If you think that being young is protection enough from COVID, think again. 28-year-old writer and photographer Dani Bacon, who...
If you didn’t catch her article in our June issue, (Little Miss Lockdown, #126) Jagoda Brown-Polanowska explained what lockdown life was like through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl in Nottingham. Having recently turned twelve, Jagoda has continued to explore her local surroundings, making some interesting and timely discoveries at Rock Cemetery in the process…
Being forced into lockdown has seen Notts’ creative cohorts turn their hands to all sorts of projects, from live-streaming music to socially-distanced filmmaking. But for seventeen-year-old Alice Lynn, lockdown provided the opportunity to create something personal. We caught up with her to find out more about BelieveMe, the new project aimed at creating a safe space for victims of bullying...
A proper good slice of cake can always help put the world to rights, and Sam Rose of Betty Rose Bakes knows how to do just that, and more. Her sweet treats are made with beautiful local ingredients, as she has a keen focus on them being environmentally-friendly. We chat to her about the makings of her business and how she’s been keeping calm and baking on during lockdown…
Stranded boats at sea. Last breaths in lorries. Traumatisation by traffickers. These are just some of the horrific risks refugees take to reach the UK – a place that historically has been full of promise and hope for them. Yet when they arrive here, they’re met with a hostile government and campaigns of hate. However, the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum provides a range of services to help them survive and thrive in the face of adversity. As it celebrates its twentieth anniversary, Eve Smallman talks to Director Matt Atkins about what they’ve achieved and how you can help them carry on their work…
One of the fascinating by-products of increasing globalisation is the thought that, right now, someone in China is watching a tour of Ruddington Village Museum online. The reason for that is Feixue Huangdu, whose tours of local heritage spots have gone viral in her native China. We caught up with Nottingham Trent Museum and Heritage Development graduate to discuss the surprise success of her videos and the importance of sharing cultures...
With the 2020 cricket season about to start, we take a look at how Nottinghamshire are shaping up to take on the COVID-impacted schedule.
During Lockdown, I became particularly partial to home improvement programmes. There was something quite therapeutic, during a time of intense instability and incoherence, watching someone making sense out of chaos by turning a decommissioned Soviet missile into a glamping pod.
As the world gets ready to remember the 75th anniversary of VJ Day, photographer Jagdish Patel explores the role of Commonwealth soldiers – many of whom were conscripted under the threat of violence – in Britain’s victory.
In a time when politicians are regularly accused of being out of touch with everyday life, Nadia Whittome showed why her constituents in Nottingham East were right to place their trust in her during the last General Election. While no one would have blamed her for stocking up on essentials and hunkering down in safety, Britain’s youngest MP made the decision to put herself on the frontline of COVID-19 by returning to care work, the profession in which she worked prior to her election victory last December. With a unique, first-hand perspective on the devastating impact of the virus on the country’s most vulnerable people, we talked to the Labour MP about the ongoing lack of personal protective equipment, the impact of cuts to health and social care services and the Government’s response to coronavirus…
In one year, your average adult will sleep for just under 3,000 hours. But 2020 hasn’t exactly been a normal year, and a lot of us are grappling with changes to our normal sleeping schedule – whether that’s an extra afternoon nap to combat the constant feelings of lethargy, or a loss of night-time hours due to anxiety triggered by watching the news. To help put your mind at ease when it comes to quarantine shut-eye, we’ve delved deep into the world of sleep to (hopefully) help you lot get a better slumber...
In the days before iTunes and Spotify, Nottingham boomed with dozens of record shops. The biggest of these was Selectadisc, which opened in 1966 and finally closed its doors in 2009. Jim Cooke was the store manager and worked for them for over thirty years. Here he remembers the halcyon days of the nineties in that store...
As a member of the Windrush Generation who came to Britain in the 1950s after World War II, 89-year-old Albert Johnson devoted his life to being a well-respected and productive member of society. His reward? Being threatened with deportation and denied his legal rights as part of the 2017 scandal. With the dream of returning home to his native Jamaica one final time, we talked to Johnson as he looks back on a life of hard work, endurance and survival…
For years they lay hidden away in the attic of a house in New Zealand. But now, the missing World War One diaries of Nottingham soldier Billy Richards have been discovered, and are being used as the basis for a new exhibition and play...
It’s Friday 13 March. National Bystander Awareness Day (#NBAD) - a day when we raise awareness of safe and simple ways you can intervene in hate incidents. This important initiative has its roots in Nottingham and was established in 2018 by a local social enterprise Communities Inc.
If you’re looking for something a little different to mark International Women’s Day this year, Radcliffe Sword Club might have just the answer for you.
Last week saw Arsenal take on Chelsea in the Continental Cup Final. Our guy Cristian Bratu was at the City Ground to catch all the action.
As the first person to coin the phrase “technological addiction” in the mid-nineties, it’s fair to say that Dr. Mark Griffiths was way ahead of the curve when it came to predicting the potential impact technology could have on society. The world-renowned psychologist is a Distinguished Professor at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Social Sciences, as well as the Director of their International Gaming Research Unit, which was established to, amongst other things, discover and understand attitudes toward potentially addictive behaviours in gaming. And with an estimated 33 million gamers in the UK – almost half the population – we caught up with Dr. Griffiths to find out what it actually means to be addicted to video games...
Nottingham’s anime and manga society, aka NAMSOC, invited LeftLion to come to one of their weekly meetups to talk all things community, anime, and identity...
Over the past decade, an angular building in Sneinton has grown into one of the UK’s most revered DIY music spaces. JT Soar, a fruit and potato warehouse turned studio, rehearsal space and gig venue, will celebrate its tenth birthday this month, with founder Phil Booth still very much at the helm. What began in 2010 as a recording studio has slowly but surely become a DIY exemplar, boosting our city’s street cred while simultaneously providing an all-embracing platform for artists from far and wide to flourish. We stopped by for a pre-birthday brew to find out more about JT Soar’s Midas touch…
Beat the Streets, the annual day festival raising money to improve the lives of homeless people in Nottingham, is back for 2020 on Sunday 26 January, and they’ve pulled out all the stops to kick-off the decade how they mean to go on. As well as bagging Jake Bugg for a performance slot, you can also catch the likes of award-winning folk singer and activist Grace Petrie and everyone’s favourite live karaoke band Bamalamasingsong. But enough about the big guns – our music editors have selected four lesser-known names that they think you should fight your way to the front to see...