Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/22/2023 i The Big Issue

Coming together to make poverty history This crescendo of a day, last Wednesday (May 17), when we launched our ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ – an APPG – did not disappoint. Even if it was un-slick, or clumsy, or seeking clarity when clarity was hard to achieve, it served its purpose well. It launched upon the world in as best a form as it could. If people want to know what the launch of The Big Issue was like, watch the beginning and growth of this, our ‘Business Response to a Social Crisis’ APPG. If you want to know what it’s like to have an idea and then throw it out into reality and watch it prosper, clumsily and stumblingly, towards a purpose, then our coming months will be informative. Yes, our…

“Doing portraits requires a lot of concentration to make them accurate,” says Little, who submitted this artwork via the 240Project, an activity centre empowering West London’s vulnerable community. “Having spent several years being homeless, I got into the habit of ‘people watching’ which inspired me to do portraiture.” 240project.org.uk…

CULTURE INTERVIEW Sydney Sweeney As calls for institutional scrutiny reach deafening levels across the globe, how whistleblowers are punished by the systems they expose is an increasingly pressing issue. At the age of 25, US Air Force member and NSA translator Reality Winner leaked government intel disclosing Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. For her crime, she received the longest sentence ever imposed for unauthorised release of government information to the media – just over five years in prison. Winner’s story is the basis for the tense new film Reality, but the film stays clear of tackling Trump’s victory, electoral transparency and voter data harvesting. For Reality’s star Sydney Sweeney, a rising young actor who’s already gained popularity and acclaim for her roles in Euphoria and…

WE ARE THE SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ACADEMY! The Social Enterprise Academy was founded in Scotland in 2004 to inspire people of all ages to create social change. Three years later, we established the Social Enterprise Schools programme in partnership with The Scottish Government to focus on the next generation of social entrepreneurs. Social Enterprise Schools enables young people to identify a social or environmental issue that is important to them, before designing and launching a trading social enterprise that will directly address the issue. Through Social Enterprise Schools, we help young people reach their full potential as they develop a range of critical skills, become more employable and have meaningful impact on their communities. Our work with young people is based around two key questions: Q1. What do you care about?…

BIG ISSUE GROUP How we are helping vendors – and many more people – through the cost of living crisis Big Issue gave hundreds of our vendors a hand up during the cost of living crisis – and support from Big Issue Group helped millions more. Overall, 7.4 million people in the UK were impacted by Big Issue Group’s systems of support or engaged with our products: an increase of 58 per cent in a year. The new figures just published in our annual impact report reveal that during 2022, we worked with 3,637 vendors – 876 of whom came to us to sell for the first time, a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. The men and women who earn a living with Big Issue buy magazines…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Support the strikers I must respond to the untrue letter from Malcolm Bazement from Bristol [Issue 1562, May 1], who states that the extortionate (in Mr Bazement’s opinion) wage demands from train drivers, nurses, council workers etc are what is causing inflation. Presumably, he thinks that these wage demands are not affordable by employers. Giving in to the trade unionists, giving them all they want, instead of pushing up inflation even more, will in fact allow trade unionists to feed their children, clothe them, provide them with heating in their homes (if they have a home, and haven’t been put out on the street because they couldn’t afford the rent or…

SOCIAL HOUSING “This is my home. I don’t give them the right to make a decision on behalf of my life,” Aysen Dennis says. “I’ve been campaigning for the last 23 years, and I’m going to keep fighting until the very end. This is not right.” The 64-year-old former women’s refuge worker is holding out against plans to knock down her estate in Southwark and build new flats. To that end, Dennis has turned every room of her council flat into a densely packed, wall-and-ceiling-covering exhibition documenting her decades-long struggle to remain in her home. “Years later, I’m still here. That’s all that matters. Even if I prolong, to make them lose lots of money because of the court case, that’s what I am after,” she says. The Big Issue…

REVIEWS A dance between the cracks British-Ghanaian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel Open Water was a slam dunk. The South Londoner’s ode to music, aspiration and love met with instant hyperbolic praise, and his trophy cabinet (every young writer has one of course) heaved under the weight of numerous awards. Not one to hang about, just two years later the 29-year-old is publishing his much anticipated follow-up this month. It’s a positive sign that Small Worlds shows no evidence of a ‘difficult second album’ panic to prove one’s breadth by moving from earnest soul to heady techno. It is a young love story and a study of Black experience, swaying back and forth from joyful feelings of freedom to fears of entrapment, propelled by the rhythms of gospel, jazz,…

Every sensible person knows the ‘culture wars’ are a contrivance being played out by a tiny number of angry idiots who have been duped by a failing government and their media sponsors into believing that men and women being allowed to piss in the same public convenience presents an existential threat to humankind. It’s all a scam, like a man at a trestle table asking you to guess which paper cup the ball is under. Only carried out with even less guile. It’s rage fuel for idiots. There is no woke conspiracy or new liberal elite. There are just human beings trying to get along and survive in increasingly difficult conditions. The Tory government has made this country poorer, unhappier, less productive and more divided over their 13 years in…

SAM, 31 I have been a Big Issue vendor since June 2009 and I have been selling on this pitch ever since I joined Big Issue. I moved to Bournemouth in the same year because I already had a relative here. I made a friend who took me to Bournemouth’s office. At the beginning I couldn’t speak a word of English. However, I started to learn the language while selling the magazines. That’s how I learned, by taking in everything that I would hear on the streets. When I arrived in Bournemouth, I felt alone. I was such a young age, I didn’t even know where to start from or what to do. Big Issue has given me the opportunity to work and earn a decent income. During the pandemic,…

The Scottish Government’s ambition for Scotland is to be a country that has the wellbeing of citizens at the heart of its economy. The Social Enterprise model of business for good is a great example of a wellbeing economy in action. The Social Enterprise Schools programme has been running for more than 15 years and this has coincided with a sharp growth in the social enterprise sector in Scotland. In 2016 The Scottish Government committed to a 10-year Social Enterprise Strategy and partnered with the Social Enterprise Academy to embed an understanding and culture of social enterprise within Scotland’s schools. Our joint goal is to ensure that every child in Scotland has the exposure to social enterprise during their school career, and that they bring that ethos and understanding of…

MARR COLLEGE, SOUTH AYRSHIRE Marr College Barista Each year our S3 students get a chance to participate in social enterprise lessons, which involve running their own social enterprise and deciding how to help our community with the profits. The class runs twice annually, meaning two sets of students get to experience this amazing enterprise each year. Every Friday our students get two lessons to work on their social enterprise. They work on a variety of tasks, beginning with market research to find out what drinks and cakes staff would like, and how much they would be willing to pay. They use this information to make decisions on what products to offer and what to charge. They then create and distribute digital order forms, and each Friday create lovely drinks and…

This is a significant week. It marks the moment that the current Westminster government has overtaken New Labour’s length of time in office. It’s now more than the 13 years and a fortnight, give or take, that the Blair/Brown premiership lasted. There have been five Conservative PMs in that time and more deputy PMs than you can name without a reference book. Is it long enough to accept responsibility for what you’ve done and finally move on from blaming the crew who were in before and the note that one of them left in a drawer? It feels like a long time. While the Conservatives will, as any government do, trot out achievements and bold claims over spending leading to better lives, the lived reality the nation feels cannot be…

At 16 I had just left school. I was doing a BTEC National Diploma in performing arts at Oldham College, and saving up for driving lessons. That was a big thing, I really wanted a car. I had a filofax and I loved that, it made me feel like my life was go-go-go. I liked going to the local pub when I was on my lunch hour for a pie and to play snooker. And at college I enjoyed being in an atmosphere with all the rest of the drama students who just wanted to make stuff. It was a very creative, buzzy atmosphere. I was already auditioning for things – I had an agent in Halifax. Coronation Street was on my radar; all my family were like, “Coronation Street…

CULTUREWITCH In 1964, when Zambia gained independence from Great Britain, President Kenneth Kaunda was determined to galvanise a sense of national identity and pride, particularly in the younger generation. Many young Zambians at the time were optimistic, keen to be politically engaged and focused on self-development. The UK radio stations they had been listening to had them hooked on the gritty, blues-steeped rock’n’roll of The Rolling Stones and The Who, but the new government introduced a new slogan, ‘one Zambia, one nation’, along with a mandate that 95 per cent of music played on local radio must be of Zambian origin. It was under these mercurial conditions that a new musical genre, Zamrock, began to percolate. Musicians in Zambia kept one ear firmly pointed west as the vivid psychedelic sounds…

Hello and welcome to this year’s Big Issue Schools Special Edition! In the following pages you will find an array of inspiring stories explaining how young people are making a meaningful impact on the social and environmental problems that matter most to them. The last 18 months have been tough for us all. The impact of the war in Ukraine continues to grow, we are teetering on the brink of environmental collapse and, closer to home, we are facing the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. It’s enough to make even the most optimistic person start to lose faith. But the focus of these pages is on a brighter future. Despite all these problems, the Social Enterprise Schools programme fills us with hope. The young heroes who feature in this…

JAMES FAIRWEATHER AWARD In an exciting new development, at our Social Enterprise Schools Awards (Scotland) in June this year we will be issuing a special award to a social enterprise team that has demonstrated outstanding financial skills. The James Fairweather Award for Financial Literacy is a tribute to James Fairweather, a person close to the hearts of both the Social Enterprise Academy and The Big Issue. As well as chairing the board of the Social Enterprise Academy, James Fairweather was CEO of Big Issue Invest – the social investment arm of Big Issue Group. He supported social businesses and charities to deliver social, economic and environmental impact across the United Kingdom. James, who died in November 2022 after being diagnosed six months earlier with an aggressive form of brain cancer,…