By Laura McCarthy. Southampton’s beloved independent bookshop October Books will be hosting a variety of exciting events for lovers of reading, writing, and even cooking this February. Things get underway half way through the month, when they will be holding a poetry fundraiser on Saturday 15th February from 2.30pm...
Community bakery celebrates 3rd official birthday by offering free cake
A Southampton community bakery that is the commercial venture for a charity in the city is celebrating its third official anniversary this month by offering visitors free birthday cake. CommuniBakes in Shirley was taken over in 2021 to solely support the charity Communicare, which is dedicated to eradicating loneliness...
Southampton Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Day 2025
Southampton and the surrounding areas will mark the UK’s national Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Day (HMD) with a commemorative event organised by the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton on behalf of the city. Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Day is the annual, national commemoration...
Review: Dear Evan Hansen, Mayflower Theatre
By Jamie Wise. Dear Evan Hansen is a musical, book, and film about an isolated teenage boy. Evan Hansen gets stuck telling a lie that he can’t keep up with, in the hopes to gain friends, love, acceptance, and maybe even popularity. This was an incredible thing to watch....
Southampton council criticised for handing city rebrand to London firm
By Sally Churchward. Southampton City Council (SCC) has come under fire for handing a lucrative contract to rebrand the city to a London agency, without giving local companies the chance to bid for the work. After In Common discovered that SCC chose not to invest the £80,000 contract locally,...
Southampton Stand Up to Racism to hold city centre counter-protest
Southampton Stand Up to Racism is calling on the people of Southampton to take part in a demonstration in the city centre on Saturday, January 25th. The demonstration is being held to oppose a planned march through the city centre by UKIP leader Nick Tenconi. In December, UKIP had...
Reef bring 30th anniversary tour to Southampton this October
Reef are set to celebrate 30 years since the release of their debut Top 10 album Replenish with a headline UK Tour, bringing them to Southampton’s 1865 in October. Singer Gary Stringer says, “It’s such a pleasure to announce that we will be on tour next year celebrating 30 years...
Samantha Fish comes to Southampton on four-date tour
Image by Curtis Knapp. Following her October 2024 UK tour, celebrated blues rock guitarist Samantha Fish returns to the UK in May and June for 4 exclusive UK concerts that will take at Cheese & Grain, Frome (May 28), Arts Club, Liverpool (May 30), The Brook, Southampton (May 31), and O2 Academy2 Oxford (June 1). “I’m ecstatic to return to the UK for...
Exhibition – Queering Connections: Glitchy Kinship
New exhibition, Queering Connections: Glitchy Kinship, comes to Winchester later this month. This is the fifth iteration of the collaborative exhibition project ‘Queering Connections’. Based on an ongoing collaboration between sociologist Lizzie Reed and visual artist Milou Stella, the exhibition brings Stella’s recent work into conversation with selected Artists’...
BANNED! Does a rising trend of book censorship mean we’re destined for Orwell’s Oceania after all?
By Laura McCarthy. It is a well known fact that George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 is the most banned book of all time. The irony of censoring literature which is prophetic of extreme censorship isn’t lost on most of us. You may well have heard of other past bans too, including...