Epigram 294

University of Bristol Independent Student Newspaper

www.epigram.org.uk

30th November 2015

Issue 294

Features

Drugs at Bristol Uni

Sarah Redrup explains why survivors of sexual violence need to talk more

Page 6

Comment Maya Jones addresses sexism at Bristol in response to a controversial new facebok page

Page 11

57 per cent of respondents have taken a Class A drug

Travel Travel celebrate Paris after the

Sarah Newey Editor Ben Parr Investigations Editor More than a quarter of students at the University of Bristol claim to have felt pressured into taking drugs, an anonymous Epigram survey of nearly 300 students* has revealed.

The survey found that 77 per cent of Bristol students have taken illegal drugs for recreational purposes and that 89 per cent of those who took drugs did so whilst at the university.

The results also reveal that 26 per cent of students have felt pressured into taking drugs and of those students, 30 per cent subsequently took them.

These findings come shortly after members of the university management - including the Vice Chancellor, Professor Hugh Brady

- were quizzed on Bristol’s ‘rampant drug problem’ at the University of Bristol Question Time. At the event, it was suggested that some students feel ‘pressured into taking drugs.’ The university management, however, appeared to be unaware of such issues, saying they would have to ‘look into it.’

Yet in 2013, a national survey asking students at UK universities whether they had taken illegal drugs listed the University of Bristol eighth. The results, reported in the Mail Online, found that 75 per cent of Bristol students had used illicit substances.

One student who said they do not take drugs commented that not doing so made them feel like an ‘outsider’ at Bristol.

‘Most unsettling is the number of people who, upon coming to Bristol, had either never taken any recreational drugs, or had only used cannabis, who have now moved on to class A drugs,’ they said.

This suggestion is consistent with

the Epigram survey results, which found 39 per cent of drug users have tried cocaine.

The survey also revealed that only 7 per cent of students claimed that they did not know about the side effects of drugs before they took them.

However, this figure appears to be at odds with the 27 per cent of students who said that had they known more about the side effects, they would not have taken certain drugs.

Student’s comments about the safety of drug use was mixed. One student claimed that if you ‘take part in horse riding you are more than 28 times more likely to be harmed’ than if you take ecstasy. Not all respondent comments reflected this sort of statement however.

‘I wish I’d known about the depression that come downs could trigger, I’m not sure I would have been so quick to try,’ said one student.

A spokesman from Anyone’s Child, a charity campaigning for legal changes in the status of drugs in

horrific events of Friday 13th Epigram

26 per cent have felt pressured to take drugs

order to promote safer drug control, suggested that there is ‘a need for accurate and honest information’ about the potential consequences of drug use.

‘We see the vast amounts of money being spent on punishment and enforcement and the inadequacy of prevention and risk minimisation education - it seems clear that reallocation is urgently needed if we are serious about protecting the health and wellbeing of young people.

If your survey shows anything, it is that lots of young people are using drugs - and policy responses have to deal with reality to minimise any potential harms,’ they told Epigram.

The majority of respondents appeared comfortable with the number of drug users in Bristol and striking the balance between this and their work. However, more than a third of students still said that they have regretted taking drugs at some point. continued on page 3

Page 26

Style

Stay safe and stylish while cycling with East Cycle Studios Page 24

Music Sam Mason-Jones reviews Foals, who didn’t put a hoof wrong in their performance at the Anson Rooms

Page 45

Epigram

30.11.2015

News Editorial

2 Editor: Sarah Newey

Deputy Editor: Adam Becket

Deputy Editor: Becki Murray

editor@epigram.org.uk

abecket@epigram.org.uk

becki.murray@epigram.org.uk

A note from the editor

Inside Epigram

Epigram/ Fares Kammourieh

We at Epigram would like to express our deepest condolences to all those affected by the Paris attacks and all terrorist atrocities worldwide, especially young people and those who have called Bristol home.

Food 29 Homemade Edible Christmas Gifts

The media is, for most of us, our primary source of news. Be it via the TV, radio, a newspaper or on Twitter, it is likely that news outlets are our first port of call for information and addition insights into the world around us.

Yet in September, a Gallup poll suggested that in America only four in ten people trust the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly - which represents a historical low in confidence in the sector.

On Monday 23rd November, The Sun ran a front page headline suggesting that 1 in 5 British Muslims’ have sympathy for Jihadis.

This was not the question posed to the 1,003 Muslims phoned.

They were asked whether they had sympathy with young Muslims going to fight in Syria – nothing about Jihadis. Only 5% had a lot of sympathy and a further 14.5% had some. So The Sun had its headline, but at best they were economical with the truth.

It later turned out that You Gov, The Sun’s usual polling company, had declined to conduct the poll; they didn’t believe they could accurately gauge opinion in the time available.

Survation, the company who picked up the work, have since said that they ‘do not support or endorse the way in which this poll’s findings have been interpreted,’ clearly disowning The Sun’s reporting of the topic.

Journalists have a responsibility to provide factually correct information about issues so readers can decide their own opinions based on truth. Accurate reporting should be a requirement for all media, including us, but especially big mainstream papers like The Sun. Surveys are a fantastic way to garner information and attitudes, but in order to be useful they have to be clear and unambiguous. The Sun’s article not only misinterpreted the results, but oversimplifies a complicated issue to a statistic. The survey question was perhaps deliberately vague – is ‘sympathy’

Charlotte Wass helps you make Christmas extra delicious with easy to make festive treats

supporting, understanding or somewhere in between? Fighters in Syria could mean any of at least three different groups, not just jihadis.

Indeed, an article published in Vice written by somebody who conducted the poll clearly demonstrates the extent of The Sun’s misreporting. Not only did the front page come as a shock to the pollster, but they argue that ‘every single person I spoke to for more than five minutes condemned the terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam.’ The conversations and opinions which were raised during the ‘badly worded poll’ are not reflected in The Sun’s simplified front page article.

Following the Paris attacks and amid the current refugee crisis, The Sun’s article has reinforced dangerous stereotypes about British Muslims and was irresponsible. Why deliberately misinform your readers? That is not journalism but sensationalism.

This week, our front page story is about attitudes to drugs at the University of Bristol. It is based on a random sample of 292 self selecting students, with clear questions that cannot really be misconstrued.

But The Sun’s front page, if anything, has made me wary of our own investigations - it’s an extreme example, but it emphasises the importance of using data well, and representing the answers accurately. Nonetheless, I am proud of our investigation into drug use at Bristol and how we have conducted it. I believe that it is an accurate reflection of what happens at our university and how Bristol is perceived nationally (and I definitely wasn’t surprised by the results).

Fundamentally, the media has a responsibility to provide the general public with accurate information that they can then digest and form opinions from. We as a newspaper aim to provide news, features and stories without trying to sway your judgement one way as another. Of course, we publish opinionated pieces too, but these are based on research and evidence rather than rumour and prejudice. Ultimately we trust you, the reader, to make up your own mind about the issues we raise, based on the facts.

Sarah Newey

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Epigram/ Charlotte Wass

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Editorial team Editor Sarah Newey editor@epigram.org.uk

Arts

Deputy Editors Adam Becket abecket@epigram.org.uk

39 Are modernised adaptations of

Travel Editor Camilla Gash cgash.epigram@gmail.com

Film & TV Editor Ella Kemp ekemp.epigram@gmail.com

Deputy Features Editor Becky Morton bmorton.epigram@gmail.com

Deputy Travel Editor Ella Ennos-Dann eennosdann.epigram@gmail.com

Deputy Film & TV Editor Kate Wyver kwyver.epigram@gmail.com

Features Online Editor Richard Assheton rassheton.epigram@gmail.com

Travel Online Editor Annabel Lindsay alindsay.epigram@gmail.com

Film & TV Online Editor Georgia O’Brien gobrien.epigram@gmail.com

Jordan Kelly-Linden jkellylinden.epigram@gmail.com

Style Editor Hattie Bottom hattie@epigram.org.uk

Sport Editor Marcus Price mprice.epigram@gmail.com

Deputy Comment Editor Stefan Rollnick srollnick.epigram@gmail.com

Deputy Style Editor Plum Ayloff payloff.epigram@gmail.com

Deputy Sport Editor James O’Hara johara2.epigram@gmail.com

Comment Online Editor Liam Marchant lmarchant.epigram@gmail.com

Style Online Editor Phoebe Jordan styleonline@epigram.org.uk

Sport Online Editor Malik Ouzia mouzia.epigram@gmail.com

Shakespeare’s plays a good thing?

Becki Murray becki.murray@epigram.org.uk Comment Editor

Hannah Wakefield and Miriam Partington lock horns over recontextualising the Bard’s works

Online Editor Ciara Lally ciara.lally@epigram.org.uk Deputy Online Editors Hannah Price hannah.price@epigram.org.uk

Online

Features Editor Alex Green agreen.epigram@gmail.com

Editor Editor What’s On Editor SciencePuzzles EditorEditors Science & Comment Technology Editor Ed Henderson-Howat Tom Flynn Alfie Smith Patrick Baker Ben Duncan-Duggal Suzie Brown Nick Cork e.hendersonhowat@epigram.org.uk asmith.epigram@gmail.com editor@epigram.org.uk bduncanduggal.epigram@gmail.com Andrea Philippou comment@epigram.org.uk science@epigram.org.uk

Flickr/ Pablo Sanchez

Film + TV 41 The Fight for film’s survival Max Tyler forms rank on the conflict between digital and stock filmmaking

Deputy Editors Managing Director Jon Bauckham Rebecca Butler jon@epigram.org.uk rebecca.butler@epigram.org.uk Hannah Stubbs hannah@epigram.org.uk Director of Operations Ryan Furniss e2 Editor r.furniss@epigram.org.uk Matthew McCrory e2@epigram.org.uk News Editor Sorcha Bradley News Editor sm.bradley.epigram@gmail.com Alice Young news@epigram.org.uk Deputy News Editor Abbie Scott Deputy News Editors ascott.epigram@gmail.com Abigail Van-West avanwest@epigram.org.uk Dalia Abuyasian Jenny Awford News Online Editors jawford@epigram.org.uk George Clarke

Features Editor gclarke.epigram@gmail.com Tristan Martin Emily Faint features@epigram.org.uk efaint.epigram@gmail.com

Letters Editor Arts Editor Deputy Webmaster Science Editor Deputy Science & Tech Editor Mattie Brignal Mihai-Alexandru Cristache Emma Corfield Emma Sackville Matt Davis letters@epigram.org.uk mbrignal.epigram@gmail.com deputyscience@epigram.org mdavis.epigram@gmail.com Chief Proofreaders Culture Editor Deputy Arts Editor Sport Editor Guy Barlow Science & Calum Tech Online Lucy Stewart Sherwood Ed Grimble Tom Burrows Amy Finch culture@epigram.org.uk egrimble.epigram@gmail.com sport@epigram.org.uk Sub-editors Deputy Culture Editor Deputy Margot SportTudor Editor Letters Editor Arts Online Editor Saskia Hume Sophie Hunter Amy Stewart Zoe Hutton David Stone Maria Murariu shunter.epigram@gmail.com astewart.epigram@gmail.com deputyculture@epigram.org.uk deputysport@epigram.org.uk Esme Webb Kate Dickinson Music Editor Living Editors Music Editor Milner PuzzlesSophie Editor Ella Wills Maya Colwell Gunseli Yalcinkaya Nathan Comer Lily Buckmaster gyalcinkaya@epigram.org.uk music@epigram.org.uk Business Team Head Sub Editor Will Soer Hannah Lewis Deputy Music Editor wilso.epigram@gmail.com Deputy Music Editors Emma Corfield Vlad Djuric Caitlin Butler Pippa Shawley Johnny Battle Sub Editors Food Editor cbutler.epigram@gmail.com Mike Christensen deputymusic@epigram.org.uk Sophie Van Berchem Harriet Layhe, Izzie Fernandes Katie Llewellyn FIlm & TV Editor Alex Schulte Kate Moreton, Rosemary Wagg Alice Best Deputy Food aschulte.epigram@gmail.com WillEditor Ellis Rachel Prince Illustrator Tom Horton Olivia Mason filmandtv@epigram.org.uk Music Online Editor Sophie Sladen Ellie Sherrard Alfie Smith Deputy Editor Online Food EditorsFilm & TVSam Mason-Jones Web Designer Becky ScottAnthony and Issy Adeane smasonjones.epigram@gmail.com Rob Mackenzie Montgomery deputyfilmandtv@epigram.org.uk

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News

Epigram 30.11.2015

3

@epigramnews Editor: Sorcha Bradley

Deputy Editors: Abbie Scott; Dalia Abu-Yassien

Online Editors: Emily Faint; George Clarke

sm.bradley@epigram.org.uk

ascott@epigram.org.uk; dabuyassien@epigram.org.uk

efaint@epigram.org.uk; gclarke@epigram.org.uk

77 per cent of Bristol students have taken drugs

Sarah Newey Editor Ben Parr Investigations Editor ‘We don’t actively track the number of drug users in any way and the number of visitors to our Just Ask service reporting issues with drugs is very low,’ Sarah Redrup, Bristol SU’s Student Living Officer, told Epigram.

‘It would be naive to suggest that drug taking

doesn’t take place at Bristol and I am aware that Bristol does have a certain reputation, but despite that, there is no evidence that I have seen to suggest that it’s any more of an issue here than anywhere else.’

Yet nationally, Bristol is often perceived as being ‘druggy.’

‘Bristol definitely has a reputation,’ one student from King’s College London told Epigram. ‘Drugs obviously do happen at other universities, but not on the same scale. When I came to a house party in Bristol last year I was shocked by how prevalent drugs were - in

London they tend to happen more occasionally on certain nights out.’

Students from Cambridge, UCL, Durham, Newcastle and Edinburgh also reported that Bristol was seen as having a ‘popular drug culture,’ and suggested that although drug use takes place at their universities, it seems to be less prevalent.

Bristol’s nightlife is often emphasised as a cause of drug use at the university and several respondents to the Epigram survey emphasised this point. One student argued that several clubs ‘rely on a largely drug taking crowd,’ and that drugs have become ‘central to what many people would regard as “the Bristol experience.”’

It is not unknown for drugs such as nos to be available for sale at both private house parties and even in clubs in Bristol. Indeed, according to Epigram’s survey, 58 per cent of students at Bristol have tried laughing gas.

However, with 70 per cent of respondents claiming to have taken it, cannabis remains the most used recreational drug at the University of Bristol.

‘Following the recent Vice-Chancellor’s Question Time, at which concerns about drug use were raised, the university is carrying out its own enquiry to assess the situation,’ a spokesperson for the University of Bristol said in response.

‘We take all use of illegal drugs extremely seriously. If we find evidence of a student taking illegal substances then Security Services are notified and we have a range of disciplinary sanctions, which could result in expulsion. We monitor the scale of such misconduct closely

and liaise with the police as appropriate.

‘We currently cover drug awareness in various ways during student induction and have for some time been planning a drug and alcohol awareness week in the spring term 2016. This is being developed with the Bristol Drugs project and in liaison with Bristol SU. Our Student Welfare Services can provide support to any students dealing with drug or alcohol abuse or addiction or feeling pressured to take drugs.’

Key Statistics • 57 per cent of respondents claimed to have taken a Class A drug (including cocaine, MDMA, LSD and heroin).

• 33 per cent of non drug users claimed to have minded drugs being taken around them.

• 27 per cent of students said had they known more about the side effects of some drugs, they wouldn’t have taken them.

• 30 per cent of students who felt pressured to take drugs subsequently did so.

• 88 per cent of students who took cannabis also took other recreational drugs. *survey of 292 self selecting respondents

University wins Green Award amid divestment debate Dalia Abu-Yassien Deputy News Editor

“

‘Whilst we commend the work of the university’s Sustainability Team and its Green Capital pledges, they are at odds with the university administration’s financial decisions’ make a meaningful long term contribution to our economy,” one week before the upcoming COP 21 international climate talks in Paris and during Bristol’s year as European Green Capital, I cannot think of a better time for the University to act.’

Her motion has been undersigned by a range of people, including other Councillors, academics from diverse faculties at the University of Bristol and other institutions, Elected Officers of the Students’ Union and Molly Scott Cato, the Green MEP for the South West of England.

Moreover, the petition handed to the Vice Chancellor led by the student activist group, Fossil Free, also garnered significant support, with over 2000 signatories. Fossil Free has organised an outside presence during the university court meeting to support Councillor Carla Denyer’s divestment motion. It should be noted that the university court has limited

actual powers, but that a divestment motion would send a symbolic message to university management.

Prof. Chris McMahon from the Engineering Faculty and an active, dedicated member of the Cabot Institute, penned an open letter to the university, with the support of over 50 colleagues, also advocating for fossil fuel divestment.

Mayor George Ferguson also recently made the commitment to keep Bristol’s investments out of the fossil fuel industry at Global Divestment Day in February, making Bristol City Council one of 30 cities globally to have made the pledge.

The university has so far adopted an ambiguous stance on the issue, stating in the annex for the published university court motion that it ‘has not yet reached a conclusion.’ It has discussed the issue with both students and Sarasin & Partners, who manage their investment portfolio. According to the agenda, the Council will be giving further consideration to the issue in their January 2016 meeting.

The annex published by the university also claimed: ‘The world does not currently have sufficient non fossil fuel related power sources to replace fossil fuel supplies.’

Other fossil divestment dissenters highlight the fact that the difficulty of a transition to

alternative fuels is often underestimated. They suggest it is too much of a generalisation to put all ‘fossil fuels’ in one category.

‘Whilst we commend the work of the university’s Sustainability Team and its Green Capital pledges, they are at odds with the university administration’s financial decisions,’ Rachel Simon, a member of the student-led Fossil Free Bristol University campaign, told Epigram.

‘If we want to support the growth of renewable energy and the cleanest energy sources we need to stop giving fossil fuel companies tacit approval for their activities: they pour billions of pounds into exploring for new fossil fuels when we already have more than enough than is safe to burn.’

These moves occur in the context of a growing international push towards divestment. Should the University of Bristol also divest, it will join the likes of Stanford, Oxford, Edinburgh, who have already undertaken this move.

The Bristol initiatives also come just before the COP21 Paris climate change conference in December.

As the university touts on its website, there is, indeed, ‘more to being green than just turning off a few lights.’

Jamie Corbin

The University of Bristol won the Green Capital Public Sector Award last week, at the same time as strong initiatives from constantly growing local campaign groups pushed the university to divest from fossil fuels.

These initiatives included a student-led petition, with 2000 signatories calling for divestment, which was publicly handed directly to Vice Chancellor Hugh Brady. A divestment motion was also made by Carla Denyer, Councillor of Clifton East, to be considered at the University of Bristol Annual Meeting of Court. This meeting is scheduled for Friday 27th November.

The Green Capital Public Sector award was given to the university by the Bristol Post in recognition of its collaboration with a range of city-wide green initiatives. The university has made four sustainability pledges, one of which aims to make Bristol a carbon-neutral campus by 2030.

However, those campaigning for divestment say that the university’s current £5.6million invested in fossil fuel companies is heavily at odds with their extensive and commendable achievements in the Bristol sustainability sector and their self-ascribed green ethos.

Many researchers claim that should we wish to maintain global warming at below 2°C, then 75 per cent of known fossil fuel reserves need to remain in the ground. In the view of many, divestment would be a symbol of the moral and ethical need to shift the global focus to alternative forms of energy.

‘I would say that, in light of the university’s recent award from the Bristol Post, they continue in their commitment to sustainability and follow through by fully divesting from the most polluting and unsustainable industry of all,’ commented Jack Willes, co-ordinator of Futures Forum, a conference organised by Bristol Hub.

‘Given the erratic nature of the oil markets, it is, if nothing else, a logical move.’

Councillor Carla Denyer’s proposed motion affirms the important role wielded by educational institutions.

‘I am pleased that the university has received the Green Capital Award, as it has done many things to deserve it,’ she told Epigram. ‘Now the obvious next step is to make sure that its endowment fund helps to build a green and sustainable future too.’

‘Three weeks after Barack Obama announced he is rejecting an application to build the Keystone XL pipeline because it would “not

Students protest groups Fossil Free campaign for divestment

Epigram 30.11.2015

4

RISE showcases ethical ‘May I Offend You?’ Science, and innovative business Religion and free speech Dalia AbuYasin Deputy News Reporter

RISE attendees take a coffee break

Epigram / Dalia AbuYasin

variety of sectors; they included Julian Okoye, one of the founders of the GENeco Bio-bus (popularly called ‘the Poo Bus’) that made global headlines and Chloe Tingle, founder of No More Taboo, which seeks to break taboos regarding menstruation, providing much-needed sanitary products to women in developing countries.

The finishing panel debate, chaired by RISE committee member Abby Scarborough, acknowledged and interrogated the difficulty of defining what being ‘green’ or being ‘sustainable’ actually meant.

Penny Burket, a second year attendee studying Dentistry, enjoyed the event.

‘I’ve never networked before, but I found it really useful. I had an interesting chat with one of the business owners,’ she said.

The annual conference has previously been hugely successful, hosting speakers such as the Eden Project’s Sir Tim Smit and Bristol mayor George Ferguson. It has also won an award during Social Entrepreneurship week.

On Thursday 19th November, Dr Susan Blackmore, an expert on consciousness, ‘memologist’ and writer, came to do a talk arranged by Bristol University’s Atheist, Agnostic and Secular Society. It was entitled ‘May I offend you?’ and took place at the Bristol Improv Theatre.

She discussed religion, evolution, memes, university ‘safe space policies,’ political correctness and the recent terrorist attacks on Paris. On most matters she took a controversial stance, which some found shocking, others intriguing or refreshing.

She heavily criticised religious belief throughout her talk and argued that Darwin’s theory of evolution highlights the incoherency of religion, even describing religion as a set of ‘bad memes’ (bad and dangerous ideas), which cause people to act irrationally.

She also talked about how she disagreed with François Hollande’s declaration of war, following the massacre in Paris. She said that actual war would not help, adding that she believed what was needed was a war of ideas, which she described as a ‘meme- war’ (meme theory is essentially that ideas spread from person to person and evolve like genes).

She described the various manipulative techniques, which she argues are used to trick people into religious belief, such as the ‘beauty trick,’ and used the example of a Cathedral to highlight how lavish beauty could entice people to religion. She then used the example of hell and the promise of virgins in Paradise in Islam, to illustrate what she suggested are fear and temptation tactics.

In a move which many would find problematic, she even used religious imagery such as the Cross and an image of the Islamic Call to Prayer in an ironically mocking sense.

However, she did say she understood that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that provoked the

“

first attack of the year on Paris could be seen as ‘crass’.

Blackmore argued that speech should not be regulated unless it is directly offensive to a person. For her, criticising an idea, no matter how contentious it may be to do so, is never wrong and should always be a matter of discussion rather than regulation. She argued strongly against ‘safe spaces’ in universities and no-platforming, stating that people such as Germaine Greer (who has been deemed trans-phobic) should be given a voice and debated with.

‘Speech should not be regulated unless it is directly offensive to the person’

Her famous Ted Talk on ‘Memes and Temes’ is available online and she is the author of several books, including Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005) and The Meme Machine (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Susan Blackmore

Mapping LGBT+ Bristol project kicks off Emily Faint Online News Editor Mapping LGBT+ Bristol, a major new project to create a permanent digital archive and online map of the LGBT+ history of Bristol and the surrounding areas of Bath, South Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire, launches this week.

Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the project is a collaboration between

Jamie Cross

Trans day of Remembrance

a local LGBT+ history group, OutStories Bristol, the Know Your Bristol project at the University of Bristol, the LGBTQ youth group, Freedom Youth, the online historical mapping website, Know Your Place, and Bristol Record Office.

The project involves local residents researching, writing and mapping LGBT+ history (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender including all gender, sexual and romantic minorities). Its aim is to make LGBT+ history mainstream and certify its place on the map as part of the official history of Bristol.

In doing so, the project hopes to make the

‘Its aim is to make LGBT+ history mainstream and to certify its place on the map’

voices of LGBT+ people heard in public, in the local authority planning process and in local schools.

Co-investigator on the project, Dr Nate Eisenstadt of the University of Bristol, said: ‘We knew about OutStories from the impressive LGBT history work they’d done as part of their Heritage Lottery funded project and exhibition Revealing Stories at Bristol’s M Shed museum.

‘They knew about us from the community historical mapping we have been doing with Know Your Bristol. When Outstories got in contact and suggested an LGBT+ history mapping project, it seemed like a perfect match. We can’t wait to get mapping!’

Over the next year the project partners will be training volunteers to carry out oral history interviews with local residents, researching LGBT+ history in the city archives at Bristol Record Office and holding a series of events to gather stories, images and artefacts to create a permanent LGBT+ archive.

They will then digitise and edit this material in order to create an LGBT+ layer on Bristol City Council’s online history map, Know Your Place, and will work in partnership with LGBTQ youth group, Freedom Youth, to create curriculum resources for schools using the material collected.

Flickr/ Adam Lappin

On Saturday 21st November, the Inc. Social Enterprise Society and Bristol Hub jointly organised the annual RISE conference, which brought together ambitious Bristol students and successful social entrepreneurs from across the UK. The event, themed ‘Business Mind, Social Heart: Our Green Capital,’ featured a series of talks, workshops and a panel debate with a green twist.

The conference gave students the chance to network and delve deeply into the social enterprise sector with professionals themselves, aiming to show that it is very possible to function as a business while positively impacting both people and planet.

‘RISE is an extremely rewarding experience regardless of your involvement in social enterprise,’ commented Mohammed AbdulQassim, a co-ordinator of the conference. ‘It offered many valuable insights relevant to everyone – social enterprise is something we should all be thinking about as it is the future of business in a potential fairer, more sustainable world.’

Andrew Gerrad, chair of Bristol Green Capital 2015 and two-time Queen’s Award for International Enterprise winner, was the keynote speaker. He particularly highlighted to the audience the drive it took to grow a company that was based on ethical value.

Among the speakers was Kevin Neal, founder of the Gloucester Road-based Compass Project, which aims to help vulnerable ex-drug addicts. He spoke about using business as a tool for empowerment and breaking the cycle of unsuccessful drug rehabilitation. As to the idea of profit for profit’s sake, he said: ‘That wasn’t why I wanted to work.’

Speakers shared their expertise from a

“

Scarlett Sherriff News Reporter

The final culmination of the project will the launch of a mobile app at Bristol Pride 2016.

This announcement closely follows the conclusion of the university’s celebration of Trans Awareness Week, spanning from 14th November to the Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20th November, organised by Bristol SU and the University’s LGBT+ Society.

Trans Awareness Week was established to raise awareness among the student body of trans issues, the use of appropriate language regarding these issues and to encourage students to challenge the perception that there are only two options for gender.

‘I thought the “day in the life” part of the workshop was very effective in helping attendees think about how almost every aspect of daily life could hold extra challenges for trans students and the toll this could take over time,’ said Evie McDonald, an attendee at the Trans Awareness workshop.

‘Taking part in awareness weeks is hugely important for the society to show its support and solidarity with our trans members,’ Charlie Oxborough, president of the University of Bristol’s LGBT+ Society, told Epigram.

OfBristolSU’sTransgenderDayofRemembrance service, she also said: ‘This year especially, it felt like the ceremony had reached out to even more members of the wider community, from Bristol and beyond.

‘Given that there have been controversial events and discussions around trans issues [at the university], it felt even more important to show the society’s support.’

Volunteers are needed for all aspects of the Mapping LGBT+ Bristol project so anyone interested in helping is encouraged get in touch: contact@outstoriesbristol.org.uk.

Epigram 30.11.2015

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Bristol pays tribute to Paris attack victims

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas Above and Beyond, a charity dedicated to supporting patient care in Bristol, is attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the most festive jumpers worn in one place with the help of Bristol students.

This event coincides with Christmas Jumper Day, where medical students wear their woollies on the wards.

At 1pm on 11th December, a crowd, sporting an array of colourful knitwear, will be gathering behind the Life Sciences building in this attempt to raise valuable funds and awareness.

The charity will be joined with Bristol students, including student fundraisers Ignit10n and hospital staff, to raise money for Bristol’s hospitals. The current festive jumpers record, which was set by Loughborough University last year, stands at 1,175, but they hope to beat this by reaching 1,500.

The students will be helping the hospital’s charity with the countdown to fundraising the last £1M needed for the Golden Gift Appeal to transform the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) and the Bristol cancer centre, the BHOC. So far, thanks to local support, the charity has raised £5M, since the appeal was launched in June 2013.

All the money raised by the festive jumpers

Palestine 101 warmly welcomed by students

attempt will go towards projects that the NHS budget can’t cover: important products such as glue and glitter for the Play Department in Bristol Children’s Hospital, iPads for memory work with Dementia patients in the BRI, a world-class intensive care monitoring system, new individual rooms for the sickest patients and family rooms for their loved ones.

Epigram spoke to students Sophie Latta and Olivia Byrom, president and vice-president of Above and Beyond Galenicals, a student-run society associated with the charity.

‘As medical students, we are so excited at the opportunity to raise funds and awareness for a truly fantastic cause,’ they told us.

‘We look forward to joining students and staff from both the university and hospitals in Bristol on the day for what should be a fabulously festive fundraiser.’

Above and Beyond are working to improve hospital care across nine Bristol city centre hospitals, including the BRI, Bristol Eye Hospital and The Bristol Dental Hospital.

Their work has affected more than 500,000 patients, as well as their families and the 8,000 NHS staff who care for them. The projects they fund aim to improve the hospital environment, support research for future treatments, provide specialist medical training for staff and stateof-the-art equipment for the hospitals.

Jonathan Sandy, Dean of Health Sciences at the University, showed his support in email correspondence with the charity saying: ‘It’s a good initiative, I will be there if I can.’

Olivia Byrom

Students involved in the creative record attempt

A candle is lit in honor of terror victims worldwide

Amy Finch News Reporter Interest in Bristol University Friends of Palestine’s talk, ‘Palestine 101’, far exceeded the expected turnout of 40 people. It was an event aiming to make the long and complicated history of the conf lict accessible to a wide audience. In fact, almost 1000 people were vying for tickets to the event – so many that not everyone was able to be accommodated by the venue.

Daniel Wernbergler, president of PalSoc and Nathan Beesley, also a member, began by trying to provide a balanced overview of the history of Israel and Palestine, mainly focusing on the period since the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

‘I was taken aback, not only by the size of the audience but also their patience and respectfulness,’ commented Wernberlgler. ‘I like to think that we showed our detractors that a PalSoc can engage in serious academic discussion and debate and that Thursday made clear the kind of PalSoc we are striving to be.’

Jonathan Godsi and Jamie Gance, who represented a Pro-Israeli stance, were then allowed to criticise this account and raise any points that they believed to be relevant to the debate.

Jonathan Godsi also praised the respect shown by all in the debate.

‘I think, above all, we demonstrated that Israel/Palestine doesn’t need to be this tribal, extremely antagonistic issue that it’s usually made out to be,’ he commented.

‘I believe we delivered a genuinely balanced discussion which put on display how complicated this conf lict is and the manner in which both sides have very valid points.’

After a short discussion between the two groups, Jude Nassar, vice president of PalSoc and a Palestinian herself, was given

a platform to speak about her experiences living in Ramallah. She revealed a number of harrowing experiences of occupation and military presence from the perspective of a child living in the West Bank.

Finally, questions from the audience were directed towards the speakers.

Fares Kammourieh

Abbie Scott Deputy News Editor

Fares Kammourieh

On a blustery evening, people from all different faiths and backgrounds gathered at College Green to show unity and solidarity in reaction to the recent terror attacks in Paris and elsewhere.

The vigil outside Bristol Cathedral was organised by the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society (BMCS), Council of Bristol Mosques, Building the Bridge, Somali Community Organisations, Stand Against Racism & Inequality (SARI) and Bristol Multi-Faith Forum.

It welcomed a number of speakers from various other faith organisations and charities and its focus was not entirely on the Paris victims, but also those in Beirut, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.

The atmosphere was solemn, but also remarkably positive, as strangers struck up conversations and introduced themselves before the speeches started.

Alex Raikes, Director of SARI, spoke to Epigram before the vigil about how islamophobia was behind nearly half of hate crimes in Bristol, even though it is a ‘respectful city.’

‘Only yesterday a woman was abused on the street because she was wearing a hijab,’ she revealed.

The University of Bristol’s Islamic Society also spoke to Epigram.

‘These attacks were a crime against the

victims, Islam and humanity,’ commented their Interfaith Representative, Annisa Khan.

‘But it was heart-warming to see people of all backgrounds gather together peacefully to honour these victims.’

Labour Councillor Afzal Shah opened the vigil, by describing it as ‘the perfect demonstration of unity in the face of extremism.’

‘Bristol is rich in diversity and offers sanctuary for those who need it. We will not sow divisions in our society,’ he announced.

Arif Khan, Chairman of the Council of Bristol Mosques, declared with defiance: ‘This is not Islam!’

Mayor George Ferguson praised the concern shown by the city of Bristol, and reminded the crowd of those killed in the Syrian civil war, from which so many refugees are fleeing.

Tracy Lewis, Chairwoman of Bristol MultiFaith Forum, gave a rousing speech calling for peace. ‘The war on terror is not working.

Meeting violence with violence breeds even more violence and we are caught in that trap,’ she said.

Once the speeches were over, the gathering of people from various different faiths walked peacefully into the cathedral, side by side, in a highly symbolic moment, in order to light candles and for quiet moments of reflection.

The windy weather had threatened to spoil the occasion, but in Bristol’s latest attempt to show solidarity with terror victims, the communal spirit endured.

“

Matty Edwards News Reporter

‘I think above all, we demonstrated that Israel/ Palestine doesn’t need to be this tribal, extremely antagonistic issue that it’s usuall made out to be.’

Dalia Abuyasin, who attended the event, also commented on the positive atmosphere at the event.

‘It was promising to see the amount of people interested in attending and learning more about a conf lict that’s so current and raw,’ she said. ‘I feel the organisers did a good job in highlighting how f lawed the idea of ‘picking a side’ in this issue is.

‘Student activism has limited power to make an actual difference, but education, empathy and awareness are the first steps needed to sketch out a more peaceful foundation.’

Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli students at the university have been praised for their mature and collaborative approach to the debate, which was highlighted in the Jewish Chronicle. Notably, PalSoc chose to hold a Palestinian Awareness Week in lieu of the anti-Israeli Israel Apartheid Week which went on at many other campuses.

Such collaboration and discussion is surely essential as a new wave of violence in the region has been labelled by some as a third Intifada.

Epigram

30.11.2015

Features

@epigramfeatures

Editor: Alex Green

Deputy Editor: Becky Morton

Online Editor: Richard Assheton

features@epigram.org.uk

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Survivors of Sexual Violence: We Need to Talk More

Epigram / Philip Bruland

Last year’s Reclaim the Night protest against sexual assault marches up Park Street

Two weeks before I started my AS levels, I was raped. Afterwards I took a very long and very emotional shower, I washed his smell out of my hair and brushed my teeth about five times.

As soon as I stepped out onto the bathmat and stared at my face in the bathroom mirror, I stopped crying. I didn’t cry again for several months.

Soon after that I began getting the best grades that I had ever achieved, I scored 100% in my Psychology January exam and scored nothing less than an A in everything I did. At college I was confident and focused, judging by my energy anyone would have thought that I really did have everything going for me.

The minute that I closed my eyes at night, everything changed. I’ve always been an extremely vivid dreamer; in fact, they are often hilariously weird.

The more I powered through life, throwing myself into my studies and ignoring my memories the more disturbing my dreams became. Several nights a week I would wake up feeling like I was in his bed, his smell still lingering in my nostrils, the taste of his breath in my mouth and my skin crawling from his sharp fingernails.

Still, as soon as I opened my bedroom door, that part of me got buried.

Soon my days became nothing but a cycle of covering up my feelings.

Wake up. Cry. Put make-up on. Leave an afternoon lesson to go to the toilet.

Cry. Reapply make-up. Go home. Close bedroom door. Cry. Go to sleep. I just didn’t want to deal with it, I believed it was my fault, that I was acting like this because I wanted attention. Even on the occasion that I convinced myself that something was wrong, I was

worried that other people wouldn’t feel the same. What would I even say?

The only times that I heard anyone talk about rape or sexual assault was either when they were making a joke, when it was being discussed in the news or if it formed part of a plotline on TV.

“ What continues to amaze me is that there are just so many survivors of sexual violence but yet we seem to hardly ever interact with one another.

Rapists were these mysterious predators, not a guy that you had GCSE History with for the past two years. Survivors weren’t survivors, they were victims. They were curled up on hospital beds, or hugging their knees in a dark room like they were in some terrible stock photo on the top of a Guardian article. Yes, I experienced serious emotional trauma and sometimes I did curl up on a bed crying, but the vast majority of the time I didn’t look like that at all. It was no wonder that I didn’t think anyone would believe me.

There is a special kind of stigma reserved for sexual crimes. It is not uncommon to hear phrases like ‘rape is especially heinous’ and ‘rapists are monsters.’ I’m not disputing that sexual violence is ‘especially heinous’; In fact one of the teenagers on the recent BBC documentary, Is This Rape?, articulated it perfectly when she described rape as ‘torturing’ someone. The difficulty is that it is very hard to stop that stigma from seeping into the lives of survivors.

The more that we hate rapists and are

disgusted by that crime, the weirder we feel about those affected by it. If a crime is so heinous, horrific and life altering then how can survivors look like normal people, act like normal people and still be sexually active like normal people? Even now, there are very few people in the media and in the public conscious that are obvious examples of survivors rather than victims. Being a survivor of sexual violence is so much more than the initial act, the day after and the trial (if you manage to get one). It is often something you feel like you are for years. So, why don’t we see more about living after rape? Where are those stories?

What continues to amaze me is that there are just so many survivors of sexual violence but yet we seem to hardly ever interact with one another.

Sometimes I wish that we walked around with massive signs so I can find you all and strike up a conversation.

Up until this year my entire experience of dealing with that rape – and several other instances of sexual violence – has been characterised by clinical and secretive meetings with professionals.

I kept the entire thing separate from my normal life. I wouldn’t talk about it with friends and if I did I’d avoid certain words, keeping the descriptions brief for fear of making them uncomfortable.

One conversation with a man from Time to Change completely changed how I felt. He said that while he understands why it is often difficult for people to be open about their mental health, the stigma around mental health difficulties wouldn’t go away until it becomes normal to talk about it. To make that happen we need more people to talk about their experiences as if it was already normal. That really stuck with me. I realised that while I had gradually felt comfortable speaking about my Generalised Anxiety Disorder

in everyday conversation, I couldn’t imagine talking about my rape in the same way. But that was exactly what I wanted from other people back during my A Levels; I wanted to see someone talk about it without all the sensationalism and mystery.

So, I decided to start doing that. I told my friends, I wrote it all down on my blog and shared it widely on social media. If I was asked questions, I would answer them honestly and fully. Then I found that the more I spoke about it, the more that people I knew came forward and told me that they had experienced something similar. So far, the number has reached 13. For so long I had been so lonely, thinking that I didn’t know anyone else who would understand. Now it’s completely different, I can freely chat with survivors that I know about the everyday problems that inevitably crop up. We share tips and support one another, and the best thing is – it’s not weird at all.

“

Sarah Redrup Student Living Officer

Rapists were these mysterious predators, not a guy that you had GCSE History with for the past two years.

There are so many ways that the University can better support student survivors. We can create guidelines for accessing extenuating circumstances when you haven’t reported it to the police. We can make the University reporting process more obvious to all students instead of having to trawl through pages and pages of websites and PDFs. A massive help would be to

use trigger and content warnings for units and readings to help them get involved in seminars without enduring that nasty surprise. There is nothing worse than an image, reference or conversation about rape cropping up unexpectedly in the middle of a seminar, causing your heart to race, your windpipe to close up and your stomach to ache like you’ve just been punched in the gut. Carrying on as if everything is fine so other people don’t think you’re weird is almost impossible as it is, let alone actually learning and contributing towards discussion.

But, there is one really important way that we, as students, can better support each other. We can just talk about it. If you’ve experienced sexual violence in any form and you are ready to talk about it, then go ahead! Initiate that conversation. By being open about it yourself, you can help others around you feel comfortable enough to start talking too.

There is so much that I’ve wanted to talk about for so long. I want to talk about how I still don’t know why I agreed to give him a hug the morning after. How Zelda logos, grey wool hats, long nails, the smell of cider and empty microwave dinner packets make me feel physically sick. How I regularly look at his Facebook page and wonder if he ever thinks about me. How despite it all I still love myself and nothing will change that.

I’ve decided to take action. I’ve set up a blog called the ‘The Living Project’ where I’m inviting you all to join me by submitting posts. I believe you and I want to listen. So, what do you want to talk about?

The Living Project is a blog started by myself and my best friend. You can submit post to us either anonymously or with your name. www.thelivingprojectblog. wordpress.com

Epigram

30.11.2015

7

A Bleeding travesty! Students respond to the tampon tax What would you say if you were told at the age of 13 that to afford sanitary items for your entire lifetime it would cost you approximately 38 full days’ wages? This fact is based upon an average women’s use of 11,000 tampons in a lifetime, working at the current minimum wage.

This reality comes about as a consequence of the 1973 amendment when a 17.5 per cent Value Added Tax should be introduced on all sanitary products due to the government’s classification of them as “luxury” items. In 2000, the Labour MP Dawn Primarolo lobbied successfully for the tax to be reduced to 5 per cent but the recent campaign demands this tax to be eradicated completely. This campaign has highlighted a multitude of tax exempt items including edible sugar flowers, alcoholic jellies and exotic meats including crocodile and kangaroo which expose the absurdity of the government classification of these items as ‘luxury’ rather than a necessity.

The Treasury has vowed to axe the currently outdated tax on sanitary items, however the bill has yet to go through parliament, causing an uproar amongst women globally.

This week Epigram met with three Bristol-based females who have decided to take an active part in the campaign.

In response to the rejection of the Finance Bill Amendment, which would have forced a negotiation with the EU to reduce the VAT rate to 5 per cent less, they have decided to organise a protest on the 12th December. Emilia, Leigh Ann and Izzy told me over a cup of tea why they feel so passionately about this debate.

‘I didn’t want to spend my time sitting idly by, constantly angered by the ubiquitous sexism in our society, and inequalities in general, yet not doing anything about it. I’d seen the success of the ‘save Brixton cycles’ campaign in my hometown and was inspired.

Grassroots campaigns do work, so I decided to get involved,’ Izzy Clifford, a second year languages student, told Epigram.

The importance of this campaign to these girls is far from economic; its part of a far larger sociological debate on women’s rights. Gloria Steinem raised this issues in 1978 in an article for Ms Magazine.

”

Bea Gentilli Features Writer

The importance of this campaign to these girls is far from economic; its part of a far larger sociological debate on women’s rights.

‘What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

Menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: men would boast and how much and how long,’ she wrote.

The Bristol campaigners today also recognise the relevance of the issue to women’s rights. ‘The tampon tax is a direct reflection of the gender inequality in parliament. Razors are tax free, yet tampons and sanitary towels are considered a luxury. I wonder what David Cameron would say if I bought him some ‘luxury’ tampons for Christmas!?’ Leigh Ann reflected.

Similarly Emelia argued, ‘It is crucial to make your voice heard. Women in particular are so often talked down to that we need to scream to get our voice across. That’s why I am marching

against the tampon tax. Periods affect over half of the world. They shouldn’t be seen as a taboo. In parliament it was excruciating to watch that most male MPs couldn’t even say the word out loud. The problem is deeply rooted and things need to change.’

The girls highlighted how the ‘Tampon Tax’ is not simply about an unfair tax, but should be seen as a milestone in the pursuit of a more egalitarian society for women worldwide.

This is a problem that affects more than just students which is why the campaigners desperately want anyone and everyone to join the march. The Trussell Trust has seen the number of people using its foodbanks soar from 346,992 in 2012-2013, to 913,138 in 2013-2014, illustrating the growing poverty in England. This essentially means that one in five working parents in the UK having to choose between paying an essential bill and putting food on the table. If there children are all menstruating females, this is an additional cost to account for.

Fantastic as it is that condoms, dental dams and the contraceptive pill are free on the NHS; this does raise the question: why are sanitary items being taxed, let alone not being free for lower-income households. A women’s menstruation is essential and it is as crucial to ensure that one is clean and sanitised as it is to ensure protected sexual activity. This campaign signifies a mile-stone in a wider sociological debate. It should be seen as an important step to create a more equal society. Tampons are not a luxury; they are a right. Period.

If you are interested in learning more about the protest or want to get involved, please contact Izzy Clifford on 07825617317 or visit the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/ events/503305453162673/.

Go on, just kill it.

How prepared are today’s graduates for the working world?

The arrival of summer brings with it equal measures of glee and misery to thousands of graduates across the UK. As they blissfully shake bottles of bubbly in June, September swiftly slaps them with an empty glass of

vino that was poured to numb the new aches of a nine to five job.

54 per cent of employers say that university simply does not prepare young people for the world of work.

If anything, it does the opposite.

University life is filled with late mornings which swoon into later nights, consumed by more units of alcohol than you’d ever care to count.

Cramming is the undergraduates’

“

Zoe Barrington Features Writer

word for time management and the misconception that the completion of a degree means you’re wholly prepared for employment is both frightening and widespread.

Jamie Hodson, a graduate working at the InterContinental Hotel calls the long hours ‘a shock to the system’, having only had a mere ten hours a week at university. He goes on to describe ‘the brutality of the employee hierarchy’ as ‘something university could never prepare me for.’

54 per cent of employers say that university simply does not prepare young people for the world of work.

Flcikr : Jens Schott Knudsen

40 per cent of graduates are unemployed 6 months on

Sam Tarrant, a recent law graduate on a vacation scheme at JSM Mayer Brown, explains that ‘each job or office is run completely differently’ and that ‘office etiquette is something you can only learn through experience rather than in the university library.’ She tells us that the biggest transition was

adjusting to the idea that ‘all the work that you’re doing actually matters and affects the rest of the firm. If you miss a deadline you can’t simply ask for an extension or bear the brunt of a 10 per cent mark deduction. Every task you get given actually matters to the rest of the firm, and directly affects your success.’

But these employed graduates are, if anything, the gold stars of the class.

According to the Telegraph in 2014, one third of graduates (60,140) in the UK were employed in ‘non-professional’ jobs that did not necessarily require a degree. Despite having graduated with a 2:1 in History from Durham, Charlie Higson is currently working at Hollister, explaining that he ‘simply doesn’t interview well’.

The problem lies in the absurd idea that what university education gives you is just a degree. University, however, also gives time to prepare yourself for what your degree can’t.

The mere two lines that your three years occupies on a CV is just a ticked box. Job offers arise from the long list of summer internships and extra curricular activities that teach you the skills employers desire.

With most courses boasting an underwhelming amount of contact hours and over 19 weeks off a year, it’s hard to see where the 27 grand is

going. But who at Bristol knew sport existed? Who at St Andrews knew there were societies other than wine and cheese? Who at Cambridge ever started a club night?

Time is opportunity and what university gives you is an excessive supply. Success cultivates from those who use it wisely. For the rest, every summer spent waking up to a throbbing hangover that only perpetual omnibuses of The Big Bang Theory can soothe, is an employer discarding your CV just like you wish you could that night. You’ll never meet your future boss in a club, you’ll never learn communication skills in a 300 person lecture and it’s unlikely you’ve developed an office attitude if you’ve never seen the morning.

According to The Independent, in 2014 nearly 40 per cent of graduates were still hunting for jobs six months after leaving university. With a surplus of labour in the market the best chance graduates have of removing themselves from this statistic is to saturate their CVs with experience.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry in today’s age is entering the working world with a degree, what will prevent you from ending the summer unemployed or unprepared is how you choose to spend your time outside of it.

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Epigram

30.11.2015

9

‘I could never go back to a tampon’: Chloe Tingle, award winning taboo-breaking Bristol Grad Richard Assheton and Ellie Sherrard Online Features Editor and Features Writer

“ No More Taboo sells sustainable menstrual products, and uses the profits to fund projects around menstural hygiene

Untying and retying her hair into a bun, she gives us a summary: ‘No More Taboo sells sustainable menstrual products, and uses the profits from those sales to fund our projects in developing

‘If I hadn’t been a bit ballsy about it I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to do the whole time that I did,’ she says.

‘I wouldn’t have done the project that I did.’ Chloe would never be sitting where she is now, in a bright pink logo-emblazoned NO MORE TABOO t-shirt.

“ In the UK’, Chloe says, ‘[menstruation] is only really talked about in whispers, in kind of, close family circles.’

‘I think, just go for it. Don’t worry too much about where you think it’s going to go. And always ask. Do something you enjoy and don’t worry too much about the future.’

Chloe arrived in Bolivia the right person at the right time. Fundación Sodis, the organisation she went to work for, had the perfect project for a female engineer.

She was sent to Cochabamba, Bolivia’s fourth city, ‘The City of Eternal Spring’, to work on a pilot menstrual hygiene project with a handful of other volunteers.

There, a focus group of teenage girls opened her eyes. 90 per cent had started their periods. They all aspired to use tampons – those that couldn’t, used rags – but all of them worried about the impact on the environment.

‘I had literally never thought about how women in developing countries manage their periods at all. It had just never crossed my mind.’

Chloe had used a menstrual cup for years, but the girls

Epigram/Chloe Tingle

Chloe Tingle in Cochabamba, where she was inspired to start her project.

Epigram/Chloe Tingle

A ‘sheet of paper’ is little recognition for the lifechanging work Chloe Tingle has already done. In June last year she graduated from Bristol. In March this year she launched No More Taboo.

By October she had won Enterprise Nation’s Female Start-Up of the Year award.

‘It popped up in an email, and I was like, ‘Ah well, I’ll go for that,’’ she says modestly, her laughter keeping us awake in the stuffiness of the Queen’s Building café.

Later she tells us that how nervous the other two finalists were. They weren’t used to pitching. Chloe was; her Engineering Design degree often required class presentations.

Chloe speaks passionately and clearly about No More Taboo.

But it wasn’t her presentation skills that won it for her. It was her conviction in her cause, her humility and the strength of her ideas.

countries and the UK based around menstrual hygiene.’

In Bolivia, where Chloe was inspired to start the project, some believe that eating onions whilst menstruating gives you cancer.

In Uganda, where she volunteered last year, some believe that crossing a peanut field whilst menstruating kills all the crops.

‘In the UK’, Chloe says, ‘[menstruation] is only really talked about in whispers, in kind of, close family circles.’

No More Taboo aims to break down these myths and taboos, to get people talking about menstruation – to make what is natural, normal.

In an average woman’s life she will spend between £1,400 and £3,500 on over 11,000 sanitary products.

The result is 150kg of waste, which will take over 500 years to decompose.

Chloe grew up in the West Yorkshire countryside – in Holmfirth, Last of the Summer Wine country, a small town of grey stone amid dewy green fields. As a child she was obsessed with recycling.

‘A lot of it comes from my mum being very green,’ she beams. ‘She always wanted me to be an inventor!’

At Bristol things crystallised. Interested in water and sanitation, she took a unit in innovation, entrepreneurship and enterprise. ‘I absolutely loved that unit. It was really great – just absolutely ticked all the boxes,’ she says.

Last year, freshly graduated, Chloe knocked on the Dean of Engineering’s door and asked if he might help her fund a volunteering trip to Bolivia. He gave her £1,500.

The menstural cup: a sustainable and affordable alternative to tampons

inspired her. She found someone producing them there; she sold around 30 to volunteers and gave some to the girls.

Clearly there was a market for healthy, affordable and sustainable alternatives to tampons. Repeatedly Chloe wonders out loud what the girls now think of them.

No More Taboo is a social enterprise: it does not make a profit – any money earned goes to funding the educational projects she is involved with – but unlike a charity it aims to grow without external funding.

‘I want all the profits to be spent on the charitable side,’ she tells us, the cause of much bemusement amongst her graduate scheme Bristol friends.

So why should people buy her products and not tampons? How can she persuade people to change their habits?

‘Having done more research on it I know that there is absolutely no regulations on the disposable industry,’ she tells us.

It sinks in that billions of women around the world are using sanitary products that could contain harmful chemicals.

‘When I think about what’s actually in tampons I really don’t want to put that anywhere near my body,’ she says.

We think about Toxic Shock Syndrome, and ponder the decisions of supermarkets and pharmacies to label Tampax and other brands ‘feminine care’ products.

Chloe also claims that by its fifth birthday No More Taboo will have saved 743 tonnes of waste because of women switching from tampons.

A menstrual cup can be used for ten years before being thrown away.

“ ‘When I think about what’s actually in tampons I really don’t want to put that anywhere near my body,’

It costs either £11.00 or £19.99 on Chloe’s website; she thinks she might have also saved women £16 million in five years.

Apparently there are people on Facebook talking about ‘the dawn of the menstrual revolution’. Chloe giggles. The issue is ‘trickling through in the press’.

Then why aren’t these products flying off the shelves?

‘There’s a wall and you need to break it down quite slowly,’ she says.

‘I get a lot of ‘Eww! What is

that? No way would that go up!’’ she admits.

In the UK Chloe hopes to change curriculums so that children and teenagers, both girls and boys, are better informed about menstruation and know that there are alternatives to disposables.

In developing countries she wants to do the same by working with local educators.

In March next year she heads to Nepal.

‘The difficulty is that some of these taboos are so inherent that the people teaching are passing some of them on,’ she explains.

‘You can provide the facts but you can’t provide the cultural understanding.’

Chloe is excited about the future, but no one can say what it holds.

For now, she is concentrating on keeping No More Taboo going, working three days a week to pay her Montpelier bills.

‘There are a lot of forwardthinking people here in Bristol.’

But for all of us it’s a challenge to start talking openly about menstruation.

‘I went out with a friend for lunch the other day,’ she says, smiling.

‘He’d told his mum what I’d been doing. She literally spat her coffee across the room and shouted, ‘She does WHAT?’’

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Comment

Epigram 30.11.2015

@epigramcomment Editor: Jordan Kelly-Linden Deputy Editor: Stefan Rollnick Online Editor: Liam Marchant jkellylinden@epigram.org.uk

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Spotted: sexism at Bristol, again Twitter reacts

Maya Jones barates the latest sexist Facebook site to pop up at Bristol university

Maya Jones Comment Writer ‘Seen a banger in the library? Need an ID on that?

Submit a cheeky photo and we will anonymously upload.’ So reads the info section on the recently launched Facebook page, ‘LASS in the ASS.’ Apparently, for the admin of this page, it is such a shock that half the student body would choose to study in the university’s most popular library, that we must now have documented evidence. Women need to be objected as a ‘banger’, or reduced to ‘that’, to prove that yes, there are in fact lasses in the ASS. We actually do study.

The anonymous creator of the page can claim that this page is for all genders, but the picture of stockings, the young woman in the cover photo and the very name, indicate that it is not; unless ‘lass’ is now a gender-neutral term, this is undeniably sexist

”

Sites like these violate privacy by pushing women onto the internet without consent and just adds to the ever-growing list of ways in which women are sexualised in everyday life. Sites like these violate privacy by pushing women onto the internet without consent, whilst the creator and participators can hide anonymously behind their computers.

Sadly, Facebook is no stranger to pages that anonymously post and document people’s lives without permission and we only have to look at pages such as ‘Women Who Eat On Tubes’ to see who is often at the brunt of this intrusion. When the creator of this particular Facebook page defended himself, claiming it was ‘art’, he ironically proved the project sexist: women are not pieces of art. That pages like these, which are so inherently sexist, can still thrive in our modern day society is shameful.

Is it really still shocking that women can be so ‘unladylike’ and eat in public? Or that, just maybe,

In response to ‘Lass in the ASS’, ‘Spotted: sexism at Bristol has been relaunched

we might deserve to be at university just as much as our fellow male students?

Despite the mere three hundred likes that ‘LASS in the ASS’ boasts, groups like ‘Women Who Eat On Tubes’, with its 31,000 members, show that sexist pages like these are still immensely popular. It is only logical, then, that to fight back we must use the same tool as these sexist page creators: the internet.

Bristol students have taken this initiative and in response ‘Spotted: Sexism at Bristol’ has been re-launched. It is a page that anonymously allows witnesses of sexism to share their experiences. Its 800 plus following, which has increased by over a hundred in the last week, shows that pages like these are still needed. Clearly the launch of ‘LASS in the ASS’ has left students feeling threatened.

Unlike ‘LASS in the ASS’, however, the aim of the page is not to shame and bring to light certain individuals; it would be hypocritical to oppose violating privacy whilst naming those involved in the incidents that are posted. That some students choose to identify themselves or their friends on certain posts, perhaps in some twisted way of suggesting that they are proud to be sexist, shows

we have a long way to go.

Like the success of similar projects, such as Laura Bates’ Everyday Sexism Project, the aim of ‘Spotted: Sexism at Bristol’ is merely to highlight that sexism does happen on a daily basis and that something must be done. Crucially, this joint project between the Union’s Women’s Officer and the Feminist Society offers private advice to any members who submit information on an incident and request guidance. However, it is the solidarity

” Being a woman is taxing enough - give us a bleeding break

these projects create amongst victims of sexism that is most important. Whilst groups like ‘LASS in the ASS’ can’t help but foster ignorance and misogynism, our only solace is that at least we are not alone in condemning them.

Epigram Comment’s transatlantic caption competition This week Epigram looks across the pond to the potential next leader of the free world. So, yeah, nothing to be worried about...

Flickr / Gage Skidmore

Flickr / Gage Skidmore

Flickr / Michael Vadon

Flickr / Scott O’Dell

@AdamBecket

@StefanRollnick

@LiamMarchant

Think you can do better? You probably can. Send your best captions to @EpigramComment and make sure you follow us to take part in next issue’s competition!

Epigram

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30.11.2015

Telescopes don’t just show us the stars

Sophie Hunter argues that the John Lewis advert has an important message and does more than just tug at our heart strings...

Sophie Hunter Letters Editor

to an old man living alone on the moon, John Lewis has used their enormous viewership (the ad has been watched by almost 15 million on YouTube) to raise a very important issue facing our communities: loneliness in older age.

Our population is getting older. With more than

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With more than 50 per cent of over 75 year olds living alone, and approximately five million stating that their main form of company is the television set

Jordan Kelly-Linden

The annual arrival of the John Lewis Christmas advert has become something of a festive tradition in recent years. It marks the moment it becomes deemed socially acceptable to talk about the C word and to actually buy those mince pies Sainsbury’s has been trying to flog since mid-October.

Year after year the department store outdoes itself, producing two minutes and 10 seconds of tear jerking video. This year’s ‘The Man on the Moon’ is no different.

Following the tale of a young girl who makes it her mission to give a thoughtful Christmas gift

We contacted John Lewis and Age UK for a picture... they never got back to us, we think this is quite a good representation though. Paint skills on point

50 per cent of over 75 year olds living alone and approximately five million stating that their main form of company is the television set, loneliness in later life is a very current and important issue. 17 per cent of older people even claim that they see, or are in contact with friends, family and neighbours less than once a week.

This year’s advert was produced in collaboration with the national charity Age UK. It aimed to raise awareness of this issue with their ‘No one should have no one at Christmas’ campaign.

Cynics may dismiss John Lewis’ advert as simply a £1 million production with the sole aim of shifting their wares, capitalising on all of our feelings. They could also question why, despite the ad’s core message, said old man is still alone come the final frame…

But although you can’t help but notice some

of the advert’s ironic flaws, we must acknowledge that John Lewis is a business, not a charity. Their branding is tasteful and simple and the focus of the ad is clearly placed on the heart-warming cross generational relationship.

While most, I included, relish the yuletide period, 60% of people aged 65 or over aren’t expecting festive happiness to be part of their Christmas this year.

John Lewis evidently have a far-reaching influence. Already, Contact the Elderly, a charity

who organise Sunday tea parties for over 75s, have been contacted by over 500 people wanting to volunteer their time with the elderly. Many cited the advert as their reason for wanting to help out.

Through their classic formula of storytelling (manipulating our emotions with music and the unbiased generosity of small innocent children) John Lewis seem to have sparked community engagement and concern for those reaching their later years.

While most relish the yuletide period, 60 per cent of people aged 65 or over aren’t expecting festive happiness to be part of their Christmas this year. Loneliness is the heart-breaking reality for far too many. However, John Lewis’ festive offering will hopefully do something to change this.

Big Brother is watching so be careful what you search for...

Caitlin Butler attacks Theresa May’s Snoopers Charter in favour for the right to her Internet privacy

Caitlin Butler Deputy Music Editor

BBC / Russell Howard

Such is the mantra, however slightly clichéd it now is, of George Orwell’s prophetic and seminal work Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the nightmarish dystopia of Orwell’s totalitarian Britain, big government spies on every single move of its citizens. Privacy is non-existent. One’s very thoughts must be hidden from the entirely invasive state. It is an entirely doom-laden vision of an alternative world.

But how ‘alternative’ is the UK of the book?

Any reader of it is surely horrified at the entirely pessimistic and, frankly, frightening prospect of such a way of life. Reading it myself, I managed to comfort myself that such a thing could never come to be in modern Britain. We are such a civilised and modern society that we are, above all, entitled to freedom; not only of speech, from violence and any other liberties we have come to expect, but also the freedom to communicate how, what and with whom we wish to, including the right to do so online. Realistically, we are safe from the too-prying eyes of our government.

Realistically, I was completely and utterly wrong. I could not have foretold, reading it as I did in 2011, the revelations of a clever young man, Edward Snowden, in 2013. I did not foresee the Snoopers Charter, or the ‘Draft Investigatory Powers Bill’ as it is bureaucratically called by our most benevolent Home Secretary, which was released on November 5th of this year. Who on earth could have predicted the crumbling of our

We feel like Russell Howard has accurately summed up the panic that will soon sweep the nation... so-called democratic state in this way?

I don’t know about you, good reader, but that In short, we need to wake up and smell the sounds very Orwellian to me. The bill also requires proverbial coffee. Our government can and wants communication service providers to hold their to increase its powers to spy on every single thing customers’ ‘internet connection records’, as in we do and say online and via telephone. Anyone visited webpages, for a year. So next time you’re could be tracked. The amount of information that is looking up something a bit dodgy, think about available about us online is phenomenal and soon this; there is someone somewhere who could know it will be possible for police and spying agencies to exactly what it is you’re looking at. And could do so access and hold pretty much anything we do via the for a year. world wide web.

So what does that mean for us humble students?

The latest draft version of May’s bill allows, If you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing amongst other things, to permit the police to fear, right? I strongly doubt and indeed hope and intelligence agencies to carry out targeted not, that any of the good readers of Epigram are ‘equipment interference’; that is, hacking into terrorism suspects. The heightened surveillance computers or smartphones to access their data. state is meant to track and stop terrorism. It is a

particularly grey area; it is so difficult to prove increased surveillance stops terrorism. But in my humble opinion, this does not give our government the right to know what the rest of us do online. Our data should belong to us, just as anything physical belongs to us. But clearly, our data is anything but ours. Online privacy will soon become a nostalgic throwback of the distant past.

What can we do to stop the powers that be from being any more powerful? The Snooper’s Charter may have drifted on by unnoticed for many of us, but that coffee really does need to be proverbially smelt. We need to initiate debate about the proper restrictions of prying into our online activity. I, for one, would like to retain my right to privately access what I want online.

Epigram

30.11.2015

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England’s organ donation scheme has no heart Adam Berman thinks that everyone should be a little more altruistic... or, more specifically, Welsh, when it comes to donating their organs

Adam Berman Comment Writer It seems bizarre that in this day and age, organ donations are still ‘Opt-In’ in large parts of the UK. Not that I’m suggesting some sort of lottery whereby the winner is strapped down and forced into donating a kidney, but rather it seems a little odd that we aren’t signed up automatically to the organ register.

Luckily, change is coming, albeit at a glacial pace. From December, anyone living in Wales will be part of an ‘Opt-Out’ organ donation scheme. Effectively, this means that the NHS has what they call ‘presumed consent’ to use

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moment is that families often won’t allow their loved ones organs to be transplanted after death, meaning that 1 in 10 waiting for an organ ultimately die. So, you might ask, is this problem solved with the ‘Opt-Out’ donation system? No! The next of kin still get the final word and are able to block any donation.

I signed up to the Organ Donation Register when I applied for my driving License. It costs me nothing and for as long as I’m alive it means nothing, but I’m comforted by the fact that in death, I might be able to help someone.

However, I’d be absolutely furious if my family decided not to donate my organs, a power that they legally have.

So, are there any ways around this? Adnan Sharif from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham thinks he might have found one.

It’s a simple idea that’s already in use in Israel: give organ preference to those who are already

on the register, or in other words, if you’re not prepared to help, then don’t expect any help.

Admittedly, it doesn’t solve the problems of families vetoing donation, but at the moment

Before their latest push for donors over the summer, the NHS was facing a 40 per cent decrease in blood donation over a ten-year period.

only 31 per cent of the population is on the register. We’re getting older and more unhealthy and we need a simple way to encourage a significant increase in donors.

But like many people,I’m a little uncomfortable

with the concept of incentivising altruism whilst at the same time chastising those who aren’t prepared to give. Nonetheless, we need a way to encourage altruism in a friendly way. Before their latest push for donors over the summer, the NHS was facing a 40 per cent decrease in blood donation over a ten-year period. Whilst the rise in long-distance travel and an increase in the number of us getting tattoos hasn’t helped, the real problem is the combination of apathy and ignorance. Astonishingly, 13 per cent of us think that blood can be created synthetically, like the TV drama True Blood.

So, what’s the moral of this story? If we don’t change our attitude to altruism we may be forced into a situation whereby either innocent people will suffer, or our civil liberties will be eroded. So get off the sofa, close Netflix, and you’ll find how blissfully easy is it help another human being.

It costs me nothing and for as long as I’m alive it means nothing, but I’m comforted by the fact that in death, I might be able to help someone.

Flickr / BBC Radio 4

your organs after death (as long as you haven’t told them beforehand that you don’t want to donate). Similar schemes have been proposed by the devolved parliaments in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, but on what seems a very clear-cut issue, even the medical community seems to be divided.

For those of us who don’t study a scientific subject, it’s not quite clear who to believe.

The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh say that an ‘Opt-Out’ organ donation system in Scotland would save lives, but transplant surgeons in Northern Ireland have written to the Health Minister, warning him about the dangers of such a change. So, what should I believe?

Well, for one thing, the law isn’t quite what it seems. One of the most serious problems at the

The irony of 2015: less money more problems Oluwaseun Matiluko calls for worldwide media channels to pay more attention to problems and limitations for women everyday

Oluwaseun Matiluko Comment Writer

Flickr / wocintechcha

Although Biggie Smalls found that with ‘mo’ money came ‘mo problems’, women in the 21st century aren’t as fortunate. In 2015, women still earn less than men. In the year where a woman is the 8th richest person in the world, there are still several women in full-time work who are paid less than men. The current overall gap between male and female full time workers is 13.9 per cent. In fact, many people around the world have marked this pay gap through the years via ‘Equal Pay Day’ - the day when women effectively start working for free. This year, ‘Equal Pay Day’ was on November 9th, whereas last year it was the 4th of November (5 days earlier). Therefore, one could say that the pay gap is narrowing and therefore things are getting better. However, this negligible difference doesn’t take away the women who are suffering every day. The women who strive and work equally hard as their male counterparts but don’t reap the rewards.

This isn’t the only problem that women have in society today of course. Regardless of their pay, women are much less likely to get appointed to high-ranking posts within their field. Outside

of the work sphere women are more likely to be targeted by criminals. Women are more likely to be assaulted and raped. However, it seems that women’s issues haven’t been the media’s cause-celebre as of late. The liberal left have now, finally, latched on to racism and homophobia and whilst these issues are extremely important, they shouldn’t take attention away from the injustices towards women. It seems as though ‘left-minded’ media pick and choose what ought to be talked about and when. For example, there has been rampant racism and police brutality in the USA since well before the 2010’s, but people only seem to care now. When will people finally start to care about women? Some would like to ignore women’s issues, like Kate Winslet who thought it was ‘vulgar’ to talk about the Hollywood pay gap. However, this isn’t the right way to go about things. We have to confront the problem head-on if we are to see a solution.

In fact, going back to equal pay, some people have made comments that women are less likely to ask for a higher pay cheque and that’s why they get paid less. Even if that were true, that’s really a sign of how endemic sexism is in our society: where women are scared to get what is rightfully theirs. If we keep talking about inequality and the injustices women face from everyday life to the work place, maybe one day (perhaps in the 22nd century?) we will see amazing results. To help support the fight against the pay gap, tweet @ fawcettsociety with #PayGapPledge and tell them what you’ll be doing to help end this inequality.

This year, ‘Equal Pay Day’ was on the 9th November. It marks the the day when women effectively start working for

Epigram

30.11.2015

Science & Tech

@EpigramSciTech Editor: Alfie Smith Deputy Editor: Matt Davis Online Editor: Amy Finch

asmith@epigram.org.uk mdavis@epigram.org.uk

The f-ant-astic society beneath our feet pheromone if they are squashed, preventing other ants meeting the same fate. When under a great threat, ant colonies may migrate to a new nest, requiring a great deal of social cohesion.

Recently, Thomas O’Shea-Wheller, a PhD student in Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, published his research into how the ant species Temnothorax albipennis reacts when exposed to different types of predation.

This was achieved by removing

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Flickr/felixcart

individual ants from different areas of the nest, representing different predatory threat levels. For example, the removal of ants on the periphery of the nest represented a low level threat, and resulted in remaining ants retreating back into the nest.

However, the removal of ants from directly inside the nest, which represented a high-level of threat, caused an evacuation of the nest and emigration to a safer one. O’SheaWheller’s research supports the theory that ant colonies act as a single superorganism, able to prevent further damage from a threat in a concerted way and willing to accept the loss of some of their number in order to protect the whole.

Flickr/sallzoni

Much like a single neuron in the brain, an individual ant is powerless, yet millions of ants acting in harmony form a superorganism

The ant colony is comparable to a nervous system of a single superorganism with a brain and nerves. Ants that are delegated the role of scout act much like sensory nerves, relaying information about their surroundings back to the colony by pheromones.

Removal of periphery scouting ants is much like the withdrawal reflex exhibited by humans when they touch a painful object. Furthermore, ants do not replace the missing scouts, thereby avoiding further harm to the colony.

Much like a single neuron in the brain, an individual ant is powerless, yet millions of ants acting in harmony can act as an effective superorganism capable of carrying out all the tasks required to keep the nest alive.

However, unlike a nervous system, there is nothing that acts as a brain.

The title of queen ant can be misleading, as she has no power over the colony and is basically just a breeding machine. Instead of a brain, each individual within the ant superorganism makes their own decision based on their immediate sensory data while coordinating with other ants via their chemical markers.

This decision of sorts is always what is good for the colony, rather than the ant itself. It is this defining feature of ants, their lack of individual interest, that makes the superorganism model so effective for understanding their behaviour.

The ant lab may seem like a niche project in the vast amount of research happening in Bristol, but its models can explain how all social creatures function, even big ones like us.

Flickr/Swedish Plutonium removal

Compared to humans, you may consider ants to be simplistic organisms, yet ant colonies display highly-developed social skills which are far more advanced than those seen in most animals.

An ant colony can consist of anywhere between a few dozens to over a million individuals depending on the species. Large colonies are organised around one or more queen ants, with a queen being the only female in the colony capable of reproducing. The rest of the colony largely consists of sterile, wingless females, as well as a few fertile males, called drones.

Ant colonies display eusociality, which is the highest order of animal sociality. Within a colony, individuals are delegated to different roles, such as workers and soldiers. This system is known as caste polymorphism, and allows the colony to act as a single superorganism,rather than individuals, which can be advantageous if the colony is under threat from a predator.

Until recently, it was not understood how ants communicated to order such a complex division of labour between themselves, seemingly in perfect time with each other. Now we know that they release chemicals known as pheromones that are detected by the antenna of other ants.

There are a multitude of different pheromones, each communicating a different meaning. For example, ants produce a certain pheromone when they find a food source, attracting others, and release a different

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Rozie Benyon Science Writer

Students’ Apple obsession is breaking the bank Sophie Zhang Science Writer According to Kantar ComTech, the iPhone has a 42.5 per cent share of the UK smartphone market.

Walking around the university campus, I see lots of students texting on their iPhones, while writing their assignments on their Macs. Even the students of this country can’t help but take part in Apple culture. Apple

products are used so frequently, battered about in pockets and backpacks, that the chance of breaking an iPhone screen or having a logic board malfunction is high.

Last spring semester, I found that whenever I turned on my Mac there were several black strips on the screen and strange noises emerging when it was kept on too long. I took my Mac to an Apple store where the technician at the Genius Bar told me that the logic

board had malfunctioned. If I wanted to replace it with a new one, since my Mac was just out of one-year warranty, needed to pay about £500.

I was shocked by such a high repair cost and eventually decided to give up on fixing my Mac and purchase a new computer instead. Several thirdparty repair shops offered to repair it for around £350, but that is still a huge amount of money for a student to fork out to get all their work back.

Apple stores have made themselves almost the only saviour of malfunctioning products, with some places refusing to take in Apple products all together.

Flickr/18percentgrey

Apple is famous for its high repair cost and tight readings of AppleCare and AppleCare+ insurance plans. If you don’t have AppleCare for your Apple products or your limited warranty is out of date, repairing an iPhone 6 can cost up to £256.

In comparison, you can get your Samsung Alpha fixed by the Geek Squad for only £89 and you’ll pay £170 for Blackberry and HTC One’s flagship phones.

Or, if you’re feeling handy, you can spend £11 to purchase a replacement kit to fix the iPhone yourself - but then you can’t take your phone to the Apple store to be fixed any more because you’ve voided the warranty.

Be warned: in order not to give anyone the chance of taking their equipment into their own hands, Apple have their own brand of each part, such as screw heads, making it laboriously difficult to acquire the right tools cheaply.

As a news piece published in Bloomberg Business revealed, Apple has tight control over its supply chain, from design to manufacturing and assembly and all the way to retail stores.

This makes it extremely difficult for outside parties to obtain the necessary parts for repairing Apple products. To get their hands on them, independent repair stores have to pay over and above the true cost of parts.

Apple stores have made themselves almost the only saviour of malfunctioning Apple products, with some repair places refusing to take in Apple products all together. Repair costs force owners to purchase either Apple insurance or new products.

Apple’s high repair cost also reflects how successful the company has been at carving a niche for itself in a cluttered market. It has the power and authority to exert tight control on its supply chain and most customers, including me, simply turn to Apple for peace of mind, placing place trust in the company when its products are malfunctioning without searching for help elsewhere.

Even when we do, the help from independent repair stores isn’t much cheaper than Apple’s own. The choice is simple: pay now or pay later. Either way, your Apple product is going to cost more than advertised.

Epigram 30.11.2015

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UoB research makes nuclear power ‘safe’ David Morris Science Writer After a decade in the making, it has been confirmed that a new nuclear power station will be constructed at Hinkley Point, Somerset. The plant is expected to be up and running within the next decade and will cost around £25 billion to construct.

The final decision on whether the project would go ahead was decided last month after funding from Chinese collaborators was finally confirmed, along with subsidisation from EDF energy and the British government.

The continuation of the UK’s reliance on nuclear power has caused a great deal of controversy, but there are both advantages and disadvantages to consider with its use.

Upon completion, the Hinkley Point power station alone is expected to provide around 13 per cent of the power needs of the UK. This will be a significant improvement on the 19 per cent that nuclear power already provides.

Despite these astounding statistics, nuclear power produces thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste each year in the UK alone. Determining the best place to store radioactive waste while it decays, without disturbing local populations, is an issue of great environmental concern and is a focus of some research groups here at the

We will not have run out of the Uranium-235 minerals used in reactors in two hundred years’ time.

In addition, research into nuclear energy has found that Thorium232 and other heavy elements can be used as nuclear fuel by using ‘breeding’ methods. In the example of Thorium-232, a normal nuclear reactor will have ‘fissile’ nuclear fuel like Uranium-235, which breaks apart very easily, producing energy. The fission of this fissile material produces free neutrons, tiny neutral particles which can implant in the Thorium232, which turns it into fissile material and therefore makes it work as ‘bred’ fuel.

Despite these advances in nuclear fuel technology, the safety and environmental issues associated with waste disposal and reactor monitoring have not been mitigated. Surrounding the walls of a conventional nuclear reactor are several thousand bricks of graphite. These are used to slow down the speed of the newly produced neutrons so the chain reaction can be controlled. Over time, the continual bombardment of neutrons upon the graphite bricks slowly morph its structure. This means that radioactive material can seep through the

App of the week: Plag Becki Murray Deputy Editor

the environmental impact of nuclear power, by using computational techniques to test potential materials for radioactive waste storage.

Radioactive waste continues to decay even after removal from the nuclear reactorm producing more high energy neutrons which if exposed to life could cause widespread radioinduced damage.

at all despite generating quite a few comments. It’s basically the perfect place to go when boredom strikes, but as you cannot control the content with any filters, there’s no guarantee you’ll find anything that interesting and even if you do there’s no way to share it directly with friends unless

you screenshot it. As a result, I don’t see it as a particularly useful way of sharing information in the future.

It’s fun to play around with but I’m not sure that it’s a virus that will seriously spread throughout Bristol anytime soon.

“ Hopefully the environmental issues and controversy associated with nuclear power will peter out

In Bristol Chemistry, computational simulation is being used to see how the structure of certain materials

deform upon continual neutron bombardment. It has been discovered that a variety of Zirconium and Titanium-containing oxides will deform but relax back to their original structure very quickly. The structure finally dissipates the energy as heat, which therefore makes it a very good candidate for the safe encapsulation of radioactive waste.

With Bristol research and other affiliates furthering the potential for nuclear power to produce green energy safely, hopefully the environmental issues and controversy associated with nuclear power will peter out over the coming years. This will allow nuclear power to serve as an intermediary power source before the world has worked out how to sustain itself on green, renewable energy.

6/10 Interesting idea turning social media on its head, but poor execution and layout ruins the user experience.

Flickr/Swedish Plutonium removal

Forget Facebook and friend requests, Twitter and its retweets, Plag is a whole new way of spreading information.

The idea of the app is that data spreads between users like a virus rather than being contained within more rigid friendship groups. In fact, it’s a little bit like Tinder - but for information, not hook-ups!

When you send something out into the ‘Plag world’, it starts by being sent to those closest to you geographically, who can then choose to spread it further if they wish. If they like what you have to say, they can swipe up and ‘Spread’ the information, sending it off to more individuals around them. If they don’t, they can ‘Skip’ it, containing the ‘virus’ rather than passing it on.

There’s also a chance to change your mind if you make a mistake. All you have to do is shake your phone which then undoes your last decision for you. That way, as long as you have something interesting or witty to say, your posts (or ‘cards’ as they are called in the app) have the chance to be spread worldwide.

Also, just like Tinder, there is a whole mix of users on the platform, meaning I was faced with anything from inspirational quotes, memes and random emoji’s to topical debates on ISIS and other political campaigns. You don’t have to create an account to just randomly flick through the cards, but in that way the app fails to be particularly interactive, although after just 10 minutes of trying it out I had over 100 notifications to look through.

When you sign up for a free account, which is super easy to do, you have the option to post your own information and comment on other people’s cards. You can also see how far what you have said has spread, perfect for meme creators who want to find out how many viewers shared their work. As a form of nostrings-attached communication, it’s therefore a really simple concept; think Facebook but without the need to defriend anyone who keeps posting really annoying content you can just swipe all that away.

On the other hand, whilst the idea is ‘Who wants to talk with the whole world?’, a lot of the cards are, if I’m honest, slightly baffling, so don’t tend to deliver much information

structure, compromising the safety of the reactor.

Research conducted by Bristol’s Interface Analysis Centre (IAC) in the School of Physics funded by Magnox Electric Ltd. has recently improved the lifetime of some UK nuclear power stations that would otherwise be closing at the end of this year. The Bristol researchers used ion beams to recreate the situation within a reactor and then used high-resolution tomographic equipment to determine the mechanism of fracture of the graphite on the microscale. Upon uncovering the story in more detail, the IAC inferred that the nuclear power stations could remain operational for many more years before the neutrons caused enough damage to deem the reactor dangerous.

Researchers within Bristol’s School of Chemistry are also helping to reduce

Flickr: James Marvin Phelps

“ The Hinkley Point power station alone is expected to provide around 13 per cent of the power needs of the UK.

University of Bristol.

While nuclear energy is not actually renewable, it does consume some otherwise redundant minerals within the Earth’s crust. Estimations have shown that at current rates of consumption, we will not have run out of the Uranium-235 minerals used in reactors in two hundred years’ time.

Epigram

30.11.2015

Letters

@EpigramLetters Editor: Sophie Hunter shunter.epigram@gmail.com

To fee or not to fee, that is the question

Education is not a commodity to be brought, it is a right that should be provided for all

It’s been noted that the SNP govern from the centre, rather more than popular rhetoric has suggested.

Alex Salmond’s former head of policy Adam Bell said they govern ‘Like One Nation Tories, with pragmatic instincts unhindered by ideological baggage.’ You don’t have to be a far left radical to be in favour of free universal higher education but you do have to recognise the fact you’ll need to raise taxes to pay for it.

Yes, our current fee system may not be the worst around, but we are

‘Everyone speaks English anyway’: The point in learning languages Heather McGowan Letters Writers

increasingly heading towards an American, free market style system of higher education. The government hasn’t ruled out increasing fees, with the Universities minister and brother of Boris Johnson, Jo Johnson refusing to rule out the possibility of such an increase.

With University heads seeing their government funds fall, followed by increased inflation and the devaluation of revenue raised from current fees, it is only inevitable that the government will increase the price tag of degrees.

We are seeing higher education increasingly becoming a commodity, a business investment for students rather than a means to fulfil its real purpose – to create prepared,

educated minds for the better meant of our society.

Rather than looking across the ocean for how to reform our higher education system, we should look across the channel to see what those rabid, communist reds have done in Germany. In fact it’s during the mandate of that far-left Leninist Angela Merkel that tuition fees have been abolished completely. Indeed Germany is famous for having one of the most productive and internationally acclaimed education systems of any developed country.

Rather than emulating American universities, some of which charge almost $60,000 a year, we should be embracing the idea of free higher education. Young Americans are

sick and tired of having hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt round their necks. It is no wonder the Democratic Presidential primary candidate, Bernie Sanders, has soared in the polls with his plan to make tuition free in America, particularly those young students feeling the burden of a privatised higher education system.

We should heed the warning from America and its debt strangled students, increased marketization of education is the wrong route to go down. Education is not a commodity to be bought, it is a right that should be provided for all. Tuition fees have no place in a wealthy and compassionate society that values its own national and global future.

Tweets of the fortnight: @AbiArahams

‘New game called how many free yazoo milkshakes can you get in one day at uni’

@ginagam

‘Wow lizard lounge is the best club I have been to I am in heaven Who stole my iTunes nd made a club’

@Alex_H_G

‘Bristol uni students overheard in Clifton Sainsbury’s (without sense of irony): “Oi Saoirse, manz needs bare gnocchi, yeah?”’

Anything in this issue catch your eye? Disagree with an article? Want to respond to our writers?

Flickr / Charles Clegg

As Mark Herbert wrote for The Telegraph, the majority of Brits have lost interest in studying a language.

However he fails to mention the main reason; Brits historically rate themselves as the dominant country of the world. Our nation seems to believe that our language is somehow superior. Many Brits are guilty while on holiday abroad of expecting to successfully communicate by speaking English very slowly. Yet we are quick to criticize those who visit the UK and can’t communicate in English.

The Telegraph article highlights that, ‘Among those surveyed for the British Council, 72% recognize language skills as something that helps your CV standout from the crowd, whilst 77% believe that language skills give you greater employment opportunities.’ So although the majority of those surveyed can acknowledge the value of language learning in the workplace, there still lies the gap

in learning for the sake of global communication.

It isn’t news that studying a language can make you more employable, however people don’t seem to realize the benefits of learning languages for other purposes.

If one were to strip society down to our core skills, communication would remain. Humans are social beings. So why are we so quick to shun learning how to communicate globally, a fundamental human necessity?

To independently learn a nonEuropean language, particularly at A-level standard, takes a great deal of motivation and courage. However it is languages such as Russian, Mandarin, Japanese and Arabic which will particularly further your career. Yet these languages are being ignored by the education system.

It’s all very well that comprehensive primary schools in England are teaching children French, but it will all be lost when these children reach secondary school and face relearning ‘Bonjour ou Salut!’

Flickr / Antonin Remond

The issue of student tuition fees has gone on for some time now.

Starting under the Labour party we have seen them increase from their introduction in 1998 set at £1000, to see them triple to £3000 and now £9000 for most universities in England under the coalition government.

The Liberal Democrat’s decision to agree to triple them while in government, even though free tuition was seen as a central policy platform, is commonly regarded as one of the major reasons their party was devastated at the last General election.

With the leader of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn recently announcing that Labour would pledge to abolish tuition fees through higher taxes on the wealthy, the issue of whether tuition fees should carry has been re-ignited. Should we bring in free higher education? The answer is most definitely yes.

It’s a frequent claim by those in favour of fees that a free universal system actually ends up with working class families subsidising middle class students’ education. The whole point of having a compassionate welfare state is that those benefits that everyone should be entitled to: namely healthcare, unemployment insurance and yes, education, should be universally provided for.

How we pay for higher education is used as some sort of silver bullet to justify fees. Money doesn’t grow on trees, eh? Well we pay for it in the same way we pay for other services provided by the state, through

general taxation. Increasing taxes on the wealthy and those that can afford to bear a higher burden, should be an alternative strategy to hanging tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt around the next generation’s shoulders.

Well, perhaps we should look at others who have gone down this route? The SNP’s education record in Scotland has recently been used to criticize abolishing fees. Look at those rabid socialists up north who got rid of fees, they’ve had to cut higher education budgets as they can’t afford the policy! Yes the SNP have cut higher education budgets, but this was not an inevitable outcome. Had they decided instead to raise income taxes instead, there may have been a different result.

“

Leif Sutton Williams Letters Writers

Join the writer’s Facebook page: Epigram Letters 2015/16 and write in!

Puzzles

Epigram

@epigrampuzzles

Editors: Suzie Brown; Andrea Philippou

Numerator

sbrown.epigram@gmail.com

Decode the clues to work out what the numbers represent.

(E.g. 7 D in a W = 7 days in a week)

Riddle me this Crossword A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment

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building. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves the building. In the evening, he gets into the elevator and if there is someone else in

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the elevator, or it was raining that day, he goes back to and walks up two flights of stairs to his apartment.

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Why?

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The best backronyms will be posted online with the puzzles’ solutions.

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ACROSS 1. Fried squid 5. Zone 8. Gibberish 9. Close one eye 11. Small island 12. Prophet 14. Count 15. Headlice 17. Rotate

19. Keen 21. Cowboy show 22. Long time 24. Yearning 25. Soothing song DOWN 1. Brief 2. Flooring material 3. Encounter

Your task: Come up with a different description of the organisation using the same initals. You must not use any of the words from the real meaning.

Tweet your ideas to @epigrampuzzles using #backronym

23 24

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(Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) 15

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DVLA

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Sudoku 3

This week’s backronym:

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Tweet your responses to @epigrampuzzles using #riddlemethis

32 T in an A M 1.21 G to P the D T M 3 C on the U F 525600 M in a Y 6 P in a S T

Backronym

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his floor directly. Otherwise he goes to the tenth floor

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4. Booking 6. Said again 7. Inconvenient 10. Slightly strange 13. Middle 16. Lawful 18. Rugged 20. Young female 23. Sphere

Word grid How many words can you find including the middle letter, with at least four letters per word? There is at least one nine-letter word.

18 = Average 24 = Good 30 = Excellent

Average Good Very goo

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18 Average 24 Good 30 Very goo

E I O R H A A R D

12 Average 16 Good 20 Very goo

C A R E B R Y N R

12 Average 16 Good 20 Very goo

A taster from Bristol 24/7

Celebrating Bristols around the world There are 35 Bristol’s around the world – everywhere from deepest Peru and tropical Costa Rica to chilly Canada. Pamela Parkes asked some of our namesakes what life is like as a Bristolian on the other side of the world

1. Florenceville-Bristol, New 2. Bristol Ontario County, Brunswick, Canada New York County, US Charles Walker, Bristol Tourist Office Our Bristol is a thriving little community (half of an amalgamated town with Florenceville).

Bristol’s history can be traced back hundreds of years when the Wolustoquiyik (Maliseet) occupied the land. The area was called “Shiktehawk, which in the Maliseet language means “where he killed him”. In the 1870’s when the New Brunswick Railway was being built, railway officials would not accept the name Shiktehawk for their station. The company changed the name to Kent. Villagers did not like this name and choose the name “Bristol” as it was not in use elsewhere in New Brunswick.

Bristol in three words - Tranquil, Country, Charm!

Sheryl Mordini, Innkeeper, 1795 Acorn Inn My Bristol is generally quiet and very green.

The Bristol Hills are gorgeous and driving through the valley any time of the year is stunning, especially so in the spring and fall It’s difficult to pick out one thing as the best thing about living in Bristol, but I would have to say it would be the countryside. I am always in awe The worst thing would be the winter. We get on average about 106 inches of snow a year.

The shovelling gets tough when one runs out of places to put it and the back aches.

Bristol in three words - Picturesque.

Friendly. Home.

Mainstreet in Bristol, Vermont

3. Bristol, Vermont, USA

Reg Dearborn, Bristol Historical Society Bristol, Vermont is a town in the New England area of the U.S. with an area of 42 sq. miles and a population of about 3900 people.

Probably the best thing about living in our Bristol is the small town atmosphere. You can walk in the village area anywhere you want to go and you will know most everyone you meet.

If there is a worst thing, it would be that you have travel 20 or 30 miles major shopping, entertainment and jobs.

Bristol in three words - Very enjoyable living.

4. Bristol, Wisconsin, USA

Randy Kerkman, Administrator of Bristol Our logo is naturally. We are 32 square miles with a population 4954...One of the original businesses was Merkt cheese which was known all over the country. We are rural...there are also many horse farms both private and commercial.

We are the lowest taxed village for our population in the state of Wisconsin and have a very highly ranked school system.

Bristol in three words - Better than that - one word ‘naturally.’

Bristol, Wisconsin - Lake George Sunset

Two cities of Bristol and the two states of Tennessee and Virginia

5. Bristol Rhode Island, US

6. Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia

Michael Byrnes, Explore Bristol Bristol is a small town. Less than 25,000 people.

We think of ourselves as the quintessential New England waterfront town. Founded in 1680 we have a good variety of older houses between 200-300 years old. For a small town we have a large number of museums – eight in total.

The original settlers were from England and we are named of course after Bristol England.

We had big wave of Portuguese immigration in the 1950s and 1960s so that the Portuguese are the dominate group in town.

Bristol in three words – community, scenic, maritime.

Lori Worley, Bristol Chamber The state line of Tennessee and Virginia runs right through the middle of State Street in downtown Bristol.

Combined, both Bristols have about 45,000 residents…there are two city governments, two police departments, two mayors, etc. We like to say we’re “Two Cities, One State of Mind.”

Bristol is the official birthplace of country music and also boasts Bristol Motor Speedway, a half-mile concrete race track that seats 160,000 people and is home to two NASCAR races each year.

Bristol in three words - Music. Motorsports. Mountains.

7. Bristol, Connecticut, USA

8. Bristol, Peru

Mark We’re city-sized with a little more than 60,000 residents...As a community, we’re rich with history — with historic neighbourhoods like Federal Hill and its Victorian homes… and the place where Albert Rockwell and his wife invented the yellow taxi concept.

Bristol is now famous for newer forms of production like [sport channel] ESPN - Bristol is its world headquarters There’s a passion in this community where people care for one another. We have one of the few non-profit hospitals around in Bristol Hospital.

The worst thing is the weather! We get quite a bit of snow.

Bristol in three words - All Heart community

Florenceville-Bristol in winter

One of the most elusive Bristol’s has to be a small village near San Lorenzo, on the Marañón River in the Amazon.

According to Wiki some 300 people live here, but it’s been hard tracking down anyone who knows anything about this Bristol. From academics to the Peruvian Embassy we have drawn a blank.

Willie McPherson is chief executive of the Vine Trust which runs a medical barge, the Amazon Hope, along the river. He says the area is very remote, with poor communications. Many of the villages along the tributaries of the Peruvian Amazon are incredibly hard to reach, even by boat.

If you know anything else about Bristol, Peru answers on a postcard please.

Living Travel Style Food What’s On

Epigram/ Fares Kammourieh

Pause and Remember

20

Co-Editor Maya Colwell

Co-Editor Will Soer

mcolwell@epigram.org.uk

wilso@epigram.org.uk

@e2living

30.11.2015

Epigram Living Section 2015/16

Take Time to be Mindful Ellie Donnell discusses a state of mind that could probably be pretty helpful for the average student...

We live in a ear shatteringly loud world due to the constant noise of communication. Whether it be talking, texting, instagramming, tweeting, commenting, liking, skyping - the list goes on - people are restless with the need, or perhaps the pressure, to be in constant contact with everyone and everything.

Though technology has allowed all forms of news and updates to be accessible and instant, it has equally induced a myriad of pressures that make it eternally difficult to shut down and switch off. We know we shouldn’t stare at a screen just before we go to bed, but surely we must check those final treasured tweets that will send us to sleep. After all, how else will we know what Taylor Swift’s cat is up to?

It’s important to occasionally step away from the noise of technologically induced responsibility, particularly as a student where the pressures of deadlines, a social life and living away from home for the first time can eventually start to feel, in varying degrees, solitary and draining.

Mindfulness is a state of mental clarity in which emphasis is placed on heightening our self-awareness of the present moment through controlled breathing and bodily sensation. It aims to teach people to take the time to be quiet and ‘mindful’, especially away from the all-consuming business of daily routine, most commonly through the exercise of mediation.

Immersing oneself in the present and learning to recognise our thoughts, emotions and sensations in the moment improves your ability to deal with them when they threaten to overwhelm. Whether it’s just a five minute fix or half an hour of being completely silent, the practice of this exercise enforces the importance of taking time to stop what you are doing, purge your mind of worries, fears, anxieties and stress and simply allow yourself to be happy.

The premise does sound delightfully peaceful and suggests we should all be walking around in a state of utter bliss, vacantly smiling in a bubble of happiness.

While the complexity and actuality of anxiety is not an issue that can be resolved by listening to the sound of your own breathing for five minutes, there is certainly evidence to suggest that it is having some positive effects.

The NHS have prescribed the exercise to thousands of patients since 2004 and in a two year study led by researchers from Oxford University, 70 per cent of people (out of 424 adults) were able to stop taking antidepressants after being assigned to a ‘Mindfulness’ programme. The treatment is not designed to entirely remedy anxiety or depression, but can be practised as a preventative means to keep stress at bay and improve overall wellbeing.

It’s also easy to do! Mindfulness can be adapted and applied to those dealing with more serious forms of depression, to people who are perhaps experiencing a particularly overwhelming or stressful moment in their life. Additionally, it has the capacity to be practised with others as well as individually. Bristol Nightline held a ‘Mindfulness Colouring’ event at the Student’s Union on Thursday 19th November open for students ‘with anything on their mind, big or small’, in which you turn up, sit down – maybe cast your mind back to the days of trying to colour neatly within the lines of a garishly vibrant colouring book – and escape.

Indeed, this idea has gained momentum with mindful

Epigram / Will Soer

The practice enforces the importance of taking time to purge your mind of worries, fears and stress.

colouring books now readily available everywhere from Amazon, to Waterstones and Urban Outfitters, suggesting that being mindful is now ‘on trend’.

There are also a multitude of apps dedicated to its practice.

Recommended by Waitrose Kitchen, I decided to download Headspace, where audio clips send you through the motions of controlled breathing and focusing on your entire body.

It’s an exercise that gets easier with repetition and whilst the experience of sitting alone in complete silence, eyes closed, and focusing all attention on one’s self both physically and mentally was immediately alien, it was equally profoundly

peaceful. Personally, the most inf luential part of Mindfulness resides in the fact that the 10 minutes I spent listening to the soothingly mellow voice that guides you through the process, were 10 minutes focussed purely on myself. We’re constantly caught up in the things we have to do, whether it’s a food shop, replying to an email or writing an essay, all of which do not necessarily focus on our own wants or desires. Demarcating time in your day to actively ref lect on how you feel generates a sense of empowering autonomy and, yes, I would say happiness.

Epigram Living editorial position available

Deputy Editor

Responsible for helping lay up the Living section, sourcing images, editing article submissions and commissioning articles as well as assisting with our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).

To apply please submit: - Your CV - Brief cover letter - Ideas sheet outlining your vision for Epigram Living Section - One example of your writing (preferably from student media) Send submissions to mcolwell@epigram.org.uk or wilso@epigram.org.uk Deadline for submissions: Friday 11th December

30.11.2015

21

My Top Spot: Rise

Every issue from now will feature one of our writers hyping up their favourite Bristol Haunt, with a little twist.

This week, Will Soer waxes lyrical about Rise, the Independent Musical Mecca.

Epigram / Will Soer

There’s a handful of things that you need to maintain a basic sense of calmness whilst at university, particularly once you’re in third year and have to actually do work most days of the week. I feel that one of the most crucial is a decent oasis of calm to retreat to every now and then, outside of the student bubble. My favourite candidate for this spot is Rise, an independent record store conveniently located on the triangle, above the similarly ace healthy fast food restaurant Friska (reviewed in this week’s food section).

Aside from the general aesthetic and sonic pleasing-ness, Rise boasts an enviable stock of free magazines, cheap books and ready-to-listen wall mounted albums, which - in combination with a very well placed sofa making it the perfect place to go and relax in the midst of a long day of work/procrastination.

It also frequently puts on free events, including talks, workshops and gigs.

A personal favourite of mine was Nick Mulvey back in April 2014, who I saw performing a gorgeous set to an audience of maybe 50, a few months before packing out Bristol’s O2 Academy. I recently did a quick interview with their manager Seb, who told me about his two favourite gigs that the store had put on: ‘We’ve supported Factory Floor ever since their first 12” came out, so after we picked them for album of the year in 2013 [Rise’s lists are compiled democratically by all of their staff] they agreed to play our end of year party.

It was really great for us as we’re all such big fans, which they appreciated.

‘The other one that I absolutely loved was a few weeks ago with Hot 8 Brass Band, a traditional jazz group from New Orleans, were playing a sold out gig at the Lantern and basically just turned up to Rise beforehand without any amplification but a couple of mics and they were brilliant. It was four in the afternoon and from the first song they turned the whole place into a party!’

Check out ‘Rise’ on Facebook or sign up to their mailing list at www.rise-music.co.uk for information on upcoming events.

Confessions of an Old Fogey It’s a tough life when you don’t know the words to any songs post 2010, can barely turn on an iPad and are a self-confessed tea addict. Maya Colwell gives you an insight into this charmed existence.

I would rather listen to Ravel than Rudimental, something I’m quite happy to admit, however much friends have ripped me to shreds for it in the past. This may seem rather natural for a swotty music student, but for the first 17 years of my life I had more in common with my dad than any of my Music classmates.The fact is though, that I suspect more people of aspiring to this rather glam lifestyle than want to let on (this is probably bullshit, but please humour me!), so here’s a handy little peek at how it’s done.

Your love of tea should be such that in fact, you would have to seriously consider a choice between tea and sex.

Rule Number One is without a doubt to never - though exceptions do exist - admit to having seen the latest episode of a popular TV series. Feign such ignorance as to prompt the inevitable, ‘Have you been living under a rock?’ – the key indication of success as far as I’m concerned. It goes without saying that genuine knowledge gaps are ideal, but hey ho - you can’t have it all! There are a few shows that are of course exempt from this, including University Challenge, any period

dramas, BBC documentaries (though not concerning popular culture) and shows involving baking, knitting or pottery.

Baking is a big part of old fogeyness, though none of this new-fangled cake pop or #NourishingBake crap.

Victoria sponge is an integral part of the repertoire, along with mince pies and your perfected-from-yearsof-trial-and-error chocolate cake. Carefully tread the line between retro/hipster and plain old ancient - you wouldn’t want to be accused of contributing to any sort of current trend!

If you’ve had the same iPhone for the last two years, but still can’t turn it off or on, or don’t know what the little flicky thing on the side does, you’re winning. The same goes for laptops, iPads and other modern gadgets.

The fact of owning them shows a commendable attempt to enter the right decade, but inaptitude is the saving grace from being just another normal person.

Tea is the drink of the gods and should be consumed in excess, in the manner of a nymphomaniac and sex.

Your love of tea should be such that, in fact, you would have to seriously consider a choice between tea and sex (which makes the new consent campaign all the more confusing). The only thing to rival the place that tea holds in your heart should be biscuits, so it is all the more convenient that the combination of the two has become your staple alternative to cooking.

Above all, the go-to sentence starters for golden oldie worth their salt are ‘Well in my day…’ and/or ‘When I was your age…’. These are to be used un-ironically and in a manner entirely unconscious of the fact that lateteens to mid-twenties really don’t count as being old enough to be so patronising. We fogeys are generally

shocked by kids these days and despair at the fact that so few of them are able to sing the Tweenies’ theme tune.

If you feel that the above is more of a description of you than a guide, then congratulations - you’re an official member of the club (though of course, the thought of joining any sort of social group fills you with horror)!

DISCLAIMER: This is an exaggeration of true facts. I have in fact just learned to turn my phone off.

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A Photographer in Bristol Back in 2009, whilst at Bristol University, Alex Sheppard fell in love with photography.

He describes what the city is like on the other side of the camera lens.

Alex Sheppard

comedy nights, poetry and spoken word evenings, small gigs and even scribble n scratch illustration battles. Sometimes I take my camera along and sometimes I don’t, there is no hard and fast rule. On the one hand it’s nice to completely enjoy an event and not be focused on taking photos, but on the over hand there are occasions where I wish I had taken a camera to get a photo or two.

Even though I have been in Bristol for over six years I feel there is still so much more to see.

For example, the hills in the distance if you look south I have only recently visited. There is a small village on the crest called Dundry and there are pretty awesome views looking back towards Bristol.

I am keen to see more of Stokes Croft and Gloucester Road, if anyone knows of a graffiti tour please let me know!

Sadly most of the photographs I take now are for events work - I rarely go out and take photos for fun, which is something I need to do more of to keep up my creative side. I have a few projects on my mind, I don’t want to reveal too much right now but one of them involves the Triangle area so keep an eye out! Apart from that, I’d like to take more portraits, both studio based and out on location. If you’re interested give me a shout!

And to finish with, I guess that I should probably mention that I am not a full time photographer, I am in fact a software engineer. Photography is purely a hobby and that is what keeps it enjoyable and I hope it will for many years to come.

StatickFlickr

There’s a lot going on in Bristol - which is why I decided to stay in the city after graduating back in 2013. I could have moved elsewhere, but apart from London anywhere else would have seemed quiet in comparison. Bristol is also a better size- you can get pretty much anywhere within 10-15 minutes by bike and so there is no excuse not to get out and do something in the evening and at weekends.

I started my computer science degree back in 2009 and lived in University Hall. Back then there was no No. 16 bus to Stoke Bishop, so every morning everyone had to take the 35 minute walk across The Downs and down Whiteladies Road. Whenever anyone hears this now their jaw drops, but walking was a good thing. You actually woke up on your way to lectures in the fresh air and had the opportunity to talk to your course mates about lectures and coursework. So while at first it seemed that you were just walking it was in fact quite productive.

Before starting at Bristol I was not into photography at all. Everything I have learnt has been through the photography society (Photosoc) which I happened to join by chance. Until a few years ago, freshers fair was held in the students’ union over 2 days. Returning to halls on Thursday evening I wasn’t even aware there was a photography society until my flatmate mentioned it. On the Friday I returned to the freshers fair for more freebies and this time I spotted the Photosoc stand and was persuaded to join. £8 well spent? It seemed a lot compared to other societies.

I started by attending the weekly talks and tea socials and borrowing some equipment. From then on photography became my biggest pastime. I joined the committee in 2010 and joint ran the events team which meant I was the contact point for other societies, halls and corporations that required photography at their event to find photographers. This opened doors into photographing anything from the standard clubnight, to formals, balls, the occasional sports and corporate event and even a naked calendar or two.

By photographing all these events I recognise faces in the street quite often, but a lot of the time it is tricky to remember names (and I apologise if this has been you). Some people find this quite creepy, but it is easy to remember where and when the photo of said person was taken.

Leading on from this I can people watch for hours - looking out of a café window and watching the world go by is great. Every now and then I’ll spot someone I recognise and then my mind goes off and figures out how and where I know them from.

Being a photographer means that you meet many interesting people and based on the events I photograph, they are mainly people from the city and university past and present. You also spend a lot of time talking to the people behind the scenes, those that plan and put on the events. It is definitely worth talking to these people; you’ll find out lots of facts (some interesting, some not so interesting - did you know the bell in Wills Memorial rings in E flat?) and if you’re nice to them they may be able to return a favour in the future.

Every year while at university I lived in a new house with different people in different areas: from Cliftonwood and Pembroke Road to Cotham Brow and now Royal York Crescent. Three of these are pretty close to The Triangle, which I think most students at Bristol can relate to. It is hard to walk across the triangle without bumping into someone and having a chat. Most of the photography work I get is through word of mouth, so it is always worth stopping to say hello to people as you never know what the next job may be.

It is weird seeing Bristol over the holidays, students disappear and everything becomes rather quiet. There is no queue for the Sainsburys self checkouts and Lounge isn’t open Monday – Thursday.

Facebook event invitations go quiet and there are fewer people thrusting flyers down your throat.

This is the perfect opportunity to explore other things the city has to offer. More recently I’ve tried

Alex Sheppard photography@alexsheppard.co.uk facebook.com/alexsheppard11

Crush of the week: Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor As the cold begins to draw in there is only one thing that keeps long walks to and from campus bearable and that is the voice of Rebecca Taylor in your ear. Slow Club is a male/female duo, but Rebecca is the one wearing the trousers and the way she struts around the stage switching between guitar, drums and vocals has you eating out of the palm of her hand. So in the long wait for album number five, why not rediscover some old tunes and Alex Sheppard

Complete(ly) Surrender to her powers.

Jon Stanley Austin

Maya Colwell

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Editor Hattie Bottom

Deputy Editor Plum Ayloff

Online Editor Phoebe Jordan

hattie@epigram.org.uk

payloff@epigram.org.uk

pjordan@epigram.org.uk

@e2style

30.11.2015

@epigramstyle

Instagram, @anna_dello_russo

Instagram, @pandorasykes

manrepeller.com

Want to be a fashion editor?

Epigram Style editorial positions available for 2016: Deputy Print Editor Deputy Online Editor Responsible for laying up Style section of fortnightly issue, sourcing images, editing article submissions and commissioning articles for Style writers.

Responsible for managing social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), helping to source images and edit article submissions for online Style section.

How to apply:

How to apply:

- your CV

- your CV

- brief cover letter

- brief cover letter

- ideas sheet outlining your vision for Epigram Style section, including 3 article ideas

- ideas sheet outlining your vision for Epigram Style online - 1 example of your writing (preferably from student media)

- 3 examples of your writing (preferably from student media) or creative design Send submissions to payloff@epigram.org.uk

Send submissions to pjordan@epigram.org.uk

Deadline for submissions: Friday 11th December

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Deadline for submissions: Friday 11th December

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30.11.2015

24

Breaking the mould, a new way of fashion for cyclists An interview with East Cycle Studios, the fashion brand redefining road safety

It’s a new niche market - have you been inspired by any companies doing similar things outside of London/UK? There are very limited numbers of people working on the same concept, especially in the UK. It is quite exciting to be one of the

first pushing the boundaries of a new idea.

All the feedback we have had has been hugely positive and everyone seems to love the AW15 collection!

market for urban cycle apparel.

Is there a story behind your brand idea?

I am all for encouraging people to cycle over taking the bus or driving. For a lot of people, I know that the idea of changing in and out of a cycling outfit is off-putting and now with ECS, you don’t have to! We also try to keep our fabrics and manufacturing as sustainable and ethical as possible by upcycling vintage and using more sustainable fibres in the fabrics we select.

It all started when I saw so many news stories about collisions with cyclists on our city streets.

I took a long look at my pretty standard, allblack outfit and decided something had to change. When I went to look for something more visible to wear, there really wasn’t anything available. I think that, with ECS, we fill a huge gap in the

Dry bag, £30

Your online store currently has a range of T-shirts and vintage jackets, do you see the company expanding into any other styles?

Yes. We are already working on our collection for SS16, which is going to include some great new pieces. Even with our vintage jackets, we are always working on new custom orders. If you don’t see your size or the exact design you like, we have a great custom order process where we design and manufacture a jacket specifically to you, 100 per cent unique.

You can stay safe on the road and feel fashionable too by shopping the ECS collection at eastcyclestudios.com.

Plum Ayloff and Hattie Bottom Style Editors

East Cycle Studios AW15 / Elliot

East Cycle Studios AW15 / Elliot Kennedy

Vintage Denim Jacket, £65

Is the environment a particular focus for the philosophy of East Cycle Studios?

Instagram, @ecs_ldn

Fashion and cycle safety really aren’t two things that people put hand in hand. It is a tricky concept because we are trying to do something so unique at the moment. We’re trying to break the mould of conventional cyclewear and encourage people who do not want to wear neon windbreakers and lycra cycle suits to still be visible at night.

Instagram, @ecs_ldn

Tell us a little more about the fashion x cycle safety concept?

Instagram, @ecs_ldn

With Bristol as the European Green Capital and the prominent rise of fitness enthusiasts, more and more students are choosing to cycle to lectures and all around the city. Road safety is, of course, of vital importance, but wearing the necessary precautions can (wrongly) be seen as too much effort for some students.

This is a problem that new fashion brand East Cycle Studios (ECS) is endeavouring to tackle, aiming to give students a more appealing option to remain safe AND stylish. The collection is a mixture of new and vintage items that have been customised with reflective patches and prints to keep cyclists visible on the roads at night - no lycra or high vis in sight!

We interviewed ECS owner and designer, Katherine Sherry, to learn more about the inspiration and ethos behind the brand:

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30.11.2015

Accessories Shop Hattie Bottom some of the best statement necklaces to encourage the Iris Apfel in you

Kate Spade floral print, pinterest.com

sublimefinds.com.au

Iris Apfel, a rare bird of style

Tropical collar necklace, & Other Stories £25; Resin ring necklace, Topshop £14

Alexandra Keates explores the wardrobe and wisdom of the 93year-old style icon challenging boundaries in the fashion industry Iris Apfel is not a fashion icon. At least, she wouldn’t call herself one; instead, she believes herself to be a style icon. This delicate nuance in how she perceives herself can teach us a monumental amount about the world of fashion and how to embrace it.

Iris began her work as an interior designer to the elite. She worked alongside nine First Ladies to design their private apartments in the White House, including Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan. However, it was in 2005, when the MoMA gallery in New York put on an exhibition entitled ‘Rara Avis’ (rare bird) showcasing over 300 garments from her wardrobe, that she truly made her name as a style icon. So mesmerising, so ingenious and so incredible was this exhibition of her wardrobe, that renowned fashion photographer Bill Cunningham told people that if they wanted to see fashion, they shouldn’t go to Paris, they should go to the Apfel exhibition.

Be yourself and style yourself with attitude Since then, this 93 year old ‘It’ girl has been the face of campaigns for designers such as Kate Spade and Mac Cosmetics, designed a range of accessories for QVC, been a cover girl for Vogue and is a guest lecturer at the University of Texas, as well as making a film of her life aptly entitled Iris. However, even with the fashion world at her feet, Iris doesn’t believe any girl should be a slave to fashion. The greatest fashion statement, she believes, is to be yourself and style yourself with attitude. Indeed, when she was recently asked what she

thought style was, she simply replied with ‘Attitude, attitude, attitude.’

From a young age, Ms Apfel has always had a keen eye for style, which she says stems from her mother’s love for accessories. Yet she has always known how to have fun with it. In an industry that is often seen as cold, glamorous and superficial,Iris shows that in fact it is one of the most exciting, creative and personal forms of art. Style, she believes, is in your DNA; it is inherent to each individual and has nothing to do with the fashions that come and go each season. She believes that although fashion may be on the outside, style is what is inside you. To her, style has no rules. It is simply the greatest form of artistic self-expression you can share with the world.

Perhaps it is this enthusiasm for individuality and quirkiness that has gained her legions of followings that include monumental figures such as Dries Van Noten, Anna Wintour and photographer Bill Cunningham.

So what lies inside the wardrobe of this style icon? Well, just about everything. From hand painted Versace shirts to $1 earrings from the flea market. Iris has created a wardrobe that captures style from both ends of the market and all over the world. Her pieces are an eclectic and eccentric collection of global fashions fit for a 93 year old rebel. One of her favourites is a reversible hand embroidered jacket she bought from a Pakistani flea market in the 1980s. However,many people hear Iris before they see her,due to her famous chunky bangles that adorn each one of her incredible outfits.

With her 93 years of wisdom sprinkled with an ample dose of rebellion, we can all learn a great deal from Iris; most importantly that our style should evoke confidence within ourselves. To her, fashion and style have to be fun. She believes the best part about going to a party is getting dressed for it. Yet she is resolute over the matter that living is about excitement and that style should follow this motto. This style icon will tell you that it is always better to be happy and confident with yourself than to be well dressed; a life lesson that we should all remember about style.

Iris’s film Iris is available on Netflix, she is also featured in ‘Bill Cunningham’s New York’ and ‘Advanced Style’ both available on Netflix.

Twisted cap necklace, Topshop £18.50; Faux pearl and chain statement collar, ASOS £28

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Editor Camilla Gash

Deputy Editor Ella Ennos-Dann

Online Editor Annabel Lindsay

cgash@epigram.org.uk

eennosdann@epigram.org.uk

alindsay@epigram.org.uk

@e2travel

@epigram_travel

30.11.2015

Epigram Travel Section 2015/16

The City of Lights: a celebration ‘If you’re in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck’

Camilla Gash

Camilla Gash

Friday the 13th saw a series of horrific attacks carried out on France’s capital for the second time this year. I was on my year abroad working near Paris when the attack on Charlie Hebdo happened back in January and I can only imagine how much greater the country’s shock, bewilderment and sadness must feel this time around.

The attacks hit very close to home for many of us and have resonated so strongly with ordinary people because those who were targeted were just that - ordinary people simply enjoying a Friday night out at a concert, at a football match, at a restaurant. One of the Bataclan victims was a student at the business school where I worked and several of my Paris-based comedian friends were performing standup that evening (mercifully in the basement of another café) on the same street as two of the cafés targeted.

It is very hard to know how to react and what to feel when something like this happens. Anger, grief and despair are all understandable reactions. But if these emotions are lasting then the terrorists win. The only viable option is to continue as before, to continue living and to continue enjoying life. And this is something that the French are experts in.

I’d like to leave you with the words of comedian and TV host John Oliver, who summed up this sentiment better than I ever could: “If you’re in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Because, go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring John-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, Marcel Proust, and the fucking croquembouche!”

This week, we’re celebrating Paris.

Camilla Gash

30 free things you must do in Paris 1. Watch the Eiffel Tower light show at night (every hour on the hour from dusk). In my opinion, the best view is from the steps in the Jardins du Trocadéro opposite, but it’s also pretty magical if you’re stood underneath.

14. Visit the permanent collection at the Musée d’Art Moderne, just a short walk from the Jardins du Trocadéro.

views over the city and a close-up of the Palais Garnier.

15. Stroll along the Canal Saint-Martin, or even bring a picnic to enjoy on the banks.

20. Visit Place des Vosges, Paris’ oldest square and the former home of Victor Hugo (he lived at number 6 and you can visit the permanent collections there for free).

16. Take a promenade through Parc Monceau, an elegant park near the Arc du Triomphe filled with statues, bridges and even a decorative colonnade.

21. Faire du lèche-vitrines (go window shopping… window licking in French!) on the very smart Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré or Avenue Montaigne.

4. Visit Sacré-Cœur at dusk and watch the sun go down over Paris.

17. Go exploring at the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen (Paris’ largest flea market, every Sunday in Montmartre). Any souvenirs you do buy will be far cheaper than in the city’s tourist hotspots.

22. Visit the Wall of Love (Le mur des je t’aime) in Square Jehan Rictus, Montmartre, just a five minute walk from SacréCœur.

5. Browse the books in Shakespeare and Company, a famous independent bookstore on the Left Bank.

18. Check out the exhibitions in the Petit Palais, as well as its beautiful terrace and garden.

23. Admire the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’ city hall. Take a seat in the plaza and enjoy the spray of the fountains on a hot day. In the winter this space becomes an ice rink.

6. Relax in a chair by the Jardin du Luxembourg pond and watch excitable children race boats.

19. Watch a fashion show at the Galeries Lafayette (Monday & Friday at 3pm). Afterwards, pop up onto the roof terrace for great

2. Explore the Rue Mouffetard street market, taking in the sights, smells and crowds.

3. Walk the stretch of the Champs-Élysées, from the Arc de Triomphe down through the lovely Jardins des Tuileries to the Louvre.

7. Visit the impressive Notre Dame and pay a visit to the gargoyles in the bell tower.* (* = free for EU under-26-year-olds)

24. Relax in the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden containing all sorts of plant displays, a small menagerie and an alpine garden.

25. Stroll around the Marais, popping into churches such as L’Église Saint-Gervais and L’Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis.

8. Visit Édith Piaf and Oscar Wilde’s tombs (and several more) at the huge higgledy-piggledy Père Lachaise Cemetery.

9. Walk the Promenade Plantée (also known as the Coulée Verte), an elevated linear park built along an old railway line (the first in the world– the High Line in New York is the same sort of concept).

26. Visit the Palais Royal courtyard, where you can find an art installation of humbug-like black and white columns of differing heights. There’s also a nice little garden and avenue of trees.

10. Visit Église de la Madeleine, a huge Greek temple-esque church.

27. Climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for some spectacular panoramic views of Paris.*

11. Take a book to the beautiful Parc des Buttes Chaumont on a sunny afternoon.

28. Visit les Invalides, where you can find Napoleon’s tomb, an armour exhibition and an extensive first and second world war museum.*

12. Visit the Musée Carnavalet and learn about the history of Paris.

Camilla Gash

13. Sit by the Seine and watch the world go by. My favourite spot is on the western tip of Île de la Cité– there’s a little park called le Square du Vert-Galent, or you can sit legs-dangling on the sloping concrete bank.

29. Wander around the Musée de l’Orangerie, admiring Monet’s Waterlilies, among other Impressionist paintings.* 30. Visit Sainte Chapelle, a stunning gothic church just a short walk from Notre Dame.* Camilla Gash

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30.11.2015

The best films and literature set in Paris Noa Leech talks us through her favourite Paris-based pop culture.

2. Amelie’s surreal visual style brings out the best of bohemian Montmartre, the artistic heart of Paris. Following the philanthropic life of Amelie Poulain, this quirky film simulates the real life of Parisians through a witty script and eccentric plot. This realism explores the problems of the isolation of living in the city and Amelie’s solution through changing the lives of others.

3. The Aristocats is not only a Walt Disney classic, but also captures perfectly the jazz and vitality of Paris in 1910. With its colour, comedy and magnetic soundtrack, it is difficult to not enjoy this film – ‘cause everybody digs a swinging cat…’

4. Moulin Rouge, a personal favourite and one of Baz Luhrmann’s finest, is a comic-tragedy about forbidden love between a bohemian writer and a courtesan. Also based in Montmartre, the dreamlike scenes flaunt Paris during the Bohemian movement, with reworked music forming the acclaimed soundtrack, including a tango rendition of The Police’s ‘Roxanne’ and the popular ‘Lady Marmalade’.

5. Les Intouchables makes audiences cry both in laughter and tears with its tale of a quadriplegic who hires his new carer, Driss, from a poor banlieue of Paris. Driss cares for Philippe using hilariously unconventional methods, being the only one not to treat him with pity.

Amelie, Canal+, France 3 Cinema, UGC

6. Les Miserables (1862), famously turned into a musical and then a star-studded film, was originally a book by Victor Hugo. It depicts hardship before and during the June Rebellion in 1832, but also offers elegant insights into life and the city: ‘A breath of Paris preserves the soul.’

7. Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald differs from his The Great Gatsby in its tranquil setting of Provence, the French countryside, though echoes it in its shared themes of romance and scandal. The couples in the novel apparently can’t keep away from the enchanting capital, the centre of culture and parties, where most of the action takes place.

Aristocats, Walt Disney Productions

1. Midnight in Paris is a beautifully filmed love letter to Paris appealing to artists, literature fanatics or simply lovers of the stunning capital. Owen Wilson’s character, Gil, finds a passage to 1920s Paris where he socialises with artists from the period, including Stein, Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds. Visiting all the beautiful and most famous areas, Midnight in Paris relives the ‘nouvelle belle-époque’ in style: ‘Paris is unbelievable – there’s no city like this in the world.’

8. The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006) is about the contrasting stories of an overlooked concierge and the young daughter of a bourgeois family living in the building. Similar to Les Miserables, the book by Muriel Barbery criticises the class system of France while simultaneously describing the beauty of Paris’ opulence.

9. Suite Française (2004) by Irène Némirovsky is an unfinished series of five novellas, several of which depict German occupation in Paris during the Second World War. The love story reflects the romance of the City of Love, as well as vividly illustrating life during the historical events that changed Europe.

10. Hopscotch (or ‘Rayeula’) by Julio Cortazar (1963) provides an unusual view of Paris in being intrinsically Latin American. Romantic and surrealistic, the novel is about the bohemian Argentine and his life in France, alternating its setting between bustling Buenos Aires and the Parisian 1950s of jazz and liquor.

Paris theatre: better than ever before international guests to appreciate the French. They can still hear the poetic and expressive scripts in their original language. We’re merely celebrating diversity of cultures.”

Whatever the reason, as a year abroad student in Paris myself, I am grateful. I thought that while here, I’d miss my youth membership at the National Theatre, or the £5 tickets I’ve benefited from for two years at the Bristol Old Vic. But when I heard about these English surtitles, my fears were allayed. Even as a French student, the translations have helped me catch nuances I would have otherwise missed.

I’m constantly berating myself for not mixing enough with French people here. Despite my initial confidence, Parisian social circles are quite difficult to break into, after all. So this opportunity to sit amongst the locals - to laugh when they laugh, to cry when they cry and all that jazz - is very much appréciée indeed. Perhaps, if I keep going, I might even make some French friends in the audience too… But I’ll stop there, before I start getting ahead of myself.

Alexandra Heal

Victor Pascal

A dramatic revolution is currently taking to the stages of the Parisian theatre scene. More specifically, this revolution is laying its roots above the stage - in the form of innovative English surtitles.

Contrary to what its affectionate nickname, ‘The City of Lights’, would suggest, Paris has never been celebrated for its choice of evening entertainment for tourists and expats. The traditional cabaret, ballet and opera have for a long time been the only offerings for non-French speakers.

Considering that a ticket to the Moulin Rouge will set you back €150, these aren’t the most accessible, or authentic, experiences.

Finally, this is changing. By projecting an English translation above the stage, the innovative start up, Theatre in Paris, has opened the doors of Parisian playhouses to guests of over 50 different nationalities since it was founded in 2014.

“There is a current trend in tourism to seek ‘experiences’ rather than visits,” explains co-founder Carl de Poncins.

“Tourists want to go beyond being stuck together in the Eiffel Tower or Versailles, to have more local experiences alongside local people.”

With the new autumn season, the English surtitling phenomenon seems to be winning over more and more theatres. One of the most beautiful and popular venues in Paris, the Théâtre Édouard VII, has joined the ranks to offer The Lie, possibly the most anticipated French comedy of the year, to English speakers.

Amongst expats, the word is spreading. The Édouard VII is apparently bustling with English-speaking audience members every night. Whilst tickets to this elegant theatre might be slightly out of reach to the average Erasmus student, there are also less expensive surtitled productions at other venues across the city. For example, Cyrano de Bergerac, for all the literature-minded year abroad expats, or the slapstick, riotous comedy, Around the World in 80 Days.

Considering the success of this new venture, L’Hexagon was originally slow in joining in with the fun. Countries such as Germany and Israel have been surtitling dramatic productions for foreigners for a while now. Was the famous French protectionism of their language behind this resistance? And is this new Parisian trend a sign that the French are finally succumbing to the power of English?

“Absolutely not,” begins de Poncins. “We’re not dubbing the performances. The surtitles are merely a bridge to allow

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Editor Izzie Fernades

Deputy Editor Tom Horton

Online Editors Issy Montgomery; Becky Scott

30.11.2015

getinvolved@epigram.org.uk

Join us at: Epigram Food Section 2015/16

Follow us at: epigramfood

Eating Out Guide: Friska

Ellie Donnell taste-tests one of the Triangle’s most popular lunchtime options Being both a student and a food fanatic, finding places to eat that are reasonably priced, whilst also providing fresh and wholesome food, can be a challenge. Thinking economically, anything exceeding £5 seems extortionate if you’re looking to grab a bite that’s light but still satisfying and tasty. Luckily, Bristol is brimming with cafes and eateries that serve delicious food on a student lead budget, with Friska proving a particular favourite.

Between the hours of 1pm and 2pm, the streets of the Triangle undergo an influx of students who flock from the university precinct in search of food to fuel their afternoon lectures. One of the most popular hotspots is Friska, a cosy and casual space for anyone to catch up with a coffee and cake or, more popularly, a satisfying lunch. The reclaimed wooden tables, built in booths and walls lined with classic music posters underline the vintage theme that reflects their shop upstairs: a goldmine of clothes, books and music. The décor is rustic and homely and the feelgood atmosphere supports their appropriately chosen slogan of ‘Feel good food’. Not too pretentious, just good, honest food.

The menu offers an eclectic range of choices, but Friska are most prominently renowned for their mouth-watering hotboxes. The rules are simple: choose the main body of your box, whether its chicken curry, grilled halloumi or spicy chilli (they’re always changing) and they are all served with spicy rice, seasonal slaw, tortilla chips and toasted seeds. For £5.25 these

boxes are heavy and warming and taste and smell absolutely incredible. Their food feels nourishing and homely to eat, no unnecessary additions just honest ingredients, which is exactly what good food should be. It may not be quinoa and chia seeds, but healthy doesn’t have to mean superfoods, it should mean wholefoods.

On offer are also hot wraps (the pulled pork is superb) with a filling of your choice, all enclosed in a mix of seasonal slaw, salsa rossa, spinach and house dressing to form a parcel of wonderful textures and flavours. For something lighter, the Vietnamese pho noodles served in a hot broth are available, along with an equally delicious and eclectic array of salads and sandwiches.

Tried and tested options include the chicken and prosciutto, duck pad Thai or falafel and houmous salads, although the hot menu is far more likely to keep you fuller for more time and less money, as these average merely a pound cheaper than the heavy wraps or boxes.

For the regulars amongst us, Friska does offer a loyalty card and app which allows you to earn rewards in the form of free coffee or lunches on particular visits. The card is not exceedingly beneficial, offering a free snack after 10 visits and a free lunch after 20 – this is for the truly committed customers – but although the app does not offer much more in the way of perks, installing it does secure you a free coffee voucher.

The ethically responsible mini-chain, which won the 2014

Best Ethical Restaurant title in the Observer Food Monthly Awards, pursues a zero waste landfill policy and uses renewable electricity, proving that it’s not just the delicious food that renders Friska both a desirable and reputable reason to part with your student loan. They strive to not only think ethically, but focus largely on being responsible in everything they do, both as a restaurant and a business. And because everything is locally sourced, the menu changes seasonally to ensure that the freshest ingredients are being used. Whilst the menu may seem to provide a diverse range of unrelated options (porridge, scrambled eggs, chicken and chorizo gumbo or noodles), this merely reflects the seasonality of the produce and ensures that Friska remains a place that offers something for everyone: both for the safe and the more adventurous food enthusiasts.

Judging by the bustling queues and packed tables during the lunch hour rush on the triangle, Friska proves itself a worthy competitor amongst the numerous eateries that permeate Bristol’s food scene. Their fresh and delicious food, cosy interiors and responsible stance on sustainability and equality in the workplace make Friska far more than just a café. Their attention to responsibility towards all areas of the company truly reflects in customer satisfaction. The warm, rich taste of a steaming box of Keralan Chicken Korma (that you know is locally sourced and honestly nourishing) cannot help but make you ‘feel good’ that you chose Friska for lunch.

Epigram/Ellie Donnell

Epigram/Ellie Donnell

Student Fairtrade Cafe for money that it offers. Typically, you can enjoy a light lunch or snack for under £2 and a very decently sized lunch all for under £3.

The cafe also has a very laidback feel. The kitchen is completely open and the friendly volunteers and masses of students give the place a very sociable feel; it’s definitely somewhere you could go on your own and get chatting to people scattered around the various tables.

As well as serving up delicious lunches, the cafe also has a very strong ethical practice. Not only are all ingredients environmentally friendly, fair trade and vegetarian or vegan, but they also take all the surplus food to the Big Issue office in Stokes Croft and donate money to charities.

Find Fairtrade Cafe on Facebook for updates on the week’s menu and make sure you get there early for a seat!

Simon Munn

Every Friday from 12pm until 2pm, a student-run cafe based in the Multi-Faith Chaplaincy serves up Fairtrade vegetarian and vegan fare at incredibly reasonable prices.

Epigram decided to hold their last food writers’ meeting there and so a number of contributors sampled the food.

The verdict was unanimous: in our opinion, this is certainly the best place to get lunch out around the university on a Friday for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the food was delicious. The soup was thick and hearty, perfect for a blustery afternoon in the depths of November. This was accompanied by a tabbouleh that was delicate and healthy and brownies finished the whole thing off. With lunch you can also get a cup of high quality Fairtrade tea or coffee.

What is astonishing about the Fairtrade Cafe is the value

30.11.2015

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4 Drinks to make you MERRY this Christmas Mulled Wine

Ingredients: ½ bottle red wine 1 cinnamon stick (broken in half - 1 for each glass) 1 orange and lemon, sliced 30g/1 oz sugar 1. Put all ingredients, minus the cinnamon, into a pan.

2. Gently heat the wine, orange, lemon and sugar until sugar dissolves.

3. Strain into heatproof glasses and serve.

Eggnog

This creamy Christmas cocktail isn’t the healthiest of beverages, but it will warm your insides with deliciousness, as well as getting you a little tipsy. Best served with a mince pie (or two). (Serves 4) Ingredients: 40g golden caster sugar 3 egg yolks 1 can of condensed milk 1 tsp of vanilla essence 80ml brandy

Homemade Edible Christmas Gift Ideas

Choosing Christmas gifts for your loved ones can be a stressful and difficult task. You want to give them something meaningful that will make their eyes light up with delight when they pull back the wrapping paper, but thinking of something original and unique that is within your student budget can be tricky. Homemade, edible Christmas goodies go down a treat as gifts, especially if they’re made with love and care and presented in a pretty little Christmas bag/box with a red ribbon. Charlotte Wass shares her top suggestions for gastro gifts this Christmas…

Linzer (German Christmas Biscuits)

1. Put the sugar in a saucepan with 75ml water. Gently stir until all the sugar has dissolved.

2. Cool and leave to chill.

3. Beat the yolks and vanilla extract until they are smooth.

4. Add sugar syrup (now cooled), brandy and condensed milk.

5. Pour into a large jug and chill for two hours.

6. Drink within 24 hours!

Hot Spiced Cider

Being in Bristol, we have all grown to love the bubbly beverage that is cider. This spicy take on classic cider is the perfect potion to combat those wintry nights. (Serves 4)

Rum Hot Chocolate

Cheers to the genius who decided to combine the nations two favourite pastimes - drinking hot chocolate and getting drunk! This divine drink will be much-loved by teenagers and grandparents alike. Nigella Lawson shows us how it’s done below…

Ingredients: 2 cups semi-skimmed milk 4 oz good quality semi-sweet chocolate 2 tsp honey 1 cinnamon stick 1 tsp brown sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 tbsp dark rum (more if required)

Oreo Christmas Truffles These delectable little balls of delight are super simple and you only need four ingredients: Oreos bashed into crumbs (200g), cream cheese (100g), vanilla extract (1 tsp) and cooking chocolate (200g). Simply mix the Oreos, cream cheese and vanilla essence together in a bowl, then roll the mixture into small balls and chill in the fridge for one hour. Melt the chocolate and dip your chilled Oreo balls in the melted chocolate. Then put them back in the fridge. To finish off you can either sprinkle some Oreo crumbs on or drizzle melted chocolate of a different colour over the top. This recipe makes about 12 truffles.

We all know that Germany does Christmas pretty well - the German Christmas market in Bristol is evidence enough for this.

These Christmas biscuits are a German classic and are really delicious. Mix 280g flour, ½ packet baking powder, 180g butter, 120g icing sugar, 1 tbsp vanilla extract, 1 pinch cinnamon, 3 tbsp milk and 100g ground almonds together in a bowl to form a dough, then cool in the fridge for 2 hours. Roll out your dough so it is approximately 1cm thick and use cookie cutters to cut out your biscuits. On one half of the cut-outs make a smaller hole in the centre of the biscuits; you’re meant to use a thimble but as this isn’t the sort of thing most students have to hand, you can use anything of a similar shape (perhaps the lid from a tube of tomato puree or go free hand). Bake for 10-15 minutes at 150°C. Once slightly cooled, dip each biscuit in icing sugar to coat.

Spread a layer of jam (usually raspberry) over the biscuit without the hole and then top with a biscuit with a hole cut out. These cookies are really simple, but taste divine!

Raspberry Vodka You need to be organised with this one! It’s best to go to a ‘Pick Your Own’ farm during the summer and gather 500g of fresh raspberries, so that you have half a year to let your vodka mature.

If you don’t have this long then you can leave your vodka for 2-3 weeks, but the longer the better. All you have to do is mix the washed raspberries with 200g of sugar and 2 litres of vodka.

Store in a cool dark place and shake every day until the sugar has completely dissolved. Strain the vodka through a sieve lined with coffee filter papers back into the bottles. Finish off with a handmade label and you’re all set.

Snowy Rocky Road This Christmassy take on the classic rocky road is, in my opinion, even better than the original. Melt 400g of white chocolate and leave to cool for a few minutes. While the chocolate is melting/ cooling, break up one packet of Oreos into bitesize pieces and cut some glacé cherries into quarters. Mix the chocolate, Oreos and cherries together and then stir in some mini marshmallows. Pour the mixture into a greaseproof-paper lined tin and add a few extra marshmallows, Oreo pieces and cherries on the top. Pop in the fridge overnight and then wake up the next morning to the best rocky road your friends and family are ever going to have tasted.

Charlotte Wass

1. Break chocolate into small pieces.

2. Put chocolate into saucepan and add the milk.

3. Add cinnamon stick, honey and stir in sugar.

4. Heat the ingredients gently until the chocolate melts.

5. Add the vanilla and mix with a small hand whisk.

6. Add a spoonful of rum.

7. Add the rest of rum and more sugar if necessary.

8. Take out cinnamon sticks and pour.

Ellie Jacobs

Charlotte Wass

Ingredients: 1l cider Handful of cloves (whole) 1 orange, peel only 2 cinnamon sticks 4 tbsp honey 2 tsp ground allspice 1. Put all the ingredients in a bowl.

2. Heat and gently stir occasionally for around 15 mins.

3. When hot, strain into heatproof cups.

Charlotte Wass

This warm wintry treasure is, let’s face it, the only reason we brave the sleet and wintry winds to make it to the pub.

I like my favourite Christmas drink infused with lots of cinnamon and sugar. (Serves 2-3)

Editor Ben Duncan-Duggal whatson@epigram.org.uk

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30.11.2015

Flikr/:nirudh Koul ttkonline.com

‘Why does it always rain on me?’ You’d be justified for asking this given Bristol’s recent weather. But fear not - all these events are inside, even the ones which are so frickin big they’re gonna blow the roof off.

When was the last time you were in a club and not under the influence of something? Never, probably.

That’s understandable, because nightclubs are built to be hammered in – they’re sweaty rooms filled with strangers listening to terrible music, which no sane (i.e. sober) person would ever think of setting foot in.

The good news is that this could be your first time. If you can’t dance sober to Disco, Funk and Soul, you can’t dance sober.

4th Dec BUMP Christmas Rollerdisco

Being drunk is fun. Dancing is fun. Dancing when drunk is fun. Dancing, drunk, on roller skates, is fun. Enough said, really.

Trinity Centre, 9pm-2am, tickets available from Bristol Ticket Shop, £10 including skates.

Flickr: Heinrich Klaffs

Flickr: amyfallon

Credit: amyfalllon

Basement 45, 10pm-3am, tickets available online for £4.

12th Dec EATS EVERYTHING ALL NIGHT LONG @ The Small Horse Social Club Eats Everything, one of Bristol’s best musical productions ever, has ‘moved back to Bristol after 6 months in Ibiza’. He’s decided to come back to earth by playing an all-night set at the relatively tiny Small Horse Social Club (formally the Big Chill).

Such a formidable name should not be missed in this intimate a setting, and it’ll be a great chance to see whether House music suits the setting of the usually more Jazz-orientated Small Horse.

Credit: digBoston

This discussion is hosted by Anyone’s Child, a group formed by relatives of those who have died as a result of taking drugs. Perhaps counter-intuitively, they are calling for the ‘legalisation of all drugs’.

The presence on the panel of several members of this group, as well as a former undercover police officer who is now pro-legalisation, should make it all the more interesting.

Redland Church, 6pm, tickets available online for a donation.

Credit: Garry Knight

THIS WEEK’S EVENT OF THE CENTURY 9th Dec Trip The Light: Disco, Funk, Soul & D’n’B. Flickr: Dance 4 Love

3rd Dec Drugs can be dangerous. But does banning them cause more harm than good? (Panel Discussion)

9pm, tickets available online.

Got suggestions? Email whatson@epigram.org.uk with your ideas or to be featured in the paper

getting women active THIS GIRL CAN LAUNCHES THIS WEEK!

THE ENCHANTED FOREST

official end of term party FESTIVE JUMPERS

we're selling xmas jumpers bristolsu.org.uk

MAKE A CHANGE

your chance to win ÂŁ20k!

Ge t lost i n t h e

ENCHANTED

FOREST 8 things you’ll miss if you miss your end of term party On 11 December Bristol students will be celebrating the end of term by transforming The Students' Union Building into a super club. You do NOT want to miss this. Here are just a few reasons why:

Your favourite tunes - all night long Because with so much going on, there really will be something for everyone!

All the best student nights under one roof

The most magical décor you will see all year, and

Seriously, there will be rooms hosted by: Caramello, Shak Out, Groove sessions, Compete & Burst radio.

Mind blowing light tricks

A silent disco

Those of you who have attended any gigs at the Anson Rooms recently will be familiar with some of the AWESOME stuff that can be done with our new, state of the art set up.

The cheapest festive drinks in town

Why is dancing like an idiot so much more fun when you’re wearing ridiculous headphones?

possibly ever…

Star splashed clearings, snow covered forests, fantastical creatures and enchanted archways all dreamt up by the minds that have worked on events like Just Jack and Love Saves the Day.

…Including a gingerbread house!

A flipping gingerbread house. (Can’t guarantee that this will be made from actual gingerbread)

YOUR end of term party This event is going to be big. And it’s going to be exclusively for Bristol students. Hundreds of Bristol students all letting their hair down together. Doesn’t get much better than that.

visit bristol.org.uk to get your ticket before they're gone!

feeling festive?

Buy a Christmas jumper for only £12!

This Girl Can

Sport and Student Development Officer Steph Harris tells us why the This Girl Can campaign is important to her.

At the beginning of 2015 Sport England launched the This Girl Can campaign to encourage more women to become physically active. Currently, only 31% of women are active nationally compared to 41% of men.

During the week of 30 November, Bristol SU will be taking part in the national BUCS This Girl Can campaign to promote female participation at University, where 53% of female students are active compared to 63% of male students. We will be running a special program of events throughout for those who identify as women to take part in.

Not only are female students less likely than their male counterparts to be active they are also significantly less likely to participate in competitive and team sport. Several of the sessions are introductions to team activities.

Sport, in my case rowing, played a huge role in making my time as a PhD student so enjoyable and worthwhile. Sport helped develop my closest set of friends, transformed me from a timid 22 year old with no experience of being active to a confident (sort of) adult. It taught me to find fulfilment not just through personal achievement but in empowering others. It wasn't all about winning, it was about finding a community. So during This Girl Can week try something new, and find where you belong!

What would you do with £20,000?

Set up a puppy therapy centre? Introduce napping pods on campus?

Make A Change is one of the main channels through which you can improve your University experience. If there is something that you want to change, or a campaign that you'd like to run, your idea could be an online form away from becoming a reality. You can now apply for up to £20,000 to help your realise your ideas.

Pick up yours in store or online today

shop.bristolsu.org.uk

The Basket Your Student Union Shop

Every year, Bristol graduates donate more than £1.2 million to the University and £20,000 is spent on student-led initiatives through Make A Change. In the past this has gone towards water fountains on campus, more accessible sports programmes and free yoga. Last year’s winning idea was to introduce a bike hire scheme. This lead to the creation of Balloon Bikes: the Bristol SU scheme which allows students to hire bikes for just £50 a year.

If you'd like to discuss your idea first, we'd love to hear from you – please email us at make-a-change@bristol.ac.uk

WHAT'S ON FEATURED EVENT Student Council 6:30pm - 8pm, Tuesday 1 December Anson Rooms Student Council gives you an opportunity to discuss issues affecting your experience at Bristol.

Motion 1 - Crossing at Woodland Road/ Tyndall Park Road Renewal Motion 2 - Red Card to the Green Paper Motion 3 - JCR Autonomy Motion 4 - Funding for interuniversity competitions outside of BUCS Motion 5 - Supporting Student Support Services Motion 6 - Transport for Langford

december

Tuesday 1. Peace of Mind society take over the Balloon Bar. 8pm – 11pm A Christmas themed meet and greet with Peace of Mind society.

Tuesday 8. Student Leader Conference 5:30pm - 8:30pm, Bristol SU Free skills training on everything from emotional intelligence to the environment. Open to all students who want to develop themselves outside of their degree. FREE Pizza.

Wednesday 2. This Girl Can main event.

5:30pm – 6:30pm, AR5, Bristol SU Work up a sweat with this free class with Cuba-tone and THE REAL ZUMBA. Make sure you get there early, first come first in!

Thursday 3. Make Uni democracy work better for PHD life. 5:30pm – 7:30pm, Wallace Room, Bristol SU A workshop for any Postgraduate Research students who feel frustrated and want to help design a new model of democracy that works for you.

Friday 4. Why Is My Curriculum White?

6:30pm – 9pm, Pugsley Lecture Theatre, Queen’s Building Launch event for Why Is My Curriculum White. These sessions will be centred around questioning the Eurocentricity of many of our courses.

Friday 4. Karaoke & street food 8pm onwards, Balloon Bar Local street foodies BEats feed us with a different theme of food each week.

Plus get up and sing us a tune from our Karoake stage.

Friday 11. OFFICIAL END OF TERM PARTY: The Enchanted Forest 8pm - 2am, Bristol SU On 11 December Bristol students will be celebrating the end of term by transforming The Students' Union building into a super club. You do NOT want to miss this.

For more information on all upcoming events see bristolsu.org.uk/events

Epigram/ Sarah Newey

C U LT U R E

Epigram

30.11.2015

Arts

Editor: Mattie Brignal

Deputy Editor: Ed Grimble

Online Editor: Amy Stewart

arts@epigram.org.uk

egrimble@epigram.org.uk

astewart@epigram.org.uk

@EpigramArts

The human experience of the city; past, present and future

Following the hugely successful Festival of the Future City, Ed Grimble ruminates on the experience of urban life and how our cities must adjust to meet the demands of the future.

Flickr/ Ed Webster

‘What strange phenomena we find in our cities, all we need to do is stroll about with our eyes open’, wrote Charles Baudelaire of his experience of life in the urban sprawl.

How has our approach to the urban space developed over the last two centuries? What does the city offer its inhabitants, both on a societal and individual level? And how best should we synthesise our present experiences of urban life with those of past thinkers to address the prospect of how to craft our cities of the future? The questions that arise when one considers the human experience of the urban space are as fascinating as they are multitudinous. As part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas (tirelessly championed by Andrew Kelly), the Festival of the Future City, which ran from Tuesday 17th until Friday 20th November, sought to tackle some of these issues in a fantastically broad programme of talks and debates. Tuesday evening’s launch: a lecture by Sir Mark Walport, chief scientific adviser to the government, was followed by a panel debate featuring urban planner Brent Toderian, writers Olivia Laing and Lauren Elkin, and Gabriella Gómez-Mont from Mexico City Lab. All are clearly tuned in to the urban zeitgeist and indeed many of the points raised morphed into motifs that recurred in other discussions and talks throughout the week.

Walport raised an issue found by a recent survey by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), that whilst 47% of Britain’s adults recognise that cities will become more important to the UK economy in the next halfcentury, the same proportion also fear that cities will become less ‘liveable’ over the same time period. Sombre reading, in which the city emerges as a growing, but increasingly hostile, entity. It is integral that cities of the future do not concretise this hypothesis, but are more liveable, as the benefits of this are countless.

As Ike Zimmerman (played by Jonathan Pryce) gnomically utters in the 2014 film ‘Listen Up, Philip’, the city is too often a place with ‘a creative energy, but not a productive energy’. If this trend were to be reversed, then I imagine we would be astonished at how enriching the urban space can be for its inhabitants.

Novelist and social commentator Will Self, who gave a walking tour of Bristol as well as a talk on the late writer J. G. Ballard (to whom Self was a close friend) as part of the Festival, is someone acutely aware of the role of the artist as inhabitant of the urban space. Think Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Charles Baudelaire’s Spleen de

Bristol’s Stokes Croft is at the centre of the debate surrounding gentrification in the city

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Paris, Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners; the writer as walker of the city has yielded some truly brilliant works. Self ’s ‘Psychogeography’ columns for The Independent, as well as his writing detailing his ‘airport walks’, very much keeps alive the spirit of the modern flâneur: one who ambulates about the city space, the

Bristol’s architecture embodies the very Bristolian mindset of not waiting to be told what to do. walker as artist. In the age of the bus and the taxi cab, our understanding of cities can become increasingly atomised. Think of how many times you have heard someone, talking about London, for example, comment that whilst they are familiar with locations A and B, they would have no idea how to navigate from one to the other unaided on foot. Too many of us engage with our cities as fragmented microcosms, neglecting to really explore the interconnected whole.

I have no doubt that a return to eotechnical

WHO

Ed Grimble

WHAT

Mierle Laderman Ukeles Artist Born 1939

Flickr : Salim Viriji

Mierle Laderman Ukeles is an artist who was born in 1939. She studied History and International Studies, and, perhaps a legacy of her Barnard College experience, her art explores gender roles and interrogates the value of labour. In her 1969 ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art’, she tellingly self-identifies, acknowledging the multitudes of expectation: ‘I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. (Random order.)’

modes of transport, those that are more ‘bodily’, will help greatly with the task of shaping liveable cities. Auto-centric ones, where the car is king, are certainly less pleasant places to be, and will remain so. Of course, the drive (pun not intended) towards green and sustainable cities compounds this.

Bristol can, I think, be very positive about the direction in which it is headed in this respect.

In his annual address, mayor George Ferguson announced that the city’s target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 40% by 2020 had already been met. Bristol’s year as European Green Capital is certainly simultaneously both a recognition and catalyst of the city’s continued work towards sustainability.

The aforementioned sense of atomisation that can occur in cities manifests itself, in the most extreme cases, in the crippling isolation which both individuals and whole demographics can potentially suffer. The word ‘gentrification’ recurs often in these discussions; it has become a symptom of cities wherein rich and poor become increasingly divided as money enters areas and puts increasing pressure on local people. Areas around Stokes Croft and St. Paul’s in the east of Bristol are particularly clear examples of this phenomenon. However, whilst the effects of

gentrification risk throwing into even sharper relief the acute problem of poverty from which Bristol suffers (as Ferguson said recently in an interview with John Harris, ‘if you’re poor in Bristol, you’re really, really stretched’), one must always show restraint in lampooning what can be a beneficial process. As Toderian (himself a former urban planner in Vancouver) said, gentrification does at its simplest level represent socio-economic progress in cities, a fact often overlooked in favour of exclusively using the term synonymously with issues of loss of integrity, destruction of local culture, and suffering of the poor. It is a complex issue facing our cities.

Bristol does, however, have a great amount going for it as a city. It is a wonderfully palimpsestic, almost geological city, where architectural styles from the perpendicular gothic of St. Mary Redcliffe church, through to the Palladian styles of the Bristol Museum and Victoria Rooms sit side by side within the city. Buildings like Colston Hall, where the 19th century Byzantine styling of the main building marries with the modern plate glass extension, typify this phenomenon of urban architecture. Jonathan Meades, in conversation with John Harris as part of the Festival of the Future City, praised Bristol as being symbolic of a completely anti-totalitarian designed city. Its aesthetics are mixed, unordered, and eccentric- the city’s architecture embodies the very Bristolian mindset of not waiting to be told what to do.

The mayor raised the point in his annual address, closing the festival, that Bristol must strive to make use of its huge pool of talentcreative, political, and entrepreneurial- in order to make sure its future is a bright, clean, and fair one; and to continue the efforts to make this city an internationally renowned and admired place to live and work.

Four days of debate and discussion is a drop in the ocean within the vast swathes of highly complex work that has been produced about how we experience the city, and the best ways we can exploit the potential that urbanity offers us. However, the Festival of the Future City certainly engaged with these issues in an intellectual and thought-provoking way. and should make us all think about the kind of changes that are needed, both here in Bristol and beyond, so that we can successfully craft the more liveable, more sustainable, fairer future cities in which we all desire to live.

In the ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art’, Mierle Laderman Ukeles states that ‘[e]verything I say is Art, is Art’: Laderman Ukeles has been creating conceptual art around the subject of labour since the late 1960s. In 1977 she became the first and only artist in residence at the New York City Sanitation Department, a role she continues today.

Epigram

30.11.2015

37

Michael Dean’s art in situ, in Bristol Maria Leonard visits Dean’s latest installation on Bristol’s harbourside and explores the practice of site-specific art Michael Dean (artist) - going against Wittgenstein and every concept introduced to you in an English language class such as ‘legibility’, ‘sentence structure’, and ‘proper words in a good enough order’ - has put up a fly-posted (decorated) hoarding around a building under construction on the harbourside down the road from the Arnolfini. Art gurus have called it a site-specific, typographically slanted (illegible) sculpture of the word ‘now’ (four times over, capitalised).

Site-specific art is, broadly speaking, art which is in a relationship (i.e. can’t be without) a particular location. For instance, it means that this art could look like a bit of wooden hoarding, or could indeed be a bit of wooden hoarding.

In the most extreme sense site-specific art can be made out of that location, like a formation of rocks in a rockery or a handprint on cementor the wooden hoarding of a building under construction. The idea of art like this is simplechildlike in a way- as its actions and locations and mud are the media themselves that are used to create, to say, to write.

When I set out to see the piece, having seen some of Dean’s work at the Arnolfini before (‘The Introduction of Muscle’, 2013), I was anticipating a sculpture which looked like a cardboard cutout of a cardboard box or something similar.

What I actually found were construction works and some boys attempting to skateboard up on to wooden hoarding. (With hindsight I can now see that these boys do not just seem optimistic in their ability to overcome gravity but are also interrogators of what it means to experience art.) I walked around aimlessly in search of Dean’s installation, trying to get into the building (the one under construction) in which I was told I would find the art. I nearly gave up hope when I saw a very small and very official Art Notice Explanation rectangle which told me that this hoarding (upon which the skateboarders were skating) was the artwork.

At this I laughed out loud and art which makes you laugh out loud is art which must have been in some way worth making. Except, Dean didn’t make this, the ‘intersection between the public of the harbourside and the

“

evolving building behind’ did. The way this bit of wooden hoarding can have a press release and be reviewed here is because of the rest of the scaffolding, the building and the harbourside

Art which makes you laugh out loud is art which must have been, in some way, worth making

and me happening on it. (Or, it was happening on me.)

The work spells out sculpturally, abstractly, ‘NOW NOW NOW NOW’. In this sense (the good old-fashioned one), just these ‘words’ (demarcated from actual, non-art words) written on a bit of hoarding would have had a clearer meaning. But, meaning gets washed away with

the rest of the ‘work’ as it stands out in the rain, guarding metal scaffolding works (the difference here is the quotation marks). The black official Art Notice Explanation rectangle tells me the hoarding must be touched with the eyes rather than merely seen with the eyes- but I do not know what this means. This mountain range-esque bit of hoarding feels like not-soprofessionally done wallpapering. This is okay because it does not really matter if I do not know what it means. Instead, I stood back and saw it blend in with the city and the scaffolding and the skateboarding children. It wasn’t mud or rock formations, but it was site-specific. It became intrinsically art as I walked past it, as I felt it. It needed the participation of the viewer. A bit like as if I had been looking into a microscope all this time, I could then make my surroundings unmagnified. ‘NOW NOW NOW NOW (Working Title)’ was just another part of the Bristol cityscape.

Maria Leonard

Morgan & West: time travelling Victorian magicians Serena Basra interviews Rhys Morgan and Robert West who brought their show ‘Parlour Tricks’ to Bristol the fact we don’t look like any other magicians, if that makes sense. We look like the public consciousness idea of a magician rather than how the real human being magicians, modern magicians, actually look. We’re the archetype.

SB: Did you ever get, say, a golden nugget of advice or have something happen to you that made you realise you wanted to pursue magic as a profession?

WHERE If, before choosing Bristol University to pursue higher education, you were working in maintenance in New York City, maybe you might be personally familiar with Mierle Laderman Ukeles. ‘Touch Sanitation Performance’ was an artwork (197780/2007) which involved the artist shaking hands with each maintenance worker in the city along with a ‘thank you for keeping New York City alive’. Though Laderman Ukeles is based in New York, the Arnolfini hosted her first comprehensive solo UK exhibition in 2013. The 1969 ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art’ is available to read online.

Flick Morris PR

Everyone knows that time-travelling is impossible, right? However, this weekend in ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ bar the magic duo of Morgan and West transported us back to the Victorian Ages. The comically mismatched pair performed an array of mind-boggling tricks which ranged from mind-reading to escapology.

Their performance thrived on theatricality and sleight of hand; with members of the audience often being invited on stage to see their magic up close. There was an underlying silliness to the show which worked well, as the often cynical West continuously attempted to foil the tricks of Morgan. The skilfully directed show was superb at bringing out everyone’s inner child and, if the confused conversations that took place at the interval were anything to go by, the magic duo truly tricked us all. Magic shows may not be something that people frequent often nowadays but if the performance of Morgan and West is anything to go by then magic and mystery clearly still has a universal appeal...

SB: So do you feel that dressing as Victorian magicians helps give your show a certain edge that makes it more appealing?

M &W: Well essentially it all came from the fact we quite wanted to dress up and we wanted to be different. Most magicians are jeans, jacket, and a guy in a suit. So we wanted to be as far from that as we possibly could. Weirdly the direction we took it means we are very far from standard magicians whilst looking exactly how people expect magicians to look. We’ve got coats and top hats so we look exactly like magicians. Despite

M &W: Not really, no. Although, we always wanted to perform. Rhys has a degree in Physics and I [Robert] have a degree in Chemistry but from a young age I think we both just wanted to perform. We both liked being centre of attention.

So we wanted to be performers and this is actually great for that. We met doing student theatre and we had a couple of ideas. Like at one point we thought that we were going to do a sort of sketch-comedy troupe where the troupe was puppets. We had ideas then we started doing magic. Magic was the one that, kind of, clicked.

We were just like: “Oh, I think we’re quite good at this for some reason!” We started off very sombre and very austere and very like ‘the truths of the universe’. And then there were little nuggets of silliness. That’s when everyone was like, that bit, that bit is you. The rest, not you. And so from that we went let’s just be silly and do a really silly show. Not stupid, just silly. We really enjoy it, its fun to be silly. Like this is a bar but we often have kids at our shows and we have a show specifically for kids. So we are always family friendly in that we never do anything that kids can’t watch. So the stuff we are doing here is like seven plus, eight plus like the mind-reading, our kids show doesn’t have any mind-reading in it and that is aimed at sort of five to seven year olds. The problem is that you hit a certain age and you get 12 year olds who are like “Ew this isn’t our show” and it’s always good after like 45 minutes when they’ll start cracking smiles and we’re like: “Yes, got you! You do like us, this is fun, stop being miserable!” We do work very hard to be family

WHEN Laderman Ukeles first began making waves in the art world with her aforementioned ‘Maintenance Art Manifesto’ proposal for an exhibition “CARE”’, written in 1969. During the 1970s, many of her works focused on maintenance of urban and public spaces, notably the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut. Her ‘Touch Sanitation’ began in 1977, and is seen as a major landmark in the history of performance art.

friendly. Even little things like the drink we do with the bottle and the glass. Traditionally you do that with a wine bottle but that bottle says dandelion and burdock because we don’t want to perform with a wine bottle and glamourise alcohol to kids. So we work very hard to not play down to children but make our shows accessible to them.

SB:: Have you guys been around exploring the city much? Did you have time to see much of Bristol before your performance?

M&W: I [Rhys] did used to spend a lot of time in the city about 5 or 6 years ago so I know it reasonably well. But mostly we drive in, we unpack, we do the show, we pack up, and we drive away again. That’s what being a performer is like. It just takes so long. We arrived here at 5 o’clock to get the show ready and we won’t be leaving here until 10.30/10.45 and then it is two hours until we get home and we have got a show tomorrow afternoon at 2pm. Somewhere where we have to be there at 11am which means leaving at 9am which means getting up at 7am to get in the car so you never see anywhere. You see everything from the side of a windshield.

The majority of our show is driving, we spend more time driving than performing. But we really enjoyed the show tonight, thank you massively for coming and we do hope that you enjoyed it!

Serena Basra

WHY Politics runs through Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s lifework; she explained her work ‘has always been fraught’ to the observer.com in 2013. A major theme in her work is the low-paid labour of maintenance work, (which she puts forward as an art), alongside the continuing unpaid labour of women. ‘It’s OK to Have a Babysitter’ (1974) crossexamines the value of childcare; the labour of women is a politic woven within the contemporary second wave feminism with which Laderman Ukeles engaged. The personal is political, for Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and us all.

Rachel May

Epigram | 30.11.2015

39

Are modernised adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays a good thing?

Hannah Wakefield and Miriam Partington lock horns over whether recontextualising the Bard’s works leads to dramatic treats or watered-down travesties and playwrights, modernising and adapting too. Most notably the story of Romeo and Juliet was first written by the Italian Luigi da Porta in the 1530s, in a tale about Romeo and Giuletta and the feuding families of Montecchi and Capelletti. Similarly Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida is taken directly from Chaucer’s great poem ‘Troilus and Creseyde’ written in 1385.

Romeo and Juliet is arguably the most famous of Shakespeare’s plays, with notable adaptations such as Baz Lurman’s 1996 film Romeo and Juliet, and the musical West Side Story. Whilst Lurman’s film modernises

YES

the play in a rather unique manner, West Side Story completely recontextualises it, setting it on the Upper West Side of 1950s New York City in the midst of gang warfare. Whilst Lurman’s film may be more true to the original text, West Side Story is easier to digest. It has a distinctly non-academic quality to it that makes it both enjoyable and very accessible.

There is no fear of missing anything, plot or otherwise, something entirely possible to do if reading or watching a performance of Shakespeare’s original work, which often requires quite a rigorous reading to avoid missing the artistic details and flair of the work.

“ Spreading knowledge of and appreciation for Shakespeare’s work can only be a positive thing

Flickr/ Michelle B.

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Clare Danes and Leonrado DiCaprio in Baz Lurman’s 1996 adaptation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Sam Wannamaker’s new Globe Theatre has remained faithful to the original

compared to the original. Although it used Shakespeare’s original verse and prose, rather bizarrely it featured an illicit relationship between an unusually aggressive and poorly characterised Tybalt and Juliet’s mother, Lady Capulet, in what I can only assume was a misguided attempt at innovation. Even further from what Shakespeare could have ever thought his work would inspire was a production I took part in whilst at school based on The Taming of the Shrew and set in the context of the television show Take Me Out. Whilst this was undoubtedly no masterpiece it was a great deal of fun both for those involved and those who saw the play, spreading knowledge and appreciation for Shakespeare’s work, which can only be a positive thing.

It is, without a doubt, far better that people are able to experience Shakespeare in some form. Not only is his work some of the best ever created, but it also forms such a significant part of the UK’s history and culture that the more people are able to appreciate it the better and modernised and recontextualised adaptations tend to be less daunting, and accessible beyond the realms of academia.

Hannah Wakefield

The modern adaptation, in its pursuit to make Shakespeare’s plays more accessible and universal, creates simplified versions that lose the essence and complexity of their original texts

that moralises on suicide at the beginning of the play, it perhaps acts as a device to foreshadow Hamlet’s degenerative state of mind which, if you take his madness at face value, characterises the latter half of the play. In this sense, such an obsession over ‘authenticity’ is perhaps overpedantic- if there is an effective artistic outcome of altering aspects of performance, I don’t see why producers cannot experiment to a degree.

Ironically, Shakespeare is so thoroughly infused into the life and culture of every British person, that often his pioneering plots are lost to the modern adaptation.

Some fans of West Side Story, the 1957 Broadway Musical, for example, may not recognise its parallels to Romeo and Juliet; where the feud between Capulet and Montague is relocated to the world of New York’s teenage street gangs in a conflict between Jets and Sharks. At this point, I’d just like to clarify that I do not pretend to be an authority on Shakespeare, but I can’t help but feeling that the modern adaptation, in its pursuit to make Shakespeare’s plays more accessible and universal, create simplified versions that lose the

NO

Flickr/ bethelparkbobb_o

It would seem that every director who identifies himself as an ‘artist’ wants to have a go at reinterpreting Shakespeare’s prized works into modern adaptations. Whilst some innovation is essential in keeping texts from becoming obsolete, producers often succeed in not only eschewing the original themes and messages which characterise Shakespeare’s plays, but transform his textual mastery into obscurity.

Take Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of As You Like It as a case in point. Though usually held in high esteem as one of the most successful re-interpreters of Shakespeare’s plays, Branagh’s rather ostentatious choice to transform As You Like It’s setting from a French court to nineteenth century Japan seems somewhat misguided. Perhaps I’m just missing the point about the artistic purpose behind such relocation, but the Japanese setting appears both irrelevant and absurd, rendering Branagh’s attempt at radicalism completely unremarkable.

It appears that ‘innovation for innovation’s sake’ frequently characterises modern adaptations of Shakespeare, which serves to warp original plot lines, themes and messages, thus distancing the text from its original art. The uproar over the production of Hamlet, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, however, reveals some evidence of traditionalists still striving to preserve Shakespeare’s original text and structure. The decision of Cumberbatch’s producer at the Barbican Theatre to place Hamlet’s existential soliloquy, with its renowned ‘To be or not to be’, at the beginning of Act One, was met by many critics as sheer blasphemy. By placing a soliloquy

Many modern films, including Rom-coms and chick flicks, are based on Shakespearean plays, often without the audience even being aware of it. The 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You draws its plot from Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew, a hugely popular film watched and loved by a generation. Although purists may argue that the watching of the film and seeing the original play performed with religious accuracy to the original are incomparable experiences, but surely it is better that such fantastic work is experienced, on whatever level of academic vigour, rather than not at all.

Undoubtedly there are adaptations of questionable quality. Several years ago I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Yvonne Arnaud theatre that was certainly nothing

Flickr/ Pablo Sanchez

The works of Shakespeare are widely considered to be some of the greatest literature to have ever been written. His plays in particular cover an enormous range of topics that beautifully, and often comically, detail aspects of life and the human experience.

Part of what is appealing about the plays is that they are still entirely relatable today, four hundred years after they were written. You could argue that this makes the need for modern adaptions obsolete, yet Shakespeare himself on many occasions took ideas and inspiration from other authors

‘West Side Story’ has proved to be enormously successful. But has something been lost in translation?

essence and complexity of their original texts.

Returning to my original point, then, it is essential for texts to be reinterpreted to ensure they don’t stagnate and are kept alive in our vernacular. Innovation should, however, be accompanied with fidelity to the mastery of the original text and the essential themes and messages of Shakespeare’s plays, which are at the core of his brilliance. In the case of Kenneth Branagh’s reimagining of As You Like It, innovation cannot always work as it serves to mask such elements of the Shakespearean

play. Whilst some audiences enjoy radical alterations of Shakespeare’s familiar plays, it is my view that in a modern society, some still want to witness his art celebrated in its authentic, organic state. However, with Shakespeare being so ingrained in our global culture, there is always room for innovation, and to an extent, his plays should be treated as an evolving art and not an artefact in a museum.

Miriam Partington

Epigram

30.11.2015

Film & TV

@epigramfilm Editor: Ella Kemp

Deputy Editor: Kate Wyver

Online Editor: Georgia O’Brien

ekemp@epigram.org.uk

kwyver@epigram.org.uk

gobrien@epigram.org.uk

@ella_kemp

@KateWyver

@_georgiaobrien

The fight for film’s survival: filmmaking in the digital era In the run up to Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, Max Tyler debates the conflict between digital and stock filmmaking.

There’s a war going on. Not a war of religion, rights, poverty or suffering. This is a war on a much smaller scale; it surrounds us, hidden in plain sight. This is a war of indoctrination, financial realism and enthusiasts. This is the war for film’s survival.

It was the summer of 2013 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.Sat in a dark room in the hills of Hollywood,internationally acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino was to be taught one final lesson.Seeking technological inspiration for his upcoming Western, The Hateful Eight, Tarantino was taken deep into the archives of Panavision’s global headquarters to their private screening room.

Executives were keen to impress. Tarantino was shown Ben-Hur’s iconic chariot race, but with a twist: this Ben-Hur was presented using 70mm, Ultra Panavision technology. With its doubled frame width, expansive capturing ability and grainy identity originating from the film stock, Tarantino was hooked on this format of filmmaking. The seed was planted and a solider was born.

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The availibility of film and even our knowledge of its existence is slowly dwindling into oblivion.

Though a seemingly irrelevant tale, this day at Panavision might just have proved a turning point in film’s fight for survival. Though a lifetime advocate of stock filmmaking, the Ultra Panavision experience convinced Tarantino that this process must be protected - and he began to plan its revival.

Off his own back, he equipped over 200 theatres in the US with 70mm film projectors (required to screen films reels captured on 70mm film stock) ready for his roadshow presentation of The Hateful Eight rolling across the country this holiday season.

At this stage, it seems apt to address what I mean when I say ‘stock filmmaking’. I am referring to photography carried out with small strips of shiny plastic track, often reeled and stored in circular silver tins and presented using purpose-built projectors.

Captured usually on industry-standard 35mm, but also available in widths such as Suffragette’s 16mm and The Hateful Eight’s 70mm, all motion pictures used film stock as a method of shooting before George Lucas’Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999, which resulted in the initiation of the total digital revolution by 2005.

This consisted of all studios - and thus all cinemas - transferring almost exclusively to digital technology, making it highly unlikely that you’ve ever seen a film actually projected on film.

And what do I refer to when I talk about film’s fight for survival? Stock filmmaking is by no means a dying art. Last month’s Spectre, J. J. Abrams’ Star Wars reboot The Force Awakens, Jurassic World and the upcoming superhero behemoth Batman vs.

Superman: Dawn of Justice were all, or are to be, shot using 35mm.

Yet since the introduction of digital cinematography (capturing and storing footage in pixels rather than on acetate) the lack of film projectors worldwide has meant that all motion pictures, in order to be presentable at multiplexes, must be transferred into a digital copy. As a result, the availability of film and even our knowledge of its existence is slowly dwindling into oblivion.

But who’s to blame? In this battle, ‘blame’ is a hard word to attribute to any one thing. For example, it is hard to blame studio executives for wanting to board the digital revolution in order to reduce costs of storing, transporting and nurturing film stock.

It is also hard to blame nationwide theatres for swapping film projection technology for digital; after all, once studios transferred totally to digital, projection of film was obsolete. Rather, this is a case of position and authority.

Instead of placing blame, top studio filmmakers who advocate stock filmmaking must use their position to demand the ability to use the medium. Only through these professionals will studio executives listen.

There are such generals who are leading the charge as we speak. Since Tarantino’s visit to Panavision, Inception director Christopher Nolan, Man of Steel’s Zack Snyder, Paul Thomas Anderson, Judd Apatow, Wes Anderson and many more have committed to using only film stock in each of their projects.

At this year’s London Film Festival, Nolan even hosted a panel of industry experts discussing why film’s protection and existence is imperative for filmmaking as an art.

Also important to tackling the decline is the need to dismiss common misconceptions about the ‘troubles’ of stock filmmaking. Firstly, the myth that stock lacks quality and is

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Max Tyler Film & TV Writer

Flickr: Marta Wlusek

Should we really dismiss the object responsible for the industry we all know and love?

dangerously unstable; since swapping from nitrate film to Mylar track in the mid-90s, film is perfectly safe as it can hold billions of colour palates on a single frame (versus digital’s 16 million) which provides the image with its animated and vivid qualities.

Furthermore, the heavier cost of storage and maintenance lies with digital rather than film. Costing around £7,500 a year to store against film’s £700, digital’s never-ending technological enhancements mean something filmed in 2007 looks tired by 2015, requiring reworks and Bluray enhancements as well as storage and memory costs.

Both factions must learn to live within the same system. Each form can learn from the other

By no means am I disregarding digital filmmaking as a great method of photography. The digital revolution has created a new breed of filmmaker with new technologies. GoPro offers a viable cost-productive way of creating pictures on a smaller, non-industrial scale and as a result, the interest in and accessibility of filmmaking has never been higher.

High profile directors like Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and James Cameron solely use digital and have cited its advantages in portability, crystal-clear visuals and technological transferability. Digital is also crucially a timesaver: daily rushes are transferred from camera to graphics to edit in a matter of moments. It certainly has legs to stand on.

Yet ultimately, as with most wars, this is a tale of mutual coexistence. Both factions must learn to live within the same system. Each form can learn from the other, digital providing opportunities and technological breakthroughs whereas film offers heritage and expanse.

We must therefore cherish film not as digital’s tired predecessor but instead as its mentor, from which filmmakers have much to learn - for what is a tree without its roots?

Epigram 30.11.2015

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The fire will burn forever: The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 Film & TV Writer Lucas Oakeley reviews the final instalment of The Hunger Games and looks back on the saga the multitude of exciting action set-pieces which we are presented with certainly don’t disappoint. Furthermore, the emotional impact of this film far outweighs what we have seen in the previous films and the ante is truly upped in the final piece of Suzanne Collins’ jigsaw.

Splitting the Mockingjay book into two parts has consistently been seen as a poor choice, with many criticizing it as a money-grabbing attempt made by the studios behind the film. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, I do believe that Part 2 gains a great deal from its lengthier run-time. That being said, the first part could easily have been half an hour long.

Certain parts of the film may miss a beat or two and there are moments where I believe a little more time to digest some of the action would not have gone amiss, however for the most part I have to say that I found this to be a successful and more than sufficient end to what has been a predominantly enjoyable series of films.

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franchise, containing far too much foreplay and not enough climax, Part 2 is a definite return to form as loose ends are simultaneously tied up and cut loose amidst the film’s satisfying conclusion.

The film remains loyal for the most part and appears to be a true return to form for the franchise

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Based on by far the weakest book of the bunch, Francis Lawrence’s film manages to give it the justice it deserves.

Although some may have qualms about the slight changes that differ from the book, the film remains loyal for the most part and appears to be a true return to form for the franchise.

Mockingjay certainly doesn’t pull its punches, continuing immediately from when the last film left off and throwing us straight back into the action. This certainly works well for the film, as it wastes no time in setting up what is going to happen. In contrast to the previous film, it shows rather than tells us what is going on.

Muted greys are ever-present as the grim and drab colour scheme truly emphasises the sense of despair and desperation that our protagonists find themselves in. Tension is created marvellously at multiple points and

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Returning back to the Capitol for the fourth and final time, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 provides both readers of the books and fans of the film franchise alike with a satisfying conclusion to the saga of Katniss Everdeen and company. I use the latter phrase because it really is Jennifer Lawrence’s unflinching portrayal of District 12’s reluctant hero that has truly kept the film series so consistently entertaining.

Performances from Hutcherson’s Peeta, Hemsworth’s Gale and Harrelson’s Hamitch are far from weak, however the sheer amount of screen time that is devoted to the development of Katniss’ character allows her to really come alive to audiences. Despite Mockingjay Part 1 being undoubtedly the weakest film of the

Murray Close

Four films and the girl is still on fire...

It really is Jennifer Lawrence’s unflinching portrayal of District 12’s reluctant hero that has kept the film series so entertaining

It is an obvious must-watch for any fans of the books or movies. However, I’d also recommend it as a viewing experience to anyone keen to watch a film that deals with hot button issues such as refugees and rebels fighting against a dictatorial regime. Seriously. It does quite a decent job with such themes considering it’s only a PG-13.

If you find yourself with some time to kill and in need of an ample excuse to procrastinate for your next assignment, give it a watch.

What did you think of Mockingjay Part 2? Do film adaptations ever do the books justice?

Join the discussion @EpigramFilm

From the land of green to the American Dream: John Crowley’s Brooklyn Film & TV Writer Matty Edwards shares his thoughts on Brooklyn, a coming of age fairytale between Ireland and New York Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s best-selling novel of the same name, Brooklyn is a charming exploration of the challenges of setting off from post-war Ireland for a new life in the land of opportunity. Authentic-feeling, witty and never overly soppy, Brooklyn is a real achievement as director John Crowley has managed to create something understated,yet emotionally affecting.

Saoirse Ronan brilliantly portrays Eilis, a modest, restrained young woman, who leaves her home town in Ireland to set up a new life in 1950s Brooklyn. After seasickness turns into homesickness and Eilis initially struggles in her new home, she falls for Italian plumber Tony (Emory Cohen) and ends up getting caught between her two lives.

As soon as she gains her confidence and finally settles into New York life, a tragic event throws everything overboard and she is stranded between her life of opportunity and independence and her family back home.

Even as Eilis sets sail to America for a brand new start, she is weighed down by the burden of responsibility, as she says goodbye to her sister and widowed mother.

A love story doesn’t have to be overly dramatic or glamorised to be effective

At first taken aback by the aggressive friendliness of New Yorkers, Eilis is shy and overwhelmed in the big city, but eventually blossoms into a more confident young woman with maturity beyond her years.

Appearances from two of Britain’s best veteran actors, Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent, take the competent performances from the young cast to the next level. Walters is highly entertaining as a stern Catholic landlady who delivers some great one-liners and dinnertime at her boarding house for Irish girls is central to commentary on religion, relationships and consumerism.

Broadbent, as the amicable local priest, represents the central hub of the pocket of Irish immigrants in New York and his warmness helps Eilis get back on her feet.

At the heart of the film are differing representations of life in Ireland. To some extent Eilis’ home town is presented as quaint, peaceful and dominated by a sense of community, but in contrast it is

BFI/LFFPRESS

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Ronan’s performance is astonishingly good for such a young actress

Ronan’s performance is astonishingly good for such a young actress and her piercing blue-eyed stare is really quite powerful.

If only he knew that he is but one half of her better half...

equally stifling, grey and unimaginative.

The cultural references are at times a little predictable, with New Yorkers obsessed with baseball and Eilis learning to eat spaghetti for dinner with her Italian in-laws. However, the details are mainly well-observed.

On the whole I felt that the cinematography was not particularly noteworthy, but Crowley does leave us with the occasional striking image, such as the blinding brightness that greets a timid Eilis upon her first arrival and

when she sticks out like a sore thumb in her Irish green coat on the busy Brooklyn streets.

Thematic richness is central to the film; from the difficulties of long-distance immigration, to responsibility to your family, it’s clear to see that there is a strong sense of the notion of home underpinning the whole piece.

Brooklyn is a heart-warming and understated film and proves brilliantly that a love story doesn’t have to be overly dramatic or glamorised to be incredibly effective.

Epigram 30.11.2015

Let’s get it on (screen) - But no sex please, we’re British

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Following the release of Gaspar Noe’s Love, Film & TV Writer Talia Goldman discusses the representation of sex on screen.

Watershed

Not too close now, you’re on camera...

In the world of cinema, if there is one thing that gets critics squirming in their seats, it is sex on screen. And not in a good way. In an age where porn is accessible at the click of a button, this seems a little archaic, if not prudish. Since William Heise’s 18second film The Kiss in 1896, sex on screen has become one of cinema’s greatest taboos.

Here in the UK, we are completely obsessed with age-ratings and censorship: it is an incredibly rigorous process. Our high classification standards are undoubtedly a good thing, helping to ‘empower consumers to make informed viewing decisions.’ However, there is a common opinion amongst producers in other European countries, such as France, that British censorship and classifications are hypocritical; whilst violent films often have a

lower age rating, whack a boob on screen and you are looking at a much higher classification.

The industry seems less concerned about showing the bloody destruction of the human body than the process of its creation.

Gaspar Noé’s hotly anticipated Love is being released in UK cinemas this week. Noé is known as quite the provocateur; his work is visceral and scandalous (people have been known to vomit and faint at screenings…). Noé insists that his sex scenes are entirely credible.

“Most people have a sexual life that’s not far from the one you see in my movie,”he said.“Why it’s not portrayed in cinema more often, I don’t know.”

The aim of Noé’s film is to directly confront this taboo. He does this by showing it again and again, and again… all in tantalising 3D, until you don’t even think twice about it.

Not only that, most of the sex scenes are entirely unsimulated…

A lot of the hubbub surrounding sex scenes is the idea that, if you want to watch people have sex, you should go and watch porn. This is incredibly narrow-minded, blatantly ignoring the fact that most sex scenes, including those in Love, come wrapped up in their own romantic back-story.

Even so, you cannot condemn sex for sex’s sake.

The masculine gaze is a governing factor on sex scenes in cinema, even in 2015. In this day and age of bad sex education, where kids are getting top tips from testosterone-dominated porn, equality in the bedroom is something we really need to start seeing on screen. Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Colour, the Palme d’Or Winner 2013, depicts the longest lesbian sex scene ever made. The critics in the UK were outraged by it, just as many had been after Brokeback Mountain in 2004. Yet, whilst Blue is the Warmest Colour is revolutionary in its unapologetic confrontation with sex and is an incredibly beautiful love story, it is directed by a man, a director who both leading actresses refuse to work with ever again due to his terrible on-set conduct. When you think about shows like Game of Thrones, how many times do you see a naked man compared to a naked woman?

There is a brilliant wave of feminist pornography, made by award-winning directors such as Petra Joy, Anna Span and Candida Royalle, that wields so much potential.

Fine, porn might not be on wide-release in a cinema near you any time soon, but as a screen-genre of its own, it has the power to positively influence how new generations view sex scenes in contemporary cinema.

If we can start to encourage less stigma,

less male-domination and more sex-positive attitudes off-screen, we might start looking at on-screen sex in a completely different way. Thus, representations of the magic and sensuality of sex, or just the fun of it, might start to be more widely accepted. Why should we leave one genre of film in male hands?

Nevertheless, when it comes to mainstream sex scenes, one nation is really paving the way: the French. France has a long literary history that really elevates love and passion and is completely unafraid of sex. Whilst critics elsewhere hide behind their fingers at Kechiche’s lesbian sex scene and shudder at Noé’s explicit unpublicised posters for Love, the French merely shrug their shoulders.

Erotic literature is no stranger to the French canon, giving us the likes of the Marquis de Sade and the creation of sadism. Though reviled in his time for his libertine sexuality, Sade was instrumental in French eroticism and has an enduring influence over kinky lovers around the globe. As a result, one could be so bold as to say that the French are more open to a wider spectrum of sexual expression. This cultural background is a significant factor in the normalisation of sex and therefore helps to push modern French filmmakers to just be frank and give us the real, truthful sex that we all want to see.

I am not saying that British cinema hides behind off-screen orgasms, allusions and innuendos. Sex scenes do exist; it is just the attitude that often comes with them.

One thing’s for sure, Don’t Look Now (1973)

by Brit Nicolas Roeg was voted Time Out’s Number 1 sex scene (out of 100!). So maybe we should monopolise more on that 70’s spirit and vanquish this taboo once and for all.

What’s On? What can I do in Bristol this week? As part of BFI’s Love Season, Watershed’s latest offering is a celebratory screening of Doctor Zhivago, arguably on of the greatest love stories to have ever graced our screens. Showing from November 29th to December 3rd, the rekindling of this romantic odyssey is set to be an event for the diaries.

Films to Faces Cindy McLean-Bibby President of Dramsoc

Editors’ Picks

Kate Deputy Editor

Georgia Online Editor

Brief Encounter

Bridge of Spies

The Revenant

On BFI + Player

In cinemas November 27th

In cinemas January 15th

BFI’s Love Season is right up my street, as I’m still searching for the ultimate on-screen love story. When Brief Encounter came to Bristol I completely fell in love with it - it is definitely amongst the classics, a force to be reckoned withon both an emotional and cinematic level.

Steven Spielberg’s new historical drama stars Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance, so if this flops then it’ll be an enormous shock. It tells the story of U-2, the Russian spy plane being shot down in 1960 during the Cold War. Expect secrets, explosions and some epic performances.

Starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy, The Revenant follows frontier explorers in early Canada. The cinematography looks stunning from the trailer alone, and there seems to be plenty of gritty fights and revenge plots to get your teeth into.

Master of None

The Man in the Castle

On Netflix now

Scream Queens

On Amazon Prime

Out now

I’m yet to watch this but have heard nothing but good things about Netflix’s latest original offering. Telling the story of a 30-year old actor in New York and his trials and tribulations, I can’t wait to see if this one really is the character story that puts all the others in their place.

1962 might seem like a fairly familiar year on film, but what would be different if the Nazis had won WW2 and if Hitler was always on TV? The show explores what would have happened had the Nazis won WW2 after having dropped an atomic bomb on Washington D.C.

As entertaining as it is ridiculous, Scream Queens is packed full of dramatic deaths and evil sorority girls plotting against the Red Devil - who just so happens to be trying to murder them all. As a parody of the sorority culture, it hits the nail on the head.

Epigram

Flickr/Televisione Streaming

Flickr/Paul Flickr/Insomnia cured hereMcdee

Watershed

Ella Editor

1. Dirty Dancing If I had to watch one film every day for the rest of my life, it would be this. Never has a film had a better soundtrack. No judgements please.

2. Sleeping Beauty I grew up on this film and refused to watch anything else as a kid. As cheesy as it sounds, I would quite like the song ‘Once Upon a Dream’ played at some point at my wedding!

3. Girl, Interrupted Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder’s perfomances in this film are amazing. Such a great f ilm that deals with some very important issues. Love it.

Who would you like to see interviewed next for Films to Faces? Tweet us @EpigramFilm with your suggestions!

Epigram

30.11.2015

Music

@epigrammusic Editor: Gunseli Yalcinkaya gyalcinkaya@epigram.org.uk

Deputy Editors: Alex Schulte; Caitlin Butler aschulte@epigram.org.uk; cbutler@epigram.org.uk

Online Editor: Sam Mason-Jones s.masonjones@epigram.org.uk

ALBUM reviews

You’ve heard it right: music’s biggest baddie is back. Following a troubled adolescence in the microscopic glare of the media spotlight, disgraced teen sensation Justin Bieber has found his Purpose in his fourth studio album.

It’s an audacious and ripened effort; criminal troubles are begged to be forgiven and bubblegum pop of the past is pissed on (quite a literal metaphor, following that infamous restaurant bucket incident). Purpose offers an opportunity for second chances in a newly inhabited EDM galaxy.

The rebirth of Justin Bieber was catalysed in an unlikely musical friendship. Super producers Skrillex and Diplo surprised the music world when their side project Jack Ü released ‘Where Are Ü Now’ – a collaboration that brought the then-almost has-been pop superstar back on the public radar, and for good reason this time.

robotic dance tunes. Even his offering ‘Children’ – a Euro-pop tainted Jacko moment for the 21st century produced, again, by Skrillex – should be a winning formula, yet cannot stand up against its Purpose associates which have topped charts internationally.

Despite many of the album’s generic flaws, nothing offered by Bieber thus far in his career has made so much of a cultural impact as Purpose’s lead singles have. As much as he tries to promote his new ‘good guy’ image, it can be taken with a pinch of salt. Yeah, he’s probably still an asshole, but you don’t have to like or even respect him to recognise instant classics when you stumble across them – of which Purpose is abundant with. There’s no better time than now to (as his fanbase has appropriated) belieb.

Andrew Dallos

Justin Bieber Purpose Def Jam, 13.11 6/10

Serving as track eight on Purpose, it’s pretty loathsome on first listen, but it’s easy to become infected by that iconic drop.

This is not the only contribution that Skrillex has had in Purpose’s upbringing; he’s also served as a producer on the album, getting his hands dirty on five of the album’s lucky thirteen tracks.

On ‘I’ll Show You’, he assists Bieber in bringing to life atmospheric verses paired with potent choruses, allowing him to put those signature whiney vocals of his into full throttle.

The transition from pop’s brightest star to its most outlandish underdog couldn’t come without some abysmal behaviour and appalling mistakes, hence why Purpose acts as his chance to apologise. Fittingly, the best song from the indisputable bible of bangers is ‘Sorry’. With its soaring choruses and, of course, Skrillex production, it’s a bonafide pop masterpiece. The single is a follow-up to the worldwide smashhit ‘What Do You Mean?’ – attractive because of its self-assuring naturalness and subtle effortlessness, yet it has succeeded in becoming one of the biggest songs of the year. Upon hearing the pendulum tick-tocking on a night out, you know you’re about to have the most rollicking 3 minutes and 27 seconds of your evening.

However, it’s not an entirely EDM-only party.

While piano ballads ‘Life Is Worth Living’ and ‘Purpose’ (which concludes the album with a thoroughly empathetic spoken word monologue) propose some much needed variety, ‘Love Yourself’ is another album standout. In an additional fairly odd collaboration, it was co-written and produced by Ed Sheeran - an influence that rings profoundly throughout the song once you realise it’s there. ‘Love Yourself’ is understated but undeniably smooth in a way that even the inclusion of a saxophone solo has its place. It comes together with the unity of astonishing simplicity, new-found honesty and rather scorching lyrics: ‘maybe you should know that my mama don’t like you and she likes everyone’.

Where Purpose initially showed genuine potential, the album begins to regress around a third of the way in. Appearances from rapper Travi$ Scott, newcomer (and professional Lorde/Grimes wannabe) Halsey and Stateside hitmaker Big Sean cannot save the album from repetitively stormy R&B and repeatedly

Georgia Marsh

Recondite Placid Acid Test, 13.11 7/10 Since Acid Test released Recondite’s debut album On Acid, he has established himself as a master craftsman with the Roland 303 synthesizer. His expert hand has repurposed the aggression of the 90s acid house sound with his

own melodic minimalist techno wanderings, painting monochrome landscapes for Ghostly International in his second LP, ‘Hinterand, expanding the sound of his meanderings for Innervisions label in 2014 with ‘Iffy’.

2015 sees a welcome return to Acid Test for his fourth album Placid.

Placid feels a more fully realised album than his previous work on Acid Test, with a track list of ten songs allowing somewhat more scope for the German producer.

‘Compel’ opens the album, preparing us for what we have come to expect from Recondite, with an unmistakable aura of menace lingering in the open space of the music.

After six minutes of wanderings, ‘Pass Up’ cuts in with an almost hollow aggression, with the tracks’ underlying drums carrying hints of some urgent, desolate G-funk amid the highs and lows of a drifting 303.

‘Sequenze’ is the work of collaboration with ‘Tale of Us’, bringing their European brand of deep house into the mix. However, rather than the big-room sound they so deftly produce, their input results in an insistent shuffling pace.

It’s somehow satisfying to hear them take a backseat, their contribution subtly complimenting Recondite’s sound rather than imposing their own.

Louis Harnett O’Meara

LIVE reviews

Prides Thekla, 15.11 Having previously had one of their songs featured on the FIFA 15 soundtrack it could

be argued that Prides have already reached the pinnacle of their career – anything they produce now will merely be a speck in terms of achievement compared to this accomplishment.

However, there is a serious point to be made about what the career trajectory of Prides will be. They have gone from performing at the

2014 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in Glasgow, the city where the band formed, in front of a global audience of millions to performing on a cold Sunday night at Thekla - all this having only just released their debut album in July. It makes one wonder where they will go from here.

They are currently on a mammoth nationwide tour of no fewer than 23 cities all over the UK which they announced on Facebook in true Tom Fletcher from McFly style with an adorable video featuring a ukulele. Touring is certainly the biggest way to earn a living for bands like Prides and judging by the enthusiastic crowd in Thekla they do indeed have a large UK following.

Their actual music is near perfect synthpop with heavy anthem-like choruses and catchy keyboard riffs.

Their set was compiled of songs from their album The Way Back Up including their biggest hits ‘Messiah’ and ‘Out of the Blue’ which both had the crowd bouncing. There was an air of professionalism in their performance; the smoothness, efficiency of transitions between songs and the impressive atmosphere created

by the lighting was a pleasant surprise for a band formed just 2 years ago. They did look and sound like a band who have been touring for years.

Despite this, it was difficult to tell how much of their performance was actually live; it appeared to be too flawless to be true at times. The lighting was also arguably overbearing – to the point that I was blinded on multiple occasions.

Undoubtedly, my favourite moment of the night was the complete change in mood, style and tempo mid-way through the set. Unexpected and utterly lovely, the song, ‘Same Mistakes,’ gave the performance the intimate, emotional depth that the set seemed to have been crying out for. And this was wholly appreciated by the captivated audience. The rise of this trio seems unrelenting. Certainly this performance explained why Prides have indeed grown so quickly in popularity. Their catchy tunes, seamless performances and friendly manner make this trio truly worth going out of your way to see.

Guy Barlow

Epigram 30.112015

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Sam Mason-Jones

Ollie Megson

flickr: Vladimir

Foals’ course to the precipice of British guitar music has been plotted with near-perfect precision. After having gathered a devoted following with their coltish expostulations of geeky math-rock, they began to turn critical heads with rapturously received follow-up This Orient before turning on the swagger with bigselling, tune-heavy LPs Holy Fire and What Went Down- all without putting a hoof wrong.

The hordes which pack into the Anson Rooms are therefore, in fact, lucky to be catching the Oxford five-piece in such intimate surroundings: now sitting atop festival bills and set to embark upon a mammoth European arena tour in the new year, it is clear that grander pastures are now the natural habitat of the indie stallions.

Overcoming the age-old predicament, the band have maintained the unique nuances within their song-writing whilst continually developing healthily, with the decade since their formation representing a blue-print in credible success.

The set draws relatively evenly from each area of this progression, the first four songs effectively spanning the ten years of their output. After the band has sauntered onstage one by one to the introductory licks of new tune ‘Snake Oil’, warmly received recent single ‘Mountain at my Gates’ is followed by a brace of real oldies, ‘Hummer’ and ‘Blue Blood’.

Having cantered through the opening quartet without pausing for breath, Yannis takes a moment to exchange some pleasantries with the crowd. ‘Bristol on a Sunday night is like everywhere else on a Saturday night,’ he flirts with his tumultuous fans, who reciprocate with chants of his name. The frontman’s chat remains similarly shit throughout the evening, other than a post-song shout of ‘Fuck the Tories’ which comes hilariously out of nowhere.

Luckily he hasn’t had to rely on his loquaciousness to woo: his animalistic presence more than does the talking, stalking the stage with consummate arrogance and primal sex exuding. Unleashing the epidemic ear-worm ‘My Number’, he gets a chance to really cut loose and throw some shapes, ending the track actually on top of the crowd.

Certified mad-dog that he is, Yannis then begins to channel his inner Odd Future member during ‘Blue Blood’, scrambling over every inch of the speaker stack to theatrically throw himself off to melodramatic swoons from the crowd.

A charming moment comes when the audience en masse sits down for the emotionally grappling first verses of ‘Spanish Sahara’, surging simultaneously to greet with swirling mosh-pits the fabulous crescendo, which is still as stunning five years after its inception. And it is still the best thing the band have ever done.

Despite this slowing of pace, the intensity still burns relentlessly hot and, galloping through ‘Red Socks Pugie’, ‘Late Night’ and ‘Providence’, it finds its release in the sweat-dripping behemoth ‘Inhaler’, whose shuddering riffs close the set proper.

A poignant tribute to Big Jeff, who Yannis reveals has adorned the front-row of each of Foals’ Bristol shows, precedes ‘London Thunder’, and whose sweaty mane waves its appreciation throughout the encore. Lead single ‘What Went Down’ whips the assembled into rapture with the appropriately anthropomorphic refrain ‘When I see a man I see a lion’ wrenched from the larynx of the manic frontman, and reverberating a thousand-fold around the room.

The customary finale of ‘Two Steps Twice’, which builds its tension slowly with an elongated introduction before tearing loose in the barked final third, after all these years is still a microcosmically apt ending to the 80 minute set.

In a word: intense. Even as the tempo of the tunes ebbs and flows, the unerring intensity instilled by Philppakis’dead-eyed delivery burned constantly throughout. Relentless, dogged, raw, the band deliver with absolute accuracy and all of the energy of a prize mustang.

Evidence for the above is best found in the bedraggled throng who dispel from the room: faces beaming, hair sodden and voices particularly (ahem) horse.

flickr: JDUBOIS_

Foals Anson Rooms 15.11

There’s a violent enthusiasm from the crowd as Fidlar bring their relentless brand of skatepunk to the UK. There’s an unquestionable sense of doubt as a tightly-packed crowd wait for Fidlar to don the stage at Bristol’s o2 academy. Whilst most of the crowd would have seen Fidlar’s first, eponymous album played live in all its liberating, rebellious fury, the second album was yet to debut in livemusic venues across the UK, and I for one feared as to how it would be received by the alcoholinduced, violently chanting crowd which awaited the bands arrival. It’s perhaps a relief then that Fidlar choose to open the set with old song ‘Stoked and Broke’. Lead singer Zac Carper’s raucous exclamation that “I just wanna get really high/ smoke weed until I die” is enough to win admiration from the crowd, most of whom are now either jumping furiously, face-flat on the ground, or preoccupied in growing moshpits.

These were songs written in the midst of Carper’s untamed and heroine-fuelled lifestyle however. They are a ollection of shameless tributes to hedonism, and doubt still remains as to whether more recent, post-rehab material would succeed in drawing the same enthusiasm from the crowd. When Fidlar finally launched into new material then, there was a shared sense of surprise at the enthusiasm with which the band projected these new, more considered tracks. In turn, the efforts from the crowd were equally unrelenting, and even the quiet, selfpitying chorus of “40oz on repeat” (“how come everybody’s got somebody/ everybody but me”) became a hoarse, unifying pop-punk anthem.

Indeed, Fidlar’s vision of a rebellious, no-fucksgiven atmosphere was definitely realised, and there was a perfect blend of anger and animosity between the band and audience. Carper shouts at us to “shut the fuck up for a second” as we refuse to listen to his pre-song introduction, and is

subsequently greeted by a sea of middle fingers as the crowd singalong to Fidlar’s jubilant tagline: “I drink cheap beer, so what, fuck you”.

In turn, the guy behind me launches his T Shirt (reading “Fidlar fucking suck”) onto the stage, whilst Carper once again screams at us like an out-of-control supply teacher as the crowd decide to carry on moshpitting, rather than following his order to get down on the ground, which does happen... eventually.

By the end of Fidlar’s triumphant set, consistent of an almost perfect combination of old and new material, there’s an undoubtable sense of mutinous unity amongst the crowd.

Covered in one another’s sweat, people refuse to move, chanting “we want more” in the hope that this small capsule of carefree rebellion can continue. It’s entirely unsurprising that Fidlar are able to inspire this reaction from their audiences however, especially when one considers the rapturous, carefree lyrics which are slowly placing them amongst punk’s greatest heroes. The highlight undoubtedly comes when, in singing along with ‘No Waves’, there’s a deafening roar from the crowd as each member jubilantly screams: “I feel, feel like fucking up my life/ again with all my friends/ I hope we’ll make it til the end.”

Ezra Furman O2 Academy 14/11 Channelling the off-kilter plaintiveness of Jonathan Richman and the confrontational snarling of Lou Reed, Furman delivers an exhilarating live show.

Since the release of his critically acclaimed album Day of the Dog just two years ago, Ezra Furman has been going from strength to strength, with his most recent album, Perpetual Motion People, gaining praise from all corners.

Live, he is mesmerising, veering from vulnerable and confessional to triumphant in the space of a chord change. He seems to put as much energy into one song as most performers do in a whole show.

Opening an exhausting two-hour set with a scorching rendition of the Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll”, Furman powers through his catalogue with a frantic energy.

While the audience loved every moment, the stand-out songs were the guttural, hypnotic reworking of “And Maybe God is a Train” and queer anthem “This Body Was Made”, not to mention an unforgettable encore of “Tell Em All to Go to Hell”. Delivering every song with visceral conviction, it’s no wonder the audience adores him, manhandling him to the point of damaging his microphone when he comes into the crowd during the enjoyably eclectic “Wobbly”.

But this isn’t just a one-man show. Furman’s band The Boy-Friends are a joy to watch too, and saxophonist Tim Sandusky in particular really pushes Furman to new heights. In crowd

flickr: Stab At Sleep

Epigram

Fidlar O2 Academy 16.11

favourite, “My Zero”, sweat pours off the two of them as Sandusky delivers riff after blistering riff, back to back with the wildly gesticulating Furman.

Alex Ferguson

Epigram

30.11.2015

46

Should Russia be banned from Rio 2016? a fellow, mere human is able to run fast enough to set off a speed camera, jump over a doorframe or the length of a bus. Held up as the most inspiring role models of dedication and devotion, athletes are idolized and celebrated for becoming the best of 7.2 billion.

Now, what if that man who just vaulted a two story building using nothing other than a slightly flexible pole, did in fact have some other, more sinister tools at his disposal.

That wonder which rouses fans around the world, that veneration for the athletes, all evaporates in an

Jack Francklin Sports Reporter

The athlete pictured above has not been implicated in the doping scandal

To conclude, Mr Putin has hit the nail on the head. Athletics is entirely pointless and an uninteresting, unrelatable affair… if it is not honest.

We should remember too that the Olympic Games are competitions built on values of respect and friendship; there is no arena less suitable for such poisonous dishonesty and corruption. As such, to ensure any fans turn up to Rio 2016, Russia (and most likely a depressingly long list of other nations) cannot be allowed even the remote prospect of competing until some real, meaningful changes are made to anti-doping practices.

A better approach would be to look at individual cases, casting out those that have cheated rather than proclaim the whole country as ‘cheats’ test positive for sports-enhancing drugs a couple of years ago. It begs the question of how many athletes it takes in order to get a ‘National’ ban which is what the IAAF are inferring. A better approach would be to look at individual cases, and cast out those that have cheated

rather than proclaim the whole country as ‘Cheats’. It can’t surely be the case that every Russian athlete is guilty, whilst ‘Naming, shaming and banning’ those that are would go further to prompting people to realise it isn’t acceptable and they can’t get away with it.

Furthermore, there has even been talk of the unrest of the 1980’s reappearing between Russia and the East if this ban was to go ahead. This is another problem we don’t need and can avoid if the IAAF decides not to ban Russia from what will be a flamboyant Olympic Games in the

heart of South America.

This Brazilian flamboyancy, however, will be disrupted with the eerie air that one of the major contributors to the sport, and the world’s largest country, was not present - Russia came in 4th on the medal rankings at the London 2012 Olympics and ended up with nearly 20 more medals then GB.

Russia came in 4th on the medal rankings at the London 2012 Olympics and ended up with nearly 20 more medals than GB.

Flickr: Activ I Oslo.no

The recent uproar involving Russian athletes has not just left a bad taste amongst athletics, but for sport in general. The IAAF (Internation Association of Athletics Federations), with Lord Coe as president, has taken the steps to temporarily ban Russian athletes from competing in their sport, with the chance of the ban being extended to next year’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The situation for the Briton appears simple - doping cannot happen and there needs to be a fast solution. Nonetheless, banning the nation as a whole would be the wrong way to go about it. The outright condemnation of Russia on the back pages seems harsh despite the circumstances. Titles such as ‘They let the cheats win’ and ‘Russia not fit to hold world events’ are dismissive of any compromise allowing them to compete in the next games.

The Russians might have a claim themselves that a ban from the Olympics would be unjust. Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko accused the IAAF of covering up 150 samples since 2008 of athletes who were principally non-Russian. One only needs to look at past examples to show Russia have not been the only culprits - Asafa Powell was amongst five Jamaican athletes to

feats have now become just that, super human, what is the point?

Where is the marvel in watching a steroid pumped, EPO riddled Frankenstein athlete, supercharged on more performance-enhancing substances than the whole of Badock combined, throw a spear or jump into some sand?

Russia cannot be allowed even the remote prospect of competing until some real, meaningful changes are made to anti-doping practices.

Generations are inspired and nations are empowered by the truly astounding feats of human strength on show.

The explanation for all this is the marvel, the awe invoked as to how

instant with just a whiff of the oh-so toxic scent of drugs cheating. With it disappears any point in our sport at all.

Our most prized festivals of athletics, the Olympic Games, are a celebration of the sporting elites’ super human achievements. If these

“

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Mr Putin has hit the nail on the head. Athletics is entirely pointless and an uninteresting, un-reliable affair... if it is not honest

Flickr: Singapore 2010 Youth Olympics Games

Watching the credibility of his nation’s sportspeople melt away into a Siberian-like nothingness, Mr Putin helpfully reminds us ‘A sporting contest is only interesting when it is honest.’

In fact, athletics does not comprise particularly interesting contests at all. Who can run 100 meters the fastest? Who can jump the highest?

Who can throw a metal ball the furthest?

Yet, somehow, every 4 years they gather the most glorious carnivals of competition,to which the entire globe is invited. Generations are inspired and nations are empowered by the truly astounding feats of human strength on show. Boris Johnson captured this with his observation that the 2012 athletes had ‘For the first time in living memory, caused London tube passengers to break into spontaneous conversation.’

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Tom Hayward Sports Reporter

The very foundation of the sport needs to be investigated. Dick Pound, who led a WADA investigation, stated that the biggest flaw in doping are not the athletes but those that cover it up including the IAAF themselves. Important members of the IAAF such as Gabriel Dollé and Halib Cisseé remain under criminal investigation. Russia is not the only country to carry out multiple cases of doping and that will remain the case unless Lord Coe confronts those around him and implements a system that can be trusted. There must be forgiveness to move on from this untenable situation.

Epigram

30.11.2015

47

MLS - Legends or Poster Boys?

There’s no doubt about it, football (or ‘Soccer’ as the Yanks so affectionately know it) is one of the fastest growing sports in the USA.

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Each week, one member of the Epigram Sport editorial team and a guest both aim to correctly predict the Premier League scores.

Last time, Sport Editor Marcus Price took on Epigram’s Science and Tech Editor Alfie Smith, with Marcus edging it [6-5].

These two have kick-started a trend that some of the biggest names in football seem to be following.

However, for the cynics, these legends belong firmly in the past.

From this perspective, these players are hindering the development of any young, home-grown talent and extortionate salaries are being paid to European players who are far past their prime. Going back to the scouse celebrity, Gerrard is earning an outrageous annual salary of $6.2 million, managing a meagre two goals

The score currently stands at Epigram Sport 7-4 Guests Check out this week’s results... www.epigram.co.uk/sport

Friday Football Show

and three assists this season. Such an ineffably unjustified salary dwarves those of the players around him; they earn in a lifetime what he makes in a month, yet it’s them who are doing the running that his aging legs can’t.

They earn in a lifetime what he makes in a month, yet it’s them who are doing the running that his aging legs can’t.

although these big fish are raising the profile of ‘Soccer’ worldwide, they’re creating a gulf in the American League.

There are the unknown players on average wages, passionate about their national league, fighting for every fifty-fifty and battling for every point.

On the flipside, there are the big name players earning silly money, drifting through each match dreaming of past successes, competing for a trophy that means nothing to them. In essence, this strikes me as the reason the teams that possess the OAPs of football are not succeeding in the US; the MLS is becoming a glamorous retirement home for the fading stars of the beautiful game.

Flickr: Drew Dies

Flickr: Arturo Pardavila III

Further disappointment manifests itself in the underwhelming inaugural seasons of both Orlando City and New York City FC. The latter finished 8th in the Eastern conference and 17th overall; the Aston Villa of the MLS, if you like. Even though the combined accolades of Kaka, Lampard, Pirlo and Villa would take far too long to list, the reality is that these players are no longer good enough to win trophies on their own. To add insult to injury, the scorer of both goals in the second New York Derby, with the Red Bulls doing the double, was Bradley WrightPhillips, a player who spent a couple of months on loan at the then league 1 side, Brentford, before moving to the MLS. The fact of the matter is that

Flickr: Sameh (Sam) Fahmi

Since David Beckham’s major league move to LA Galaxy in 2007, worth a mind-boggling $6.5 million a year, the popularity of the MLS has sky-rocketed and the league now commands international attention.

In 2010, Thierry Henry made himself the next ex-superstar to move to America, signing for New York Red Bulls where he managed 52 goals in 135 appearances; a goalscoring record almost as impressive as some of his minor feats achieved at Arsenal. These two have kick-started a trend that some of the biggest names in football seem to be following, spending their final years in the States and thrusting a previously unknown league into the spotlight.

Post Henry, who retired in 2014, the league has seen an influx of last generations starlets migrate across the Atlantic. Andrea Pirlo, David Villa and Frank Lampard have all been tempted by the big money of the recently founded New York City FC, whilst Kaká, the last player to win the Ballon D’or besides Messi or Ronaldo, is now showing off his skills for another brand new club, Orlando City.

When these two met on the opening

day of their debut seasons this year, an astounding 62,510, exceeding the capacity of both Stamford Bridge and The Emirates, turned out to cheer on their respective sides; such big names undeniably attracting fans from across the world.

The list of veterans goes on with thirty-five year-old Steven Gerrard, the passionate, hard-working face of Liverpool and ex-England Captain currently holding together LA Galaxy’s midfield. Even Didier Drogba, at the not-so-tender age of thirty-seven, is still banging them in, having scored 11 for Montreal Impact in the season just gone. It’s incontestably a league littered with legends.

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Ben McCall-Myers Sports Reporter

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Bristol fall agonisingly short against Cardiff

UBRFC

Harry Dixon Sports Reporter With various changes to a reputable Bristol 1XV outfit, the team looked to put in a determined performance against rivals, Cardiff Met 1XV. From the beginning of the match, Cardiff Met applied early pressure, which was soaked up confidently

by Bristol. Despite the abundance

of ball, Cardiff Met were unable to convert their pressure into points due to the monumental effort in defence from Bristol. After a penalty for not releasing was given against Bristol, the decision to kick for the corner rather than take the three points paid no dividends, as Bristol were able to turn the ball over and relieve pressure.

A commanding passage of play followed from Bristol, who, after a quick penalty, made speculative incisions into the opposition’s 22.

However, despite the promising attack by Bristol, an interception allowed Cardiff Met to go against the momentum of the game and score a loose try. The conversion left Cardiff Met 7-0 ahead, albeit against the run of play.

After half-time, Bristol came out resolute and determined to change the score of the game. An exhilarating attack from Bristol paved inroads into Cardiff Met’s half and after a succession of phases, Bristol deservingly won a penalty.

A measured kick from Will Weston bought the score to 7-3.

With the game turning in Bristol’s favour, a clinically executed backs move off a scrum saw Chris PereraSlater go over for Bristol’s first and only try of the match. After an unsuccessful conversion, the score stood at 8-7 to Bristol.

Nonetheless, in the closing stages of the match, Cardiff Met mustered a confident attack, spreading the ball from one touchline to the other, leading to a crucial try and the

score line 12-8. An unsuccessful conversion kept a victory still on the horizon for Bristol.

A tense and bruising last passage of the match ensued, but as the clock ticked towards the red zone the home side valiantly attempted to keep the ball alive. However, to the relief of Cardiff Met, the ball went loose and was put into touch.

Despite a gutsy performance, Bristol came agonisingly close to victory, with Cardiff Met returning with a win.

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