It’s a funny and compelling read that you can imagine winding up on the big screen sometime soon (her husband is the Hollywood director Jay Roach, who made the Austin Powers movies among others – she met him in the early ’90s on a blind date). Hoffs, of course, was a several-hits wonder, enjoying chart success throughout the ’80s with…

Crossword CRYPTIC CLUES Across 1.Don maybe coming from Madrid? (8)5. Endure after all (4)8. Become less severe about Virginia being pertinent (8)9. High hurdle for laughing cow? (4)11. Happened to have taken risks (7)13. Hardship test (5)14. Realise what one should be able to do in the tunnel (3,3,5)18. Snappy sort of finish? (5)19. Wonderful claim compounded about silver (7)21. Boy is out of line (4)22. In France I take Sam to be a seller of precious stones (8)24. Bound not to have won or lost (4)25. In Dorset Bill left the ground (8) Down 1.Some of the restrictions are harsh (6)2. Hawaiian greetings said to be coming from the Stirling area (5)3. Petition in one’s job (10)4. Fled from Granada (3)6. Put an end to boils festering in a…

A huge house, overgrown with nettles and brambles, sits in the middle of “somewhere near Wales”. The owner died in a fire in his home workshop decades ago and no one has touched it since. Out the back, a bunch of cars rot, abandoned to the ravages of time and nature. That is, until former-plumber-turned-urban-explorer Colin Smith fought through the undergrowth to reveal its secrets. “It was very difficult to get in,” he says. “Inside it was very dangerous… the floors were falling through and walls were coming down.” Smith filmed his exploration and uploaded it to his popular YouTube channel, where he’s known as The Bearded Explorer. “A week later I was contacted by a girl, she was 23. And she said, ‘That was my granddad’s house. My mum…

JUSTICE SYSTEM This small change in the law will give prisoners the best chance to rebuild their lives When Jay Harrison* was released from prison it was a Friday morning. “I was homeless on my release and they just said ‘off you go’,” he told The Big Issue. Council services that provide support for people at risk of homelessness are rarely open in the evening or at weekends. So that first night on the outside he stayed with a friend. After that it was an uncle, then his nan. For weeks he was staying “here, there and everywhere”. “It’s hard because you feel like you’re under other people’s feet, you feel you’re getting in the way,” he said. “Sometimes I thought I’d rather be in prison.” Around a third of…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Indie heroes Having enjoyed your article on bookshops [Issue 1568, 12 June] and noting only one in Wales, I had to write to flag up two exceptional shops in the Marches. The Great Oak bookshop in Llanidloes is a gem not to be missed. It has an eclectic stock of books both new and second hand and survives despite its rural setting. Equally, Aardvark Books in Brampton Bryan, just 20 minutes from Ludlow, is a bibliophile’s dream. A converted barn on two levels with the largest collection of second-hand books I have ever seen. They also do very good coffee and cake! Bobby Child, Mid Wales Fuelling the debate Your coverage…

A group of people, 12 complete strangers of different ages, races, religions and backgrounds are sitting around a large rectangular table in Liverpool’s historic community building The Florrie. Despite each living at an address with an L8 postcode, they have nothing in common. Except that a few weeks ago, each received a letter informing them they had been randomly selected to take part in a project that will challenge them to think about who the most needy are in our society, who have the most potential to do good, and who are the most deserving of help. The key question they will have to decide upon is very simple: What to do with £100,000 of someone else’s money. No strings attached, and no restrictions. OK, a few small restrictions, but…

REVIEWS Modern romance offers fresh literary perspectives Bellies, the debut novel from Nicola Dinan, is a fresh and compelling literary romance that hopefully signposts exactly where the much-saturated genre is heading in the future. It begins when Tom meets Ming at a university drag night and the two boys fall in love on the dance-floor. Through interlocking chapters from both Tom’s and Ming’s perspectives, the novel presents its tropes: the awkward and introverted Tom is drawn to the popular and outgoing Ming, rapt in his confidence and aura, he is a projection of everything Tom wishes he could be. Their romance is sweet and wholesome. They travel the world together. All seems well. Until it isn’t. After a while, Ming starts being distant from Tom and reveals that he is…

PRIDE Fearful culture warriors miss out on so many stories Every week is independent bookshop week for me, but there is also an official independent bookshop week for those who need reminding, so I took off to Arnold, Belper and Nottingham for some shop, library and school events. The week began threateningly. On Monday, I woke up to see a former TV detective sidekick proudly, but not always effectively, setting fire to some Pride flags in his back garden. Then, I heard about a friend’s bookshop being stormed and the workers being screamed at for having a Pride window. Other shops had stickers placed on their windows declaring that they hated women because they had a Pride window. The fact that all of the bookshops who had incidents like this…

EASTON CHRISTIAN, 70 I’ve been back selling The Big Issue since November after retiring a couple of years ago. The people at The Big Issue told me that my customers were asking what happened to me and they kept getting phone calls and emails asking about me. They asked me if I wanted to come back and help out so I said no problem. I’m back by popular demand! Was I missing selling the magazine when I was retired? Not really but it’s no problem, it’s a bit of extra cash in your pocket. Collecting your pension and your pension credit and paying all the bills you’re left with the same amount of money at the end of each month so it’s good to have a little bit extra, you…

Rust Bucket Workshop is a sculptor who works with found items. These can be found on the street, salvaged from scrap yards, discovered in boxes of unwanted miscellany at auction houses or from house clearances “I feel that I give life to forgotten, broken and unwanted objects,” she says. “I work intuitively, so most of it feels like playtime. I’m very much led by the object. I see these objects for their colour, texture and shape, but I gravitate to pieces that already lived a life before they came to me. “By assembling these lost pieces, past stories are combined to create new ones. “I don’t disguise or excuse the parts that I use. I celebrate each knock or dent. It gives the pieces character. Somehow, they have a bit…

This week Big Issue sellers become key players in the art world. You know how this works: vendors buy magazines for half the cover price, sell them on to brilliant buyers and keep the profit. Every edition we put together is a masterpiece, of course, but this one a little more so. The cover has been created by acclaimed street artist My Dog Sighs who has also curated a special look at how art reclaims the lost, from entire areas in decline to rusty tin cans and a shuttered Sainsbury’s. His art – and that of the fellow artists he’s included – is startling, inspiring, provocative. It can be disruptive too, which is why you might spot signs of My Dog Sighs dotted throughout the pages, bringing meaning to the…

Black ash still comes through Virginia Sang’s kitchen window, six years on from the Grenfell Tower disaster. It blows in off the scorched shell of a building that still stands, wrapped in plastic, a reminder that the Lancaster West estate, where she’s lived for 45 years, is forever changed. “Every day I go in and you have to clean, and it’s all black ashes,” she says, sitting in a leisure centre on her lunch break. At the memorial wall metres away, she points to a picture of a man who died in the Grenfell fire. They used to go drinking together. “The majority of the people in the tower, I grew up with,” Sang says. But now residents are facing rising charges and an increasingly unliveable estate. “After the fire…

I left school when I was 16. Because I honestly just couldn’t wait to get on with it. I wasn’t academic. I wasn’t stupid, I just didn’t like school. So I left home to go to study business. I went to Brighton, stayed at the YMCA, occasionally turned up for college and had an absolute whale of a time. I’ve always been quite positive in terms of my outlook. I think one of the reasons I enjoy being an entrepreneur is I like challenges and overcoming difficulties. And I think that’s a sign of character. I don’t see those barriers. I think, right, what can we do to get around this? I’ve always been like that. When I went to Brighton there was no fear. There was no worry. I…

REVIEW Blockbuster franchise on Cruise control Christopher McQuarrie – the screenwriter turned director who has overseen the last three Mission: Impossible movies – is a generous raconteur happy to answer filmmaking queries on social media and podcasts. He is fond of saying that making a Mission: Impossible movie is just like an actual impossible mission: you and your hand-picked team led by Tom Cruise start with a carefully conceived plan; that plan immediately goes out the window; everyone is forced to scramble, improvise, vamp, tap-dance; then Cruise does a big terrifying stunt (and maybe breaks his ankle). The way McQuarrie cheerfully describes the constantly mutating Mission production process, it seems a miracle that this franchise has not just persisted but thrived on his watch, always going bigger but somehow also…

DOLLY PARTON ‘We need to be trying to say: this is the only world we have got’ Dolly Parton could be a billionaire many times over. But she is far too clever and knows the value of money far too well. As one of the great songwriters, an in-demand performer for half a century, a filmmaker and star, theme park impresario and author, Parton knows how to earn a buck through her talent, business acumen and work ethic. She could manage Twitter better than Elon Musk, a space programme better than Nasa and would run the world better than most political leaders. Because she knows the value of every dollar she has earned since moving to Nashville aged 18. Dolly Parton grew up poor, in the mountains of Tennessee, as…

Ever had the feeling you’re lost? The sat nav on your phone thinks you’re somewhere 500 miles away, you don’t recognise the buildings around you and nine times out of 10, you’re late to where you’re supposed to be. It’s much the same if you’re like me and are forever losing something. The frantic search for a lost passport or keys I was sure I’d left on the side but are now nowhere to be found. That password that just won’t embed itself in my memory and slips into a black hole in my mind. Whether it’s physically, emotionally or metaphorically, the reaction is the same. Helplessness, frustration, defeat. The flip side is the sheer euphoria when/if you find the thing you thought was lost forever. The satisfaction of recognising…

“When you’re 11 years old and you walk by a house that’s boarded up, you want to go in. Humans have always been interested in seeing what’s behind that boarding, seeing things that are broken and decayed. “Our mission is to highlight abandoned spaces that people might say are forgotten, but we think of as rewilding themselves. We want to show there is beauty in things being left alone for a while. We want to change the meaning of the word decay. Decay is the natural state of a process of something growing, living, decaying and dying and restarting. So decay is just part of the process. And there is beauty in it. “Ephemeral 2 was an emptied out, abandoned warehouse that had the most gorgeous mould growing through the…

There is a funding crisis in our education system, particularly in England. Schools are not given enough money for the resources (including staff ) to do justice to the educational needs of our children. And the arts are the first casualty. Prioritising STEM subjects [Science, Technology, English and Maths] means lowering the status of other subjects in the eyes of everyone, from parents to school governors to the all-powerful media. When the late educationalist Ken Robinson told us, “Evidence shows that a balanced curriculum of the arts, humanities and sciences (and I would add physical education) produces an unbeatable style of education”, this was born of years of research, and he did not see a hierarchy of importance. When Michael Gove, on behalf of the Conservative government, declared that the…