by Mike Daish. Once again, thanks to lockdown 2, I am shielding, so have been taking a few photos while out getting my daily exercise. I gave myself a little challenge to shoot some black and white images and to do as little post editing as possible. I am...
Features
Experience: Cancer in a time of covid
by anonymous. There is a very thin line that holds the fabric of our lives together. Things can change at any minute. These are my reflections from the perspective of going through the journey alongside a person with cancer. The Second World War broke out on 3rd September in...
Identifying outside the boxes – non-binary people share their journeys of self-identification
by Sally Churchward. “I’d draw my own box and tick that.” B Parsons, a gender queer non-binary drip artist and performance poet from Winchester. They/their/them. “Before, I tried out different terms for myself, but I didn’t identify with them. When non-binary was put to me, I realised ‘That’s my...
Opinion: my experience of a Calais refugee camp
by Lewis MacLean. Immigration is a contentious issue for some and wishy-washy for others. In reality, things never change for the refugees themselves. After years of the press reporting on desperate immigrants losing their lives when attempting to cross the Mediterranean, the English Channel is now the focus. The...
Southampton’s Speakers’ Corner
by Martin Brisland. Did you know that Southampton has its own Speakers’ Corner? It is located in Hoglands Park, the second largest of our Central Parks. Situated near the former Debenhams store it is complete with dias and railings. Today people use social media to voice their opinions. The...
Facing fines and deregistering children – not all parents agree that schools are ‘covid safe’
by Sally Churchward. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that every child should be in school. But many parents are choosing to face fines by keeping their children at home or deregistering them. Could the government’s hardline approach to getting children back to school backfire, with parents being...
Southampton’s new online music archive
by Geoff Wall. Stick It In Your Ear (SIIYE) has just launched an online archive of local music originally recorded on originally recorded on reel to reel tapes and published on cassette in the 1980s. Southampton-based SIIYE started life in the 1980s as a magazine, rather like a catalogue,...
From The Beatles to War Horse: Southampton’s Mayflower theatre has been at the heart of entertainment in the south for more than 90 years
by Martin Brisland. Did you know that the Mayflower, built in 1928, has one of the largest auditoriums in England with more than 2,300 seats and used to have a tea garden on the roof! In the late 1920s the Moss Empire theatre group built six 2,000 seater venues,...
Matchgirl strikes: women unite and fight
by Martin Brisland. Main image copyright TUC Archives, used with permission. The female sewing machinists’ strike of 1968 at the Ford Dagenham plant resulted in the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970. Their story was told in the 2010 film Made in Dagenham. Eighty years before, in London’s...
Brave New Southampton: Wyndham Court, modern architecture & the municipal socialist city
by Owen Hatherley. This essay was originally written as a lecture to accompany Southampton photographer Rachel Adams’ exhibition Life Is Brutalist: a portrait of Wyndham Court, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the city’s landmark building. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the planned physical exhibition had to be called off, but...