Who we are

In Common is an independent, not for profit  community, arts, culture and society website, based in Southampton. It features interesting stories about local  and national issues, people, as well as information about the local art, music and cultural scenes, book reviews and more. We are local people, writing about the things we care about and the area in which we live. We aim to offer a platform to underrepresented groups and are keen to help better the community and wider society of which we are part.

What we do

We don’t cover breaking stories about crime, court or the council. You can read that elsewhere and we prefer to focus on stories about people, rather than just events. This is slow news – not attention-grabbing click bait, but a longer read, which hopefully you will get something from. Less haste, more read is our motto.

We always welcome new contributors, whether you want to write a one-off opinion piece or you want to become more involved, as a regular writer or photographer. Please do get in touch to find out more.

Please bear with us. We aren’t salaried journalists, with a vast team of proof readers and sub editors to check for mistakes, so if you see an error, do let us know, but please don’t hold it against us.  And if you think you could do better, come along and give it a go! We’d love to have you on board.

How In Common began

In Common was founded by former Southern Daily Echo journalist Sally Churchward. When she was made redundant from her role as a features writer in May, 2019, she wanted to carry on writing about her local community and continue to help bring people together.  She reached out to people through Facebook and Twitter and found that other people also wanted to write about and take photos of their local community, not for money but for love. She also found that people were happy to donate towards the set up costs of the website. It is hoped that as the audience of In Common grows, people will value it enough to make regular donations, to help make it sustainable in the long term.

This is a new project, and it’s one that will grow and adapt with time. It’s for you, so please read, share and get involved. Tell us if there’s something you think we should write about, or write it yourself! Have a chat with us on our social media pages. Make a cup of tea, sit down and read a couple of stories. Find out what we all have In Common.

How it’s paid for

In Common is run on a shoestring, with all the funds to develop it donated by members of the local community, who want to read stories about where they live. The contributors are all currently working for free, again, because they believe passionately about this as a valuable community project.

We believe in the importance of a community news website to keep local people informed and to help strengthen our links with one another. To help us provide this free of charge, we greatly appreciate donations towards keeping the site running.