The Croft 15: Winter Issue

CROFT

CROFT

CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Annie Davey & Cerys

Larsen

MANAGING EDITOR

Shayma Al Saraf

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Anushka Holding-Savic

Social Commentary

CO-HEAD EDITORS

Ronnie Sadé

Rosie Moore

Arts & Culture

CO-HEAD EDITORS

Sophie Chin

Erina Mannan

Wellbeing

CO-HEAD EDITORS

Lydia Lewis

Alice Williams

Travel

HEAD EDITOR

Emily Peyton

Fashion

CO-HEAD EDITORS

Siân Clarke

Ollie Quinn

Alice Graves

Music

HEAD EDITOR

Iris Eastaugh

Photography

Piers Hamilton

Ned Button

Billy Allen

Alice Graves

Kirkland Childs

Anushka Holding

COPY EDITOR

Ronnie Sadé

SOCIAL MEDIA

Anushka Holding

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Anushka Holding

COVER

Anushka Holding

EDITORS' LETTER

As we settle into the new year, the buzz of the festive period lulls to a muted stillness. We are faced with a clean slate—one that carries with it the weight of both anticipation and uncertainty. Low winter sunlight throws dark shapes around us and we are forced to dwell among the shadows. We wait for the first signs of spring: for the mornings to gradually grow lighter, for the sun to rise a little earlier, for the flowers to bloom. It is the moment before dawn when the world feels on the cusp yet remains steeped in darkness.

At this delicate moment, we may struggle to find our feet. Some may find themselves stumbling, burdened by the past and the pressure of what lies ahead. Navigating the demands of a new year can feel like an uphill battle; many face financial strain, seasonal sniffles, and a struggle to maintain routines that uplift us. The nostalgia of warmer days begins to creep in— the present, with its dull and muted colors, often feels harder to embrace.

The theme of this issue, Shadows, draws on the subtlety of this period— the quiet stillness that often lends itself to creativity. It is in these moments, often in the dark of winter, that some of our most poignant and reflective work can emerge.

It is crucial that we find ourselves confronting the darkness of our world. The relentless spread of disinformation, corruption, and manipulation of political narratives are woven into the fabric of our own lives. The internet has become a vehicle for insidious and hateful rhetoric—rhetoric that dehumanises groups and spreads with alarming ease. These forces work inconspicuously, concealed behind power structures, and fuelled by a political climate steeped in uncertainty.

In this issue, we hope to offer a moment of respite and revelation. As you move through these pages, we encourage your escape into the elusive allure of the shadows. These pieces, written by our team during the earliest, darkest months, are imbued with an introspective energy; we hope they serve as a reminder of the creativity and resilience that can arise in the darkness.

In these quieter days, we ask you to embrace the stillness and to find comfort in connection. As the world around us darkens, there is power in trust and the bonds we share with one another.

Lots of love, Annie, Cerys, Shayma and Anushka from The Croft Executive team <3

“The Endless River”: Grief and Shadows in Pink Floyd’s 'High Hopes' (1994)

{words} by Evie Collins

It’s late in the day, in this half-remembered dream. A man stands at the edge of it. His black coat wears him like a void, absorbing the sun-faded surroundings. Those mellow, could-be-anywhere fields are contextualised through absence: nobody is there except this man and his clown car, inexplicably stuffed with captive balloons. It’s all a weird trick of expired film. Is he an imposing presence? Is he a presence at all?

Several members of the prog rock group Pink Floyd coalesced in mid-1960s Cambridge. Among them were David Gilmour and Syd Barrett: as students, they grew close, orbiting around a shared music taste and a very good idea. However, Pink Floyd did not start as exclusively theirs by any means – nor, some might argue, has it ended up that way. The band’s rise to fame and its associated pressures lead to Barrett growing increasingly unwell. His old friend Gilmour was brought on to ‘support’ him but eventually became his replacement. Barrett would disappear from the public eye entirely, leaving a shadow in his wake—a grim lens through which to dissect the discography that followed.

Even without this knowledge, Pink Floyd’s relationship with grief is clear. Many of their songs tip over the eight-minute mark— they are epics, divinely overstaying their welcome. It’s like, if they go on long enough, they’ll remember something. That’s the thing about grief—it makes you want to linger in its shadow for closure. In 1975, Pink Floyd—minus Barrett—spend nine movements asking that he ‘shine on’ without them; to the band, he is the light disappeared. In keeping with this tradition, High Hopes is the eight-and-a-half minute closer to The Division Bell (1994), decidedly the ‘last Pink Floyd album’. For all its finality, the song chooses to linger.

The music video for High Hopes (dir. Storm Thorgerson) is a nostalgic tour of Cambridge and its rural surrounds. This dreamy portrayal of Pink Floyd’s birthplace is driven by shadows, made literally material through Thorgerson’s use of textiles. Nostalgia is figured in terms of these fabric ‘absences’: in one instance, a colourful cascade winds across St. John’s College, bisecting a once-familiar scene. It is a fleeting crack of strangeness, a flowing tributary. When Gilmour ‘returns’ to this site, it is nourished by new colours. Indeed, this material ‘shadow’ marks the absence of an irretrievable past and yet it floats; it is lifted by the wind, and so the world continues to turn.

In a following scene, two graduates race ‘on down the Causeway’. Their black gowns flow from them, extended to catch more of the wind. Their streaming gowns are mimetic of shadows, but their form and fluidity appear to unite this image with that of a river. Sunshine ripples across these ‘shadows’: enabled by Thorgerson’s use of textiles, this contrast illustrates that the image of shadow is ultimately contingent on a light source.

Gilmour laments: ‘The grass was greener’. The same light that touched the past now tangles with the shadows of river reeds—light and dark matting together at the river’s surface. Mourning is not a gloomy vignette through which these scenes are focalised: rather, in its dynamic entanglement of shadows and light, High Hopes re-animates a vision of a present that is enriched by symbols of the past. Thus, in its emphasis on natural imagery, High Hopes animates grief so that it becomes an inevitable, and beautiful, feature of ecology.

For all this talk of valuing the Earth’s cycles, I struggle to find winter beautiful precisely because it is so dark. My days are structured around mourning summer, as the soundtracks of greener days past ring out -- not unlike the disembodied church bells in High Hopes, themselves sonic shadows ‘of that dreamed of world’. Even still – I cannot return to that summer, as much as I cannot know what the next one will bring.

This is another type of inertia that High Hopes addresses. For all its mourning, it finds a deep sense of gratitude, expressed in a large sculpture of Barrett’s likeness. Perhaps he may appear deified in this way, but the video is not preoccupied with loitering in the shadows of its grief: it is these silhouetted men, again evocative of shadows, that animate Barrett’s presence. Though evocative of a funeral, this procession beyond the frame speaks to a vitally hopeful sentiment. Infinite possibilities for grief are bound up with new possibilities for hope, although we cannot know either. But we live, and we live.

'The endless river / Forever and ever.' Gilmour’s guitar solo soars like sweeping brush strokes. There is no grandiose visual accompaniment – the melody flows, the video sails on its current - nor are the wailing chords a melancholy imposition. Perhaps mourning starts that way, but High Hopes asserts its beautiful inevitability. Grief is a function of love—just as shadows are a function of sunlight.

Buried Histories: Exploring the Cemeteries of the Baltics

{words & photography} by Piers Hamilton

In the Baltic States, where history casts its long and sombre shadow, the northeastern European nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia bear the weight of a past that lingers. Each with their own deeply rooted respective identities, these nations have borne witness to centuries of conflict, where Poles clashed with Swedes, and Germans with Russians – each wave of struggle etching its story into the region’s soul.

Chasing snow, I jumped on a flight on New Year’s Day, bound for Tallinn, Estonia. Arriving in the city’s enchanting old town, with its frozen streets and frosted spires, felt like stepping into a scene from Doctor Zhivago, a timeless tableau of the Russian Empire wrapped in a winter embrace. Driving south to the seaside town of Pärnu, I was faced with 50s-era Soviet beach houses standing in sharp contrast to the winter landscape. Beach chairs, anchored in the frozen sand and half-buried in snow, resembled tombstones – memorialising the warmth and life that had filled the resort only months before.

From Estonia I journeyed ever southwards towards Riga, Latvia’s capital. Wandering from the old town’s canopy of church rooftops, I found myself three miles out at the Pokrov Orthodox cemetery where the city’s voices softened into silence. Trudging through the snow, I saw tombstones engraved in Latvian, German, and overwhelmingly those in Cyrillic. Amidst the tombs, Tolstoy’s wife, Julia Rozhansky, rests quietly alongside a war memorial honouring Red Army soldiers who perished during the Second World War. Beneath the watchful gaze of a bronze-cast Soviet soldier adjourned with fresh, colourful bouquets, I brushed away a layer

snow to reveal a name: Sergeant Vasily Ivanovich Serezhnikov, a 26-year-old Russian soldier who died fighting the Germans during the Liberation of Riga in May 1944, now buried in the foreign ground where his life was claimed. As I turned to leave the graveyard, I glimpsed a priest moving amongst his dead, his Orthodox Kamilavka hat casting a shadow in the snow. With each measured step, he swung an incense burner like a pendulum, the smoke drifting in the cold air, blurring the boundary between the living and the dead.

The journey concluded in Vilnius, Lithuania, a city of unexpected grandeur. Daring a run by the river one morning with the towering skyscrapers of the business district looming over me, it was here, beneath these urban giants, that I uncovered a haunting piece of history. This very ground had once been home to one of Europe’s oldest Jewish cemeteries, now razed in the name of gentrification. The tombstones themselves, broken and discarded, had been used to pave the stairwells of an unbeknown post-war Vilnius, their names lost inside the city’s concrete.

bed before days would stretch long and contort themselves into many difficult positions

i cannot remember this morning but yesterday has been carved out on the soft inside of my mind where thoughts don’t fly they themselves twist into memories now dust infiltrates the negative space where the light hits the pillow and you have evaporated through the bone and the gristle floated up up up and extracted yourself from me after you’ve gone the heat from your body lingers long and resides in the crevices be tween the thick knuckles of my hand it smooths my lonely skin soon it’ll return all of that dark wet longing it’ll smother me when i close my eyes or when i’m slicing tomatoes or when i’m bleaching the toilet or when i’m calling my mother or when i’m pairing my socks or when i’m soaking my hair in the sink or there are reasons i cannot make the bed once you’ve gone

by Emma Morgan

A n interview

This is Ben and Guy—long-term friends turned business partners who decided to set up shop a few years ago in the now-defunct Vintage Market with collectables—whether it was Star Wars toys, books,records, guitars or vintage tea sets.

You will now find them at 184 Cheltenham Road, in a store filled with an eclectic selection of vinyl, CDs, Hi-Fi and DJ gear.

Collector Cave is for all kinds of music enthusiasts. Whether you’re a bigshot DJ or a uni student, come in, have a chat, listen to a few records, and you might walk out with a few gems in your hand.

AH: So, How did it All StArt?

G: Collector Cave is a business that started out as a hobby around 20-odd years ago. Buying records, going about charity shops and car boot sales, I started selling records on Discogs and Ebay in 2003. I had a great-paying office job until about 2014 when I got made redundant, which I was kind of hoping for.

So I left after working for 16 years at this company and didn’t know what to do. I went to New York for a holiday with my now-wife to blow off some steam, and I was looking at Marketplace in my hotel room and all of a sudden this collection of Star Wars toys that I haven’t seen since I was a kid popped up for only £150. So I said yes without really thinking about it, and when I visited his home in Bristol to pick it up he had loads of other stuff! Wanting to help him, but also unsure what to do with all this money I got from

my job, I decided to buy everything he had. Also, he had a bag of records which, funnily enough, was wrapped in a New York Yankees bag! I then asked my friend Ben for help as I didn’t know what to do with my car full of this stuff I just got. He started going through it and realised that it was all pretty good! Fast forward to a few years later, I was setting up market stalls around Bristol and Ben used to come along on weekends. And the next thing you know, we were setting up a business, and I decided to become a house clearer. None of this was really planned.

AH: So you kind of become An Antique deAler?

G: Well, yeah. Next thing you know, Ben and I decided to go into a partnership down at the Vintage Market. We were selling mirrors, guitars, books, tea sets, toys, records, and it was kind of getting out of hand. Every time we cleared a house, we had so much stock. I started buying more collections and Hi-Fi, and people started turning up for the records. And that was it. By 2019, we decided we wanted to do this properly and so we set up a limited company and started trading as Collector Cave—it was literally

a cave full of stuff. There was no business plan, no logic, just really unorganised and cave-man style—it was crazy.

If I look back now at what Ben and I have done, I’m surprised that we’ve actually made money and that we’re still doing this! We’ve funded this all on our own, never borrowed any money, but I think it is time now that we get some funding and expand.

AH: How did you GuyS evolve Since leAvinG vintAGe mArket?

G: We always wanted our own shop as the Market was full of other traders and we wanted to run things a little bit differently. So Collector Cave was re-imagined about two and a half years ago in this proper shop and the rest is history.

A lot of people started asking us if we can repair things, and we met this crazy guy Ollie who’s a really big part of this business and has been repairing DJ mixers and decks for years. He’s a big inspiration for us and made us realize there are other things we can offer apart from being a record shop; a one-stop shop for anything physical-music related.

AH: you HAve A reAlly curAted Selection of recordS, witH independent dJ releASeS too, How did tHAt come About?

G: We mainly buy collections that people bring in, we rarely buying anything else. We’re very fussy on what goes out, focusing on giving people what they want. Independent releases happened by chance really. Some DJs are really good at selling themselves and are confident enough to come in and say they have a release. If we like it, we’ll take it! We’ve helped a lot of young DJs with technical stuff and general advice, and next thing you know, they’ve turned into really

finding stuff regularly on a daily basis as we usually get our records from people’s collections. There’s a lot of competition out there too, with plenty of great record shops in Bristol that have been doing this for much longer than we have. So we’re ‘fighting’ on many fronts. But, withstanding all of that, we’re doing really well... apart from financially. We’re keeping the lights on, paying our part-time employees, paying ourselves. We’re all surviving but we need to do way better. In terms of our reputation, we’re very lucky with what we’ve got. And I feel like we just need to keep doing what we’re doing but on a larger

successful DJs who still come back. It’s all very organic.

AH: wHAt Are tHe mAin cHAllenGeS you fAce AS An independent record Store?

G: We deal mostly with second-hand records. But the margins on new records through distribution are very, very tight. If you don’t have the margin, no matter how good the product is, you’re just gonna be making nothing. By dealing directly with a lot of artists, we can afford to buy their records, stay afloat and keep our prices low. That’s our key challenge really—

scale, keeping the quality high and a bit more specialised—those are the things that we’re now focused on.

AH: you mentioned tHAt you’ll be doinG Some eventS in-Store?

G: Yeah. So, one of the things we’ve done because of all the great producers and people that have brought vinyl into the shop over the last few years, is that we’ve got to know quite a few people in the scene. And we’re always looking for the next producer, whoever they are, whatever they’re making; if it fits the shop we’ll take it. When they release an

EP, we want to help them and do a little launch party. We’ve done a few of these and managed to get the shop bouncing, we’ve been super busy with people whooping and hollering and we even get to do a little Djing ourselves which is great. We need to redesign the shop to have a better set-up and so hopefully we’ll have a couple of these parties every month.

So, if you’re a superstar DJ or an unknown, if you’ve got the goods and want to play a vinyl-only set, come in!

AH: wHAt do you tHink About tHe riSe of vinyl dJ’S in recent yeArS?

G: Vinyl does have some snobbery attached to it, but I think beyond that, there is this appreciation of how difficult vinyl DJing is. If you want to be a vinyl DJ but you’ve got a small budget, you’ve got to get digging in the crates and be really meticulous.

Being a DJ on vinyl is very popular at the moment, but I feel like it’s popular for the right reasons. A lot of people think they can do it and a lot of them fail. There’s a lot of vinyl-only nights now—you’ve got Tokio Station, Vinyl Destination, Dissonance. To a certain extent, they are trying to differentiate themselves from the digital ones but I think it’s more about authenticity really.

AH: How do you See yourSelf witHin tHe briStol muSic community?

G: I can only go off from what our customers say. It’s hard blowing smoke up your own backside...

b: A facilitator of music.

G: I guess people say a ‘hub’. People come here to just hang out and chat. It’s easy for us to chat for an hour without having done any work. But then a lot of what we do is conversation-based anyway, the next deal is usually done by chatting to somebody, bond with them in the shop. And the next thing you know, they’re

bringing you their sick record collection you didn’t even know they had.

Some people have said that we’re ‘a pillar of the community’ but I don’t really know what that means. I guess if we were gone, I think people would be a bit upset.

We’ve sometimes given stuff to people just to help them out. That’s what I feel has kept us in good stead —the good-will attitude. A lot of people have helped us so I feel it’s important to help where we can too.

AH: How do you feel About 2025? iS it excitinG And/or terrifyinG?

b: Interesting. Productive. I don’t see negative words.

G: We aren’t afraid of taking risks now. Mickey Zoggs & Noods Radio will be next door soon and that’s really exciting as we share a synergy in our customer base already. Keep the good energy and quality high.

AH: And lAStly, wHAt’S your fAvourite record At tHe moment?

G: Ecstatic release by Ecstatic records. A 4 track EP by a brand-new label who are friends of the shop.

b: Honestly, music is not really my thing? I’m mostly into collectables and electronics…

AH: okAy, So wHAt’S your fAvourite electronic?

b: Probably my little handheld arcade game.

But I have been listening to a lot of Buddy Guy, late 60s, early 70s Delta blues with a bit of rock’n’roll.

Come say hi, stay in the loop on IG @collectorcaveuk

Catch Guy spinning records for the upcoming jungle-jazz night of Tokio Station, 5th of March

Magnetic Veils: How Elusive Artists Redefine Fame

‘This is going to sound really weird but... well, I’m a lucid dreamer, you see. I can control my dreams. I make tracks in my dreams. Sometimes, I’m in my own studio, and sometimes, in an imaginary studio, and sometimes, in my real studio but with imaginary equipment. I reckon I get about 70% of my stuff that way now.’

Richard D. James, Q Magazine (March 1994)

{words} by Georgie Wallwork {photography} by Ned Button

Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin, has always thrived in the shadows. The dark is where he conjures his confusing elixirs of jumpy, dizzying soundscapes and where he decidedly resides. In an age where artists compete more than ever for visibility, those who intentionally reside in the shadows redefine what it is to be seen and heard. By rebelling against industry conventions of overexposure, they amplify their allure, proving that absence, too, can command attention. So, is the era of mystery truly dead, or does ‘popular’ culture still make room for the enigmatic? Perhaps artists like

Frank Ocean and Aphex Twin have cultivated such cult followings not despite but because of their elusiveness.

Frank Ocean began his career as a ghostwriter, hiding behind the spotlight. He wrote lyrics for stars like Justin Bieber, Brandy and Beyoncé, to name a few. This ghostly secrecy extends to his own music, which is entrenched with cryptic codes. These codes have sparked endless conversations and analyses of his work, with Cole Cuchna’s Dissect podcast providing in-depth unpicking of his poetic riddles. Fans have developed their own communal lexicon, which binds them in

the intimacy of knowing. Jewel Ogungbamigbe at KTSW radio captures this intimacy in their reflection on the similarly elusive Dean Blunt: ‘I find being a fan of his so rewarding as you feel like you’re in on a big secret.’ Fans are made to feel chosen, superior even.

Frank Ocean’s artistry is also defined by defiance—most notably, his cunning release of his visual album Endless as a live stream on Apple Music in order to free himself from a relentlessly disappointing seven-year contract with Def Jam, only to release his seminal album Blonde the following day with full ownership. Def Jam received nothing from the $20 million made from Blonde. This calculated triumph cemented Frank Ocean’s disdain for the industry he inhabits and his refusal to abide by its restrictive rules. Not to mention, he hasn’t released music in nearly five years and his absence looms larger than ever.

Richard D. James occupies a similarly enigmatic space. The iconic Aphex Twin logo has been circulating the media for decades. Even if you are not a fan, you probably know the symbol. The angular emblem has transcended the niche and hit the mainstream at full force. Pitchfork magazine’s Andrew Ryce seems perturbed with this mainstream shift, describing James’ most recent release Music from the Merch Desk (2016–2023) as ‘another bout of oversharing from an artist who once held his cards close to his chest.’ Yet,James is not trying to be mainstream, he just is. In his Index Magazine interview in 2001, James stated, ‘I think it’s bad to be really well known, because you end up in people’s faces whether they like you or not. That’s a really horrible thought.’

This ‘horrible thought’ has come to full fruition. James’ choice of album cover artwork for Music from the Merch Desk (2016-2023) carries a satirical nod to the productive boom in bootleg merch by copying the same format—a meta parody of Aphex Twin. James is continually making a meme out of himself, and perhaps it is this which provides him a mask of separation from audience and persona. His exaggerated facial expression is a

mask; his face is a mask of his face—a face so ‘in-your-face’ he renders himself faceless. If you can’t beat them, make fun of them?

To be able to control your dreams of success on your own terms, in your own time, is what Frank Ocean and Richard D. James have mastered. Frank Ocean stated in a 2011 MTV interview, ‘one of the coolest things about what I’m experiencing right now as far as people responding to the songs I write and what I decided to do is that it really is me... I’ll always make what I want to make.’ Unsullied by industry rules or trend cycles, these musicians lead with artistic integrity, and if that means shying into the shadows, so be it. In an attention economy, maybe the best way to get attention is to avoid it—that is when mystery is an extension of artistic integrity and value. While Frank Ocean has only retreated further into the shadows and James dances on their edges, their mystery remains a quiet form of power.

Does fashion empower or censor women’s rights?

{words} by Caroline O’Beirne {photography} by Billy Allen

Fashion has long been used as a means of expressing individuality, yet there are numerous examples of how it has also restricted women’s rights. Whether through strict societal customs dictating what is acceptable or laws that infringe on a woman’s ability to express herself, fashion can both liberate and constrain.

Throughout history, fashion has often served as a means of empowerment for women. Consider the rise of ‘Bloomer’ trousers. Amelia Bloomer, born in 1818, was an American activist and suffragist. A strong critic of Victorian corsets due to the numerous health risks they posed to women, she advocated for a type of trouser called ‘platoons’, which would later be known as ‘Bloomers’. This trend symbolised resistance against fashion norms that restricted women’s autonomy and instead championed a style that promoted their freedom.

During the Second Wave of Feminism, fashion saw the rise in popularity of the mini-skirt and mini-dress, most infamously worn by the model Twiggy at Derby Day in Australia. These garments reflected the growing tolerance and liberation of women’s bodies, aligning with the sexual liberation movement in the fight to destigmatise what had long been deemed shameful.

Just as feminism comes in and out of fashion, so too do trends that confine women to rigid beauty standards. Consider the fashion of the early 2000s. Baby tees, low-rise jeans, and satin tops have made a comeback as many fashion enthusiasts reminisce on what they perceive as an iconic decade for fashion. However, behind these trends lay a rigid beauty ideal that masked a toxic and disempowering model of self-worth.

Take, for example, the infamous diet trends of the time, such as the ‘Special K diet’, which involved replacing two daily meals with a bowl of Kellogg’s cereal. This toxic marketing campaign capitalised on a diet-obsessed culture at the expense of both men and women, many of whom grew up believing they were never beautiful enough. With so many different diets to choose from, the fashion industry reflected this growing obsession with body size through trends like low-rise jeans and baby tees.

In 2025, there are still numerous examples of how fashion is weaponised

to repress women’s rights around the world. Since the Taliban reinstated their control in Afghanistan, women have been forced to cover their faces in public and are not allowed to appear alone. In December, Iran introduced a new law enforcing harsher punishments for women who do not comply with the veiling law, including floggings, fines, and even travel bans.

What does this tell us about how fashion can suppress women’s rights? When imposed by the status quo, fashion can be used as a tool to confine women to a single form of expression, stripping them of their right to individualism—the true definition of liberation.

To explore whether fashion today exists as a means of empowerment, The Croft spoke with Neto Ken-Amobi, a Politics and Social Policy student who also serves as President of the Fashion Forward Society at the University of Bristol.

For Neto, fashion became a source of empowerment, helping her overcome childhood shyness and explore her creativity beyond academia. Like many LGBTQ+ icons in the fashion world, she found design to be a powerful medium for self-expression and a way to embrace her queer identity. Her designs, influenced by the ‘free-spirited nature’ of 1970s fashion, reflect a decade that saw significant victories for women’s rights both in fashion and society.

Despite believing that today is ‘the best decade to be a fashionista’, Neto acknowledges the persistent issues within the fashion industry. On social media, ‘people are still as nasty about people’s bodies’, and structural barriers remain for aspiring designers who lack the necessary resources and connections.

When considering the role of fashion in feminism, Neto asserts that ‘the freedom to wear what you want is a privilege’. Every woman’s experience with fashion is shaped by factors such as race, religion, geographical location, and economic status. While fashion may serve as a blank canvas for self-expression, structural inequalities continue to dictate who truly has the freedom to dress as they choose.

DISPERSION

A SHORT STORY BY JEN ELLIS {art} by Anushka Holding

‘Good luck,’ says Red Nails. ‘Have a great show,’ says Blondie. He had those names for all of us. Maybe it eased the guilt for him. Baby Eyes. Sweet Lips—there was debate as to how she earned that one.

One of them whispers something in his ear. She was known as Heroine.

Then, he answers the beckoning call of applause and ritualistic chanting. He goes to the stage where he sells himself to it. Every night, we watched him bathe under floodlights, soaking it up like rays of July sun. Behind the heavy curtains, his twisting silhouette was our best view of him. His shadow made him bigger, like the shadow you’re convinced is a monster lurking in childhood darkness. Larger hands that conducted his audience. Larger arms that called for praise.

We once desired to share that light, but we’d learnt to share the lightless space behind him. The only light we shared was the sickly fluorescent bulbs of a dressing room, an anaemic shadow cast over cut lines of snow, cast over unbuckled belts. There were moments of euphoria. A sense of real freedom. But moments were all they were. A brief space of time to exist.

In this city, beautiful meant short. Beautiful meant living like a firework: you shine as bright as you can until you fizzle out and everyone’s gazes turn to the next one. We lusted for a life that could be taped together after a tragic death and placed on display to the ‘ooh-ah’ of voyeurs. To be exhibited next to the ones who sported a beauty spot lurking seductively by the lip, like a full-stop to their oozing sex appeal. Or those who kept up a baby girl appearance, although their behaviour on booze and benzos suggested otherwise.

The show ends. A move to an afterparty. We leave any sense of the law behind us in the name of hedonism. The tour bus takes us anywhere. It races through the blurring lights of LA, a spiderweb of gold light ready to ensnare those it calls to. The tinted window of the bus reflects the ecstatic stares of admiration and jealousy from passersby. The air inside becomes musty with the smoke of burning leaves that form a haze of both the eyes and the mind that hides what he wants it to. Eventually, we unload ourselves, tripping over stairs, and stumbling towards blaring bass vibrations, contained in the brick and mortar of a nondescript house. I feel my jaw being guided open. A tab on my hanging tongue, and I let the chemical fizz burn.

I once had dreams of being a beautiful poet. To immortalise my idols in ink, stamped on with the stinging smack of typewriter tiles like a papery tattoo. Smack, smack, smack. When I met him, I told myself I could be his muse, but maybe I really wanted him to be mine. He was who I wanted to embellish with details that I wished were true. Smack, smack, smack. The back of a rough hand on a tearbrushed cheek. Smack, smack, smack. Crooked stiletto slamming on the accelerator. I fight it. Malaise and ecstasy struggle for dominance over my limbs. I separate. I harness control of my pupils. A tangle of silhouettes, the famous feasting on those who admire them most. Escape. I need to escape. The stench of lust begins to choke me, the residue smell that lingered on every interaction in this goddamn city, and I feel everything inside my stomach rise towards my throat and beat against my larynx with syncopation.

I fight it. Malaise and ecstasy struggle for dominance over my limbs. I separate. I harness control of my pupils. A tangle of silhouettes, the famous feasting on those who admire them most. Escape. I need to escape. The stench of lust begins to choke me, the residue smell that lingered on every interaction in this goddamn city, and I feel everything inside my stomach rise towards my throat and beat against my larynx with syncopation.

‘Is there a bathroom in this place?’ I call out.

Two shapes on the couch.

‘Beats me, girl,’ says one.

Vision falls into focus. I see a man with an arm around a female shape. I didn’t know whether she had been on the bus or not. She looks like all of us. Long, untamed hair, high-waisted shorts and halter that barely conceals what is underneath.

The nausea begins to burn my throat with the acidic sting of partially digested beer that pulled me to some sense of sobriety. I push open the first white door I see and stumble into a tiled bathroom. Under that muddy light, I expel everything inside me, like some sort of ethanolic exorcism, mingling with an undiscerned sweetness. I sit up from the toilet bowl, knuckles white, the fog lifting from my brain. Lying next to me is a woman. She is bundled in a fur coat, peroxide blonde hair strewn across tiles. Wrinkles cast dark lines on her face like lines on the page of a memoir. How many forehead lines had she procured from parties like these? The frown of a jealous groupie wears deep. The crows’ feet from squinting at street signs to determine location after a night of drink and regret. But I saw she was beautiful. Me and her. All of us. I stood in front of the mirror. I wanted to look at my sallow face, the bead of drool hanging from my lower lip, the skin on my shoulders that hadn’t seen soap for days.

I wanted to stay in the light.

Shadow Puppets: Who Pulls the Strings?

{words} by Alice Graham

Mantras such as ‘tax the rich’, worn famously by Democratic Senator Alexandra Ocasio Cortez at the 2021 Met Gala, have been peddled by many in the US who are growing frustrated with what they view as distrustful organisations. However, this distrust has stretched further than just criticising the ruling elite. The murder of Brian Thompson represents the ultimate frustration many have with organisations that are claimed to be abusing their power. The incident that 26-year-old Ivy League College Graduate Luigi Mangione has been charged with embodies the distrust of organisations such as UnitedHealth Group, which have been faced with accusations of insider trading, subject to antitrust investigations and confronted with a fraud lawsuit.

The police suspect that Mangione was motivated by resentment towards the health insurance industry, a discontent that grew particularly after he suffered a debilitating back injury in July 2023. At the scene of the murder, three cartridge cases were found with the words written on them – an inscription that resembles the well-known ‘3 D’s of insurance’ (‘delay, deny, defend’), alluding to insurance companies’ efforts not to pay out claims and maximise profits. Although Mangione was not a UnitedHealthcare customer, the police believe he could have aimed an attack at Thompson due to his high status within the industry. Thompson, among two other UnitedHealth Group executives, had been recently accused of insider trading and fraud in a lawsuit filed in 2024. The

company was, and is currently, facing an antitrust investigation which seeks to prevent companies from abusing their dominance and monopolising.

Despite being connected to this brutal act, Mangione has become somewhat of a symbol, with people championing him online for fighting back against the perceived inequalities of the American healthcare system and growing wealth inequality more generally. Brian Thompson’s death has brought some important and uncomfortable questions to the fore. The legal system and the public are being called to reassess the power of unseen forces – wealthy elites and corporate interests – in shaping public policies and stifling accountability. Francine Pope from the Guardian notes ‘the mess we’re in wasn’t [Brian Thompson’s] fault. Our problems are so much larger than he was. He was an unlucky, visible symbol of everything that’s gone wrong with our healthcare system’. I believe there is merit to this claim; Thompson was a figurehead of a much bigger issue: the systemic corruption in America that stretches far beyond the healthcare industry. Therefore, considering the injustice caused by Thompson alone does little to expose and hold liable the true perpetrators, the figures who enable these systems to operate. This case is only the tip of the iceberg of corruption in the United States.

In the US’ current political climate, these questions hold even greater pertinence. With formally convicted felon and businessman Donald Trump recently

sworn in as president, we can expect increasingly business-like governance, ready to risk worsening public and social conditions in favour of growing the American economy. His decision to involve tech billionaire Elon Musk in federal activities, naming him head of the Department of Government Efficiency, proves this. As he aligns himself with major business leaders – Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the list goes on – it is clear that the corporate usurping of America’s federal systems is very possible, if not already happening. This will legitimise a certain attitude –an attitude of economic greed whereby profit is prioritised over customer satisfaction and public welfare – and further enable the corruption of other public-serving organisations like those within the health insurance industry.

This creeping corporatisation isn’t just about overt alliances between politicians and CEOs. It also operates through the more insidious mechanisms of financial corruption. Consider Meta’s tax avoidance allegations, where the company faced a potential tax bill of around 870 million euros in Italy after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into the economy. The problem isn’t just about lost revenue for public systems; it’s about the message this sends—that the ultra-wealthy exist beyond accountability, being able to participate freely in the shadow economy.

Even when these ultra-rich business leaders are situated without the political sphere, they have the power to influence systems – or, in this case, corrupt them. The figures accused in UnitedHealthcare’s fraud investigation exemplify this. The corporisation of the American healthcare system means that these people have real power over their customers’ well-being. But, not only this, they have a genuine influence over the healthcare system in general. Being the largest health insurance company in America, their actions also set a precedent for the rest of the industry – any corruption would make them unfair gains in the industry, and others might be forced to do the same or see their businesses fail. A corrupt

environment breeds corruption. The case also begs the question—if a company can profit more by avoiding payouts than by providing actual care, does it not function as a type of legalised shell company?

Ultimately, Thompson’s death reveals a larger problem, a symptom of a system that perpetuates inequality and fails to hold its most powerful actors accountable. Addressing this requires more than identifying figureheads or individual perpetrators; it demands a critical reevaluation of the structures that allow such corruption to thrive. Without systemic change, the inequalities and injustices Mangione’s actions sought to expose will continue to deepen, leaving the majority to suffer while the elite remains untouched.

‘delAy’ ‘deny’

‘depoSe’

peeling, popping, crying, shaving, loving, exfoliating, masturbating, bathing, dancing, cleansing

bathroom by Anushka

You are extremely hot - literally, with your skin melting off from the hot water. And hot as you are, naked, slippery, shaving yourself to be slimy smooth like a baby dolphin (for who?).

Either vomiting your heart out or smearing eyeliner and lipstick across your face.

But you also pull your hair out, (from everywhere), mapping it into a mosaic on your shower’s wall.

An Eternal Neverland: A Discussion on Growing Pains and Nostalgic Musings

{words & photography} by

‘All children, except one, grow up’

Shadows of Nostalgia

the opening line of J.M. Barrie’s 'Peter and Wendy' (1904)

Soaring across London’s skyline in blissful perpetuity, Disney’s Peter Pan tells the adventures of a boy who resides in the dreamlike Neverland of eternal childhood. One of the film’s opening scenes sees Peter fly in through Wendy’s window to retrieve his elusive shadow, desperately trying to stick it back on with soap. Wendy instead intricately sews his murky silhouette back onto him. To me, the loss of his shadow is representative of his wish to remain in a permanent state of childhood, and this moment in the film speaks to the delicate balance between holding onto the shadows of our past and allowing oneself to evolve. I find that there is much temptation to be found in the wish for the simplicity and safety of the past, just as Peter wishes to remain in Neverland, forever unchanging.

It is easy to become entrenched in the shadows of what has come before us—especially as we shift into what might be, for some, our final term at Bristol. We may be longing for the rose-tinted memories of our earlier university life, the simple days of being a fresher and feeling as if we have endless time ahead. These feelings of nostalgia can certainly cast a bittersweet shadow over our present, ever-changing reality. Whilst we may regard our past with affection and sentimentality, nostalgia extends beyond just a state of remembering as it is tinged with the heavy sense that we will never experience these memories again.

Nostalgia: A Brief History

Interestingly, nostalgia was initially identified as a mental health condition. Swiss physician Johannes Hofer first coined the term in 1688 to describe the anxiety, disordered eating, insomnia and other feelings of intense homesickness suffered by troops serving away from home during wartime. By the 1800s, nostalgia was considered more of a melancholic depression, permeated with homesickness and loss. In the late 1900s, sociologist Fred Davis began to draw clear distinctions between nostalgia and homesickness.

Alana Levi

Even today, nostalgia still holds the residue of a yearning for home or for some form of familiarity. When I think back to the first 2020 lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, I imagine the glowing cloud of nostalgia that seemed to seep through the crevices of everyone’s closed front doors. In April 2020, Spotify reported a 54 per cent rise in listeners making nostalgiathemed playlists. Also, in a recent Radio Times survey, 64 per cent of respondents said that they had rewatched a series in lockdown and 43 per cent said they were watching nostalgic shows to bring themselves comfort. The desire to look back became an enduring trend as anxieties surrounding the present day fuelled nostalgia. Sean Gammon, a professor at the University of Central Lancashire, released a paper on nostalgia and leisure during lockdown in 2020. Gammon attributes the nostalgia boom to two things. On a practical level, many people had more time on their hands but not much to do. Emotionally, the idea of escaping to the past holds great appeal when the present is so fraught and uncertain. ‘The past is a nice place to be, especially in times of upheaval’, he told The Independent.

Indulging in the Past

This poses the question of whether we should allow ourselves to wallow in the rose-tinted memories of the more familiar past in times of uncertainty. Whilst this vicarious return to what may seem like a simpler time might provide some temporary comfort, it is important to remember that nostalgic fragments of our past are inherently incomplete. As time passes, our minds tend to regard memories in a softer, more forgiving light than how they were once perceived. Even though it may seem useful to romanticise our memories as a coping mechanism to detach ourselves from a difficult present, it is important to prevent them from embodying a murky burden that grounds us to a lost past.

We should therefore avoid becoming overwhelmed by nostalgia and see it for what it is: romanticised visions of the past. However, I want to suggest that at the same time, these visions can provide a feeling of belonging, enhancing one’s sense of identity when encountering times of unfamiliarity. Nostalgia once held the status of an illness infused with feelings of homesickness but today, it can be re-defined as a joyful envisioning of how we see our future. We know that we can never truly remain in an unchanging Neverland-like state, but we should take these feelings of nostalgia and reimagine them as fragments of time well spent—as visions of what might come next. I know that I will continue to decorate my walls with taped-up photo-booth pictures from my first year at Bristol, whilst being sentimental over how it once was, I hope to channel these desires for the past into a nostalgic longing for a future yet to live.

Fashion as a Silent Language: The Power of What We Wear

{words}

by

Shukri Jama {photography}

by

Alice Graves

As humans, we are ruled by our love of aesthetics, making our clothes the focus of subconscious judgement. Our outfits make an impression before we even have the chance to speak.

Historically, what we wore displayed our social standing and culture. On a surface level, the aristocracy was visually distinguished from the working class through fashion, allowing their status to be shown without uttering a single word.

But our style is no longer so limited in its expression. Outfits can also memorialise movements and serve as ideological tools to connect or divide. Vivienne Westwood was renowned for her embrace of fashion as an inherently political notion. The punk movement would be lost without the unifying influence of her designs. Each print, rip, and clash in her collections contributed to her rebellion against the hegemony of popular culture in the fashion industry.

Designers often use their collections to challenge the fashion paradigm. Daniel Roseberry, creative director at Schiaparelli, used his Spring/Summer 2025 show to counter the view that minimalism is modernism. The pre-Second World War fabrics paired with transcendent silhouettes push against the archaic, mechanised view of modernity. Indeed, as fashion has grown to be seen as an artistic, intellectual process, collections offer us a peek into the designer’s subconscious. What do they leave out? What do they add in? From fabric to shape, nothing is spared from the artist’s influence and deliberation.

Take the Antwerp Six, a legendary Belgian designer collective that includes both Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten. Their work encompasses a wide range of societal reflections, from avant-garde to experimental deconstruction, even exploring the chaos of the fake news anxieties consuming the 21st century. Each member was moulded by their era and the training they received at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts under the watch of Linda Loppa. All we have to do is look at the physical legacies of Demeulemeester and Van Noten. Demeulemeester is grayscale personified, whilst Van Noten flirts with excess and visual bombardment. Yet they are bonded by shared history and rebellious fluidity, like countless other designers of the past.

Before entering your wardrobe, your clothes have been consumed with meaning. They are born from the minds of designers immersed in varying schools of thought, movements, and political ideologies. Through the absorption of designers’ ideas into mainstream accessible fashion, their explorations are reflected in every shop window. These ideas then transfer onto our bodies through every clothing purchase we make. Each day, we are draped in concealed messages, unknowingly altering their meaning with every re-wear.

The Allure of Absence: How negative space and sheer fabrics shape fashion’s fascination

{words}

{art}

by

by

Sabrina Fateh

Issy Blythe

Fashion design thrives on the delicate interaction of absence and presence, an art form between intrigue and illusion. By revealing and obscuring in equal measure, designers craft garments that captivate the imagination, inviting endless fascination.

Negative space plays a pivotal role in this dynamic. Designers frequently employ cutouts and asymmetry, isolating garments to create sculpted silhouettes intended to push the boundaries of mere functionality. On the runway, voids create ephemeral shadows and provide a visual pause, compelling observers to engage with the artistry of the design rather than a singular concept, enhancing appeal and wonder around their creations. Consider the structural drama of couture: rigid corsets, laser-cut leather, or voluminous fabric layering that interacts with light and shadow to heighten the garment’s allure.

Rick Owens’ SS23 collection offers a compelling example, harnessing dramatic draping and angular cutouts to create a dynamic balance between exposure and concealment. Owens combines his signature monochromatic tones with exaggerated proportions, evoking both power and fragility. This tension crafts a world that is equally haunting and beautiful. In a similar vein, Mugler’s SS21 show explored negative space to striking effect. Against a stark black backdrop, models emerged as living illusions, sometimes in reverse. Dominique Jackson’s mesh bodysuit with sharp cutouts, paired with a sleek tailored jacket, exemplified Mugler’s mastery of balancing boldness and restraint.

Designers have long been captivated by the allure of sheer materials, adding a sophisticated and ethereal quality to womenswear since the 1950s. These fabrics—tulle, chiffon, and organza—diffuse light in a way that evokes romance and delicacy, blurring the lines between modesty and sensuality by offering a vignette of the body or garments underneath. When layered with opaque textiles, sheer materials create depth and allure, transforming garments into dreamlike compositions that incorporate the skin as an integral component of the design.

This effect was memorably displayed in Alexander McQueen’s SS99 show. Models spun beneath a single spotlight, their rigid and fluid forms casting dynamic shadows that danced alongside crystal embellishments scattering the light. Mugler’s SS21 collection echoed this ethos, notably with Hunter Schafer’s unforgettable sheer, crystal-encrusted dress—a look that boldly juxtaposed the dark, moody tones of the runway.

Whether through negative space or sheer fabrics, designers continue to use fashion to manipulate light and form, creating pieces that are both visually arresting and conceptually profound. This relationship between presence and absence ensures fashion’s place as an ever-evolving art form that both challenges and delights.

Review of Posh by Laura Wade at The Loco Klub, Bristol

Laura Wade’s Posh is a sharp, scathing critique of privilege and power, delving into the destructive entitlement of a group of elite university students who belong to the exclusive—and fictitious—Riot Club. Inspired by real-life institutions like the Bullingdon Club, the play follows these young men (and, in this production, young women) as they gather for an annual dinner marked by hedonism, misogyny, and escalating violence. What begins as a boozy celebration of tradition spirals into chaos, culminating in the brutal murder of the landlord and a desperate attempt to shrink responsibility.

Director Jamie Druce’s decision to stage Posh in the subterranean depths of Bristol’s historic Loco Klub was a masterstroke. A venue steeped in the ethos of working-class solidarity, as once a railway workers’ social club, stood in stark contrast to the Riot Club’s opulence and unbridled privilege, creating a powerful meta-narrative that sharpened the play’s critique of class and power.

The traverse stage layout was an inspired choice. With the audiences seated on opposing sides, the setup evoked a sense of judgement and tension, the audience poised to observe and appraise the Riot Club’s debauchery. The pre-show routine, featuring the cast wandering anxiously in character, offered a flash-forward of the group’s unravelling. This prolonged prelude, where the audience’s murmurs rose as their initial discom-

fort faded, cleverly mirrored the Riot Club’s later shrugging off of their heinous acts—expertly crafted foreshadowing of their moral desensitisation. Druce took a daring and highly effective step by transforming the traditionally all-male cast into a mixed-gender ensemble, with the most interesting reimagining being that of the Riot Club president, originally James Leighton-Masters, into Jemima Leighton-Masters, played by Evie King. King delivered a compelling performance, balancing Jemima’s initial moral hesitations with her ultimate complicity. That fact that Jemima was focal in the night’s depravity—partaking in vandalism, complaining about their 10-bird roast (only 9 birds!), and indulging in the same entitlement she initially somewhat resisted—perfectly conveyed the corrupting influence of power itself.

The ensemble was impeccably cast, grippingly portraying the group’s escalation from entitlement to outright violence. By the time the group pinned the landlord’s murder on Allegra Ryle (Lily Robinson), their complete lack of accountability was both infuriating and chillingly believable. Wade’s darkly comic yet sharp script was brought to life with intensity and nuance by its talented ensemble.

The production’s design elements worked seamlessly to heighten its impact. The traditional suit tails worn by most members served as a visual shorthand for their inherited privilege and

{words} by Annie Davey {photography} by Kirkland Childs

adherence to hollow traditions, while Tabby Maitland’s (Evanthe Gee) deviation from this uniform highlighted her precarious position within the group. Music choices, such as tracks by The Jam, infused the play with an anarchic energy, yet this punk soundtrack ironically clashed with the Riot Club’s lack of purpose or ideology. The transition of the landlord’s quaint pub room into a scene of utter destruction, with overturned furniture and shattered possessions, was a visceral depiction of the group’s corrosive influence on anything they touch.

The audience’s relationship with the Riot Club was masterfully manipulated. At first, their ridiculous excesses elicited laughter, but as the night wore on, the humour soured. The moment they demanded that a prostitute (Lily Walker) perform oral sex on them under the table marked a collective turning point; from that scene onward, laughter turned to discomfort and revulsion. Through this shift, Druce skilfully indicted the Club’s trajectory from amusingly entitled to unbearably cruel, forcing the audience to confront their own initial complicity in finding them entertaining.

This production of Posh was a triumph of conceptual staging and incisive direction. Through bold casting choices, evocative design, and razor-sharp performances, the play transcended its satire to become a scathing indictment of privilege’s corrosive power. This was not just a performance—it was a call to reflect on the structures of power that continue to shape our society.

I spoke to the director, Jamie Druce, about his staging of Posh.

AD: You’ve wanted to direct Posh for a long time. What drew you to this play?

JD: I’ve been passionate about it for years. I think what really attracted me was how the production tackles class and privilege. When people first hear about it, they assume it’s just a play about posh people, but it’s really about power, money, and the systemic structures behind it. There was a lot of talk about whether it was appropriate to stage this in Bristol, given its high percentage of private school students, but I thought that made it even more relevant.

AD: How did you approach making the play accessible and engaging for audiences?

JD: I really wanted to emphasise that Posh isn’t just a political statement—it’s also funny. Some people act like it’s a super complex play, but actually, it’s done at a GCSE level in schools. The humour makes it more digestible while still delivering its message. We played with making the characters likeable at first so that the audience might root for them before realising

how awful they truly are.

AD: You made some interesting gender swaps in your adaptation. What was the thought process behind that?

JD: Yeah, we changed some of the male roles to female. It was an intentional choice to see how power dynamics shift when women adopt the same elitist, entitled behaviour. Seeing a woman say some of the horrible lines traditionally delivered by a man gives them a different kind of weight. It challenges assumptions about who holds power and how it’s wielded.

AD: The marketing and aesthetic choices were also really striking. Can you talk about that?

JD: We wanted the marketing to reflect the allure of privilege before exposing its dark side. The posters had this glossy, riotous energy, almost inviting people to ‘join the club.’ It was inspired by the way the original play was presented—with graffiti scrawled over a classic painting. We did the same in our promotional materials.

AD: The staging and venue also played a key role in setting the tone. Why did you choose Loco Klub as your venue?

JD: We wanted to perform it in a venue that wasn’t traditionally glamorous, which was a deliberate contrast. The characters are dressed in these immaculate suits, acting like they own the world, but they’re in a space that’s rough around the edges.

That visual juxtaposition added another layer to the themes of entitlement and delusion.

AD: What was the biggest challenge in directing this production?

JD: Honestly, the hardest part was making sure the satire landed correctly. We had to strike a balance between making the characters entertaining without excusing their behaviour. The final scene, where the audience realises just how cruel and detached these characters are, had to be impactful. It’s easy to dismiss them as just ‘bad people,’ but the real horror is that they are real. These kinds of people exist and hold power.

AD: I felt that the most intense moment was the scene when they order a prostitute (portrayed by Lily Walker). Up until that point, the audience found the characters amusing in a satirical way, but that scene was a turning point. You could feel the discomfort in the room as it became clear how dehumanising their behaviour truly was.

JD: Yes, it almost forced the audience to confront the darker implications of the play in a visceral way. I remember people saying how they felt like they couldn’t laugh at the characters anymore.

AD: I certainly felt like I couldn’t. So, Posh was a success. What’s next?

JD: I definitely want to continue directing. I’ve been thinking about starting a theatre company that focuses on new writing, particularly from underrepresented perspectives. I love the collaborative nature of theatre—not just directing, but also working on marketing, staging, and the whole world-building aspect. I want to create stories that challenge audiences while still being engaging and, ideally, a bit subversive.

tHe Sun cHASer

by tASHA ndonGA

{photography} by Anushka Holding

As every African does, I chase the sun. In my childhood, I spent hours staring at it—curious to see what lay behind its bright and unforgiving light.

It’s a Kenyan trait to always want more. I’ve always thought of it as a way to fill the hole left by colonisation—a time where borders split up families, where we were labelled by tribes and tricked into thinking that our brothers were the enemy. A way to prove our worth after decades of being fed the ‘uncivilised and barbaric’ rhetoric.

Growing up on the ‘Dark Continent’, I knew no better. The untrue narrative of our people was being passed down through generations, even after independence—like a curse. We are lazy, corrupt, tribalistic. This negativity scarred our perceptions of ourselves and our country. The Kenyan way became lost. We were so lost in what we were supposed to be, that we accepted whatever narrative was thrown our way.

This national insecurity trickled down into schools and among children. I developed a toxic relationship with myself. It became so consuming that I stopped looking in the mirror. I just wanted to escape—so I sat in the sun, daydreaming my childhood away.

This dreaming of a better tomorrow is the norm in Kenya. A place so beautiful in its nature and people is riddled with corruption and violence. Kenya lives in the shadow of what it could have been. Now, it’s a bad attempt at a Western country. I identify with Kenya in this way—like a bad attempt at a person trying to move forward without addressing the cracks in the foundation.

Shadow versus Sun. One cannot exist without the other, and yet, it is in our nature to ignore the presence of what is dark. I had no choice but to confront the darkness when I got into university—the sun I was chasing.

So, I got my happy ending. But what lay beyond the light was just more darkness. The feelings of insecurity tripled because now I no longer had the comfort of blending in. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to daydream about. I was confronted with the shadow left behind—myself.

I realised something: my identity is entirely woven into me, no matter how hard I try to detach from it. So, I embraced it fully. The more I listened to Kenyan music, talked to my family, and found a community in Bristol, the more I became a mosaic of the people who loved me and whom I loved. I realised that what I was running from was not Kenya but a self-hatred I had internalised. No matter where I am, accepting all parts of myself, rain or shine, is what matters most.

Reliquia de un Carroñero

This time, dawn is unforgiving in the Paracas vastness, the sea-roar loses its symphony

As the mocking image of your shadow dissipates into The sand-grains nestled under your fingernails, Where temperamental winds cannot steal your Baptismal youth. The red sandstorms hum Loses itself in the gaping mouth of the pregnant fly.

The decayed bodega is the only life-source in the East Where dust covered bottles of Inca Cola share shelves with

The framed scorpions, reduced under magnifying-glass laser beams. There is no mercy for ugly creatures.

You, naked, crouch beneath the spinal shadow of my Cactus-freak, You beg for me to return your throat, but The vultures were hungry this cruel July. This time, there is no undoing. My Saint Sebastian, let the spines pierce your softness, and please, let the blood quench your thirst.

No More Uncharted Waters

{words & photography} by Sofia Lambis

Travelling is an upheaval. People leave behind the comfort of their homes, their possessions, their friends and family, and journey to places with different customs, languages, cultures, and climates. When I learned I would be teaching abroad over summer, I had no idea what to expect. I knew the training was in Assisi, Italy, and that the teaching might be in Austria, but that was about it. Where I’d be sent, who I’d be staying with, and how I’d be getting there were only revealed a few days (or, in one instance, 12 hours) before I left. I was leaving everything I knew behind for somewhere entirely new and unfamiliar.

Or was I?

Social media and the internet have transformed how we gather information. Gone are the comically wrong maps full of mythical sea creatures and strange lands, and the wild theories about what lies beyond the horizon. Now the entire planet—all 509,600,000 square kilometres of it—can be pulled up on a screen and perused at our leisure. Technology has altered how we navigate and discover new places. We can look up pictures of a building on the other side of the world and take a virtual street tour of the city we’ll be travelling to. We can watch a video of someone living in another country and hear their language without getting out of bed. We can know what our destination looks and sounds like before we’ve even arrived. The whole world—literally—at our fingertips. From satellite drones and Google Maps to camera rolls and curated Instagram posts, we’ve shone a light into every corner. This begs the question: is anything today really uncharted? When it comes to travel, it seems we’ve gotten rid of the unknown.

But if this is true, why do people still travel? It’s more expensive, tiring and time-consuming than looking something up on the internet. You could argue there’s little point in uprooting our daily life if we already know what our destination will be like. What are we searching for? If not an unknown site, a mysterious location, or unexplored gem, what is it that we’re trying to discover?

Perhaps, in the age of the internet, the uncharted has taken on a new meaning. Maybe we’re not trying to illuminate something external,

but something within ourselves. Travelling forces us to step out of the dark, static corners of our comfort zones. Flung into a new environment and confronted with new challenges, there’s no going back. The unknown is inevitable.

Once I found out where I’d be teaching (a small town near Vienna and then a city at the foot of the Alps), I frantically hopped onto Google, trying to absorb as much as I could about where I’d be staying. I wanted to know what the camp looked like, where the town centre was, how many platforms the station had and what on earth Bahnhof meant. I thought that by doing this, I’d be more prepared.

Watching a video of a train pulling out of Verona station is, however, very different to narrowly missing said train in real life and having to deal with the entire line shutting down at seven in the evening. Surprisingly, you might find (like I did) that instead of panicking you sit on a hiking bag in the middle of the platform and eat dry pretzels for an hour. It’s difficult to know how you’ll react to an environment or situation until you’re actually in it. Handling these new situations is how we discover things about ourselves – maybe that we are more (or less) resourceful than we originally thought. The unpredictability of my experiences surprisingly ended up being part of the fun. Confronting fears and embracing uncertainty is something you can’t really get from a picture.

I believe the key to why we still travel despite having everything in front of us is interaction. On Google Maps we can move left and right, turn around and read the odd road sign, but we can’t connect with the environment. It may be called an ‘interactive experience’, but it doesn’t actually interact with us. There’s merit and enrichment in face-to-face interaction (as many of us learnt during Covid-19) that just can’t be replicated on a screen. Looking up pictures of Venice for the post-teaching trip didn’t prepare me for the eccentric and slightly terrifying tour guide who refused to enter the main square, argued with passersby and insisted on exclusively traversing the backstreets. It also didn’t prepare me to meet a local who didn’t speak my language—nor I his—and manage to have a conversation in French. I was especially unprepared to be mercilessly beaten at Uno by every child I met. Engaging with an environment rewards us with new experiences, unexpected reactions, and allows us to learn things about ourselves. It’s as much of an internal exploration as an external one. Perhaps we can discover a passion or interest for the first time – going hiking, or wild swimming, picking up a language, eating a specific cultural dish that we’ve never had before. Discovering these new things is more than just exploring the external world; it’s mapping out your own personality and sense of self. Allowing a place to change us and how we think about the world.

Perhaps the reason we’re drawn to strange, unknown places, despite recent technological advances making them less strange and unknown, has less to do with merely watching them and more to do with interacting with them, letting them change us and how we think about ourselves.

{words} by Lydia Lewis {graphic design} by Penny Brown

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term ‘shadow self’ to describe repressed aspects of the personality that exist within the unconscious, including hidden desires and fears that influence behaviour. In the 1980s, ‘shadow work’ emerged as a therapy based on Jung’s concept, promoting psychological healing by exploring the shadow self. Through journaling with introspective prompts, individuals can purportedly achieve control of repressed emotions.

Recently, shadow work has found its way onto our phones and has particularly resonated with a specific demographic of online users. On TikTok, videos discussing Keila Shaheen’s book The Shadow Work Journal (2021) have amassed over one billion views. The book promotes quick exercises that enable an exploration of one’s darker self and advocates a DIY-style treatment.

Shaheen’s journal and its online reception reflect the wider sociological process of introducing psychological theories into everyday vocabulary with the intention of improving individuals’ quality of life. These concepts are consequently categorised as ‘pop psychology’.

Shadow work’s status as a pop psychology trend transformed it into a buzzword across social media during a time of extensive lockdowns – a period of isolation and increased social media usage. The fascination with shadow work could be linked to limited accessibility to psychotherapy. In the UK, obtaining free mental health support through the NHS often involves long waiting lists which can result in vulnerable individuals turning to books like Shaheen’s that promise healing without professional guidance.

So, does shadow work live up to its reputation? This therapy is frequently marketed as an easy and universally beneficial tool for personal growth but, in reality, exploring the ‘hidden self’ is a complex and extremely personal process.

When therapies are marketed as easy and a cure-all, it can create unrealistic expectations, potentially instilling a false hope for effective treatment of issues involving mental health. Shaheen’s journal promotes a deep, self-guided introspection which, can be incredibly harmful without the guidance and care of a licensed therapist. This is made worse as Shaheen’s journal lacks so many fundamental resources for people who are struggling.

Shadow work journals, like Shaheen’s, fail to highlight the harm of encouraging psychological exploration without proper resources. If vulnerable individuals dedicate all their time to these self-guided therapies, it could lead them away from essential and tailored treatments.

The rise in popularity of shadow work says something important: people want to understand themselves better. And with the ongoing challenges of isolation and limited access to healthcare, it’s no surprise that self-help tools like these are getting so much attention. Shaheen’s book has become a reference point for many, but it’s worth asking whether it’s truly helpful for everyone—or just another shiny product in the self-help market.

The Shadow of Self: The Role of Psychology in Political Division

{words} by Caroline O’Beirne

Many shadows exist within politics. Whether it be fringe movements among moderate parties or the rise of online discourse pandering to those who feel mainstream politics does not accept their beliefs, shadows exist in many forms. Shadows can also be manufactured and used to scapegoat and ostracise certain groups. Many face this fear and uncertainty for reasons that may pertain to their nationality, ethnicity, or gender. This raises the question: how is psychology used to create these shadows and undermine some of the most vulnerable communities?

Within the political sphere, we’ve normalised and accepted the hateful ostracisation of minority groups. Consider the powerful campaign slogans used during the Brexit referendums or the last election and how these led to xenophobia becoming more commonplace within the traditional media. The use of phrases such as ‘Stop the Boats’ during the Tory 2024 election campaign and ‘Take Back Control’ during the Brexit referendum exploits fears of losing sovereignty and manipulates them as part of its agenda.

These slogans promote an ideology that seeks to isolate British identity from anything different. The use of a command frames an issue to focus on its shadow i.e. the topic of immigration with the problem of illegal immigration; generating the consequence that voters would associate the two and believe they are the same. Political speeches and discourse are powerful additional means used to extend the shadow. In July 2024, Nigel Farage took part in an interview on Sky News in which he stated, ‘we have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values’ and that, ‘we’ve seen them on the streets of London every Saturday’. Here, Farage ostracises young British Muslims; explicitly saying that they are different to other British citizens. A status quo bias i.e. a rose-tinted view of British history and identity, can be used to shadow anything different. He provides no evidence to back up his claim, but the risk is that such a shocking statement could leave an imprint on the minds of voters.

At the Reform East Midlands Conference, Nigel Farage’s speech had many interesting traits that we can identify. He dictates that, ‘We are being taken for a ride at every level’ and that Reform will, ‘put the British people first’. This serves the idea that the British people have lost something; a greatness that now belongs to the past—a powerful sentiment that would empower any eager audience. In Kemi Badenoch’s most recent speech posted to the Conservative Party website, she too deploys this tactic when declaring that ‘most British citizens don’t want to change what’s good about our country’. This sense of loss exploits a powerful fear, one that is then used to cast a shadow over immigrant communities and other groups that pose a ‘threat’ to the status quo.

Additionally, those who identify as transgender are having their identities and experiences contested and undermined. Those within the transgender community are cast aside and vilified for their alleged undermining of women’s rights. Whether that be competing in sports or the misinformation that is being spread about certain British hospitals not being allowed to say the words ‘breastfeeding’ or ‘mother’. Take the Daily Mail headline about J.K. Rowling’s comment: ‘J.K. Rowling says women’s rights face “the greatest assault in my lifetime” by trans activists’. Politicians and media outlets have framed the transgender community as a threat to women’s rights while ignoring legitimate threats, such as the removal of Roe v. Wade. As a result of these accusations, the community has become unfairly ostracised.

Behavioural economics and psychology influence and shape political campaigns across the spectrum. They serve as tools for persuasion for political actors, similarly to how marketing campaigns persuade their consumers. As a result, politicians exclude innocent people through binding them to generalisations which undermine their identities and ability to coexist in society.

by Anushka Holding

DASHY

boyS don’t cry: tHe SHAdow tHAt toxic mASculinity cAStS over muSic culture

{words} by Jack McAllister

How can the music industry do right and stand as a force against unhealthy masculinity?

Popular music loves to sell itself as edgy and progressive, but scratch the surface and you’ll find that in reality it’s a hotbed of heteronormativity and hyper-masculinity. Harry Styles puts on a dress and nudges the internet into a frenzy, with fans speculating about his sexuality—fifty years after Bowie did exactly the same in the ‘70s. So why do we still care?

Popular music has, for the most part, encouraged harmful expressions of masculinity in music. Labels and management are complicit in perpetuating these stereotypes for commercial gain. Their goal is to make money and playing into gender tropes is often seen as the safest bet. When labels do decide to promote an artist who breaks the mould, their marketing strategies frequently involve exploiting these characteristics, pigeonholing artists into work defined by a single aspect of their identity—for example, their gender or sexuality.

Bands like Oasis exemplify how toxic masculinity can dominate music culture. In the 1990s, Noel and Liam Gallagher’s bravado, hedonistic lyrics, and frequent use of homophobic slurs – such as calling Robbie Williams “queer” at the 2000 Q Awards – played a role in shaping a culture that equated sensitivity with weakness. Their fame and influence led fans to idolise this behaviour, promoting hyper-masculinity, emotional repression, and misogyny to a generation of men. This influence extended beyond their own music, inspiring bands like Arctic Monkeys to carry forward a similar ‘lad’ culture in their early work.

Noel Gallagher’s reflections on his mental health reveal the toll that these expectations of masculinity can take on artists themselves. In recent interviews, Noel has spoken openly about his struggles with loneliness and debilitating anxiety during Oasis’ glory years. Having grown up in a culture in which toughness and grit were the yardsticks by which men were measured, Noel’s experiences show the individual cost of adhering to a hyper-masculine image.

The broader impact of this toxic masculinity on music culture is pervasive. It affects everything from how men feel about dancing in public to how women musicians are treated at soundchecks. It’s why so many men deride artists like Taylor Swift and part of why women in the industry often find their credibility questioned. Unhealthy standards of masculinity impact everyone’s musical experiences, from listening habits to live performances.

So how can music foster a healthier masculinity?

Bristol’s self-described ‘angry band’ IDLES are trying to find a way. They aim their righteous punk wrath at toxic masculinity in almost every facet of their work. Lead singer Joe Talbot explains in an interview with KEXP that he spent a lot of time in therapy because he was finding it difficult to be vulnerable and open up to the people around him. He explains that their album Joy as an Act of Resistance helped break these negative cycles in the band’s lives. Talbot lost his mother in 2015, and in the run-up to the album, he also lost his daughter in childbirth. His relationship with grief became a central part of the work. Track 6, 'June', is a devastating song about the pain of losing his daughter: ‘Baby shoes for sale, never worn’. Other tracks like Never Fight A Man With A Perm and Samaritans satirise lad culture (‘Brylcreem, creatine, and a bag of Charlie Sheen’) and slate the generational emotional repression passed down to men (‘This is why you never see your father cry’). Just as Oasis could foster a climate in which men were ashamed to be sensitive, IDLES shows us how music can create a culture that nurtures sensitivity and healthy masculinity.

But could IDLES’ effectiveness at fighting toxic masculinity be limited by their audience appeal? Lambrini Girls’ frontwoman Phoebe Lunny discussed the issue of preaching to the converted in a recent interview with NME. ‘If you’re preaching to your own echo chamber, all you’re really doing is fuelling your own ego. You’re not changing any minds… If someone asked us to play with a band of seven geezers in their forties – and all of their fans are fucking pricks – or an amazing queer-fronted band, I want to be in front of the audience with loads of pricks’. Consider the demographic buying tickets for an IDLES gig. Does it seem likely that their explicit political stance would alienate an audience that doesn’t already align with them on social issues? Whose minds are they trying to change?

This debate has caused some to accuse IDLES of being an exercise in self-congratulatory wokeism. Lias Saoudi of Fat White Family is ruthless in his opinion of IDLES: ‘It’s as if the lyrics have been generated by a Guardian designed algorithm, every red button issue of the day systematically addressed in the most predictable way imaginable… If you want an album that’s actually about toxic masculinity, not just one that points a finger at it and exclaims ‘WRONG!’, why not try the Slim Shady LP or even Kanye West’s Yeezus?”. Perhaps a little harsh. 'June' shows Talbot confronting masculinity and grief with originality and sensitivity. But Saoudi’s point holds some validity. When music’s intent is so on-the-nose, its potential to influence anyone who doesn’t already agree may be diluted.

But change won’t happen with one song. For too long, music has perpetuated harmful stereotypes of masculinity. Different approaches to creating change are inevitable. One may critique the lack of subtlety in a band like IDLES’ messaging, but their work clearly amplifies the conversation about the need for change. It is imperative that increasingly large swathes of the industry join the fight against toxic masculinity. The details of the method are less important. Music’s immense cultural influence ensures that contributions of any kind are invaluable in the fight to encourage healthier masculinity across society.

EDITORIAL TEAM RECS

Alice, Ollie & Siân from Fashion

✴ M32 Flea Market

✴ Children’s Scrap Store

✴ Crystal silver jewelry shop in Galleries

Cerys

✴ Bristol Loaf

✴ UoB Amnesty International Letter Writing sessions

Ronnie & Rosie from Social Commentary

✴ Letizia exhibition in the Photographer’s gallery in London

✴ Oedipus at the Old Vic

Shayma

✴ Zataar on Cotham Hill

✴ BUMP Rollerdisco

Emily from Travel

✴ Dan Guthrie’s exhibition at Spike Island ‘Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure’

✴ Panel discussion ‘Border controls & criminalisation of refugees, asylum seekers [...]’ by Star and Captain Support, March 13th (venue TBC)

Iris from Music

✴ Oppidan at Motion on 29th March

✴ Greentea peng on 8th May at O2 Academy

Annie

✴ Vintagebuydan on Gloucester road

✴ All hands on deck - open decks at The Old England

Anushka

✴ Bike Workshop for anything bike-related

✴ First Thursdays on Old Market road events (check Headfirst or @icvisuallab)

Sophie & Erina from Arts & Visual

✴ Folk house on Park street

✴ ‘Life Drawing with Dogs’, March 5th at KIT Form

Lydia & Alice from Wellbeing

✴ Garden of Easton

✴ Suvi sauna by Clevedon Marine Lake

GIGS

05.03. - Squid @ Bristol Beacon

08.03. - Jalen Ngonda @ The Marble Factory

12.03. - KiLLOWEN @ Exchange

13.03. - Nubiyan Twist @ Trinity Centre

15.03. - Kelly Lee Owens @ The Mable Factory

MUSIC: WHAT’S ON Oracle Sisters

21.03. - Poppy Ajudha @ Exchange

25.03 - Helen Deland @ Bristol Beacon

31.03. - Primal Scream @ Bristol Beacon

03.04. - Peach Pit @ O2 Academy

08.04. - Oracle Sisters @ Thekla

11.04. - Rosie Lowe @ Strange Brew

08.05. - Greentea Peng @ o2 Academy

CLUB NIGHTS

01.03. - Sleep Felt Far away w/ Softi + Sharnie @ Love Inn

01.03. - Brown Excellence: A South Asian Soundsystem Experience @ Trinity Centre

01.03. - Club Blanco /w Nosedrip + Chez de Milo @ Strange Brew

01.03. - Badger @ Motion

05.03. - Bad B*tch Dubz @ Love Inn

Bad B*tch Dubz

07.03. - Pangea: Soundsystem music from around the globe @ Trinity Centre

07.03. IMOGEN [all night long] @ Love Inn

08.03. - Doozy Machine presents Sound Metaphor DJs, Babyschön B2B Subaru @ Strange Brew

14.03. - scruz and camoufly @ Thekla

14.03. - Goddard w/ Dread MC @ Lakota 22.03. - SB presents Djrum [all night long] @ Strange Brew

28.03. - Teachings in Dub - O.B.F x Concrete Lion @ Trinity Centre

29.03. - Oppidan @ Motion

17.04. - Brakery's 3rd Anniversary party @ Strange Bre 10.05. - Stokes Croft Block Party