LeftLion Magazine - June 2022 - Issue 148

#148 June 2022

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OPEN HOUSE 2022 Want to get involved with Nottingham's culture magazine?

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Tuesday 7 June 2022 6pm-9pm Antenna, Beck Street, NG1 1EQ

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Credits

Supporters

Alan Gilby Panic Al-arm alan.gilby@leftlion.co.uk

Ashley Carter Editor ashley.carter@leftlion.co.uk

George White Assistant Editor george.white@leftlion.co.uk

Natalie Owen Head Designer natalie.owen@leftlion.co.uk

Adam Pickering Partnerships Manager adam.pickering@leftlion.co.uk

Addie Kenogbon Fashion Editor addie.kenogbon@leftlion.co.uk

Rebecca Buck Stage Co-Editor rebecca.buck@leftlion.co.uk

Daniela Loffreda Food Editor food@leftlion.co.uk

Cover Maxrock Sub-Editor Lauren Carter-Cooke Intern Marta Tavares Photographers Dani Bacon Sandra Bartley Ian Cumberland Angelena Claire Efstathiou David Hunter Nigel King Nathan Langman Lollie Locke Tamas Markos Matthew Petley Georgianna Scurfield

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Jared Wilson Editor-in-Chief jared.wilson@leftlion.co.uk

Lizzy O’Riordan Editorial Assistant lizzy.oriordan@leftlion.co.uk

Curtis Powell Head of Video and Photography curtis.powell@leftlion.co.uk

Thi Cordell Marketing Assistant thi.cordell@leftlion.co.uk

Tom Errington Web Developer tom.errington@leftlion.co.uk

Elliot Farnsworth Music Co-Editor elliot.farnsworth@leftlion.co.uk

Katie Lyle Music Co-Editor katie.lyle@leftlion.co.uk

Dom Henry Stage Co-Editor dom.henry@leftlion.co.uk

Jamie Morris Screen Editor jamie.morris@leftlion.co.uk

Fabrice Gagos Photography Co-Editor fabrice.gagos@leftlion.co.uk

Writers Dani Bacon Bassey Love CeCe Matt Hinton Alex Kuster Nathan Langman Sam Nahirny Nick Parkhouse Georgianna Scurfield Alex Stubbs Yasmin Turner Nadia Whittome

Dan Turner Photography Co-Editor dan.turner@leftlion.co.uk

Illustrators Jon Aye Fiona Carr Sophie Forrester Pete Gray Kasia Kozakiewicz Leosaysays Tracey Meek Kate Sharp Jay Wilkinson Editorial Illustrations Emily Catherine

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Featured Contributor Marta Tavares Marta Tavares is a third-year journalism student at Nottingham Trent University. Passionate about writing, people and culture, she wants to pursue a career combining both journalism and travelling. She has contributed articles to various sections of LeftLion, and has recently completed an internship with them.

She is inspired by human stories, the power of music and the simplicity of truth. Going on adventures, allowing herself to be creative and living through new experiences and memories are three of the things that make her happiest. One of Marta’s future goals is to write a book: Memories of the World.

You can read Marta’s interview with Marie Wesson of The Haunted Museum on page 26

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Contents 22

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Creepin’ It Real We hate spiders. You hate spiders. Everyone hates spiders. Well, everyone except Dr Christopher Terrell-Nield

Stalling for Time Nathan Langman’s photography project explores the impact of losing the Victoria Centre Market

The Theory of Eerie We find out about the uncanny valley - the eerie feeling that comes from not-quite human figures - from NTU’s Andrew Dunn

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Nadia on…

Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome explores the divisive role that the politics of fear have played in recent years

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On the Front Line We hear about the incredible true story of Anna Kent, the Notts midwife who swapped the NHS for an active war zone in Sudan

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A Skydiver in Notts Most of us spend our lives avoiding things that scare us. Unless, that is, you jump out of planes multiple times a day

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Naturally Terrified Our Environment Editor explores the ongoing issue of climate anxiety, and what steps we can take to combat it

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Inside Man Author Graham Caveney discusses his new book, On Agoraphobia, his feelings of loneliness and the history of the disorder

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Making Tracks Elliot Farnsworth catches up with Jimmy Rocket and LVNDLXRD to find out more about their latest EP, Bespoke Verses

If You’ve Got It, Haunt It Home to evil spirits, possessed dolls and thousands of spooky items, we check out The Haunted Museum at Hopkinson

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Mastering His Craft Fresh from winning an Amateur Jackson’s Painting Prize, we learn about the creative process of local artist Angelo Murphy

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Tour de Sauce Co-Founder Pam Digva sheds light on one of Nottingham’s biggest success stories of recent years: Sauce Shop

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Out of Time: The Victorian Freak Show We talk to Dr John Woolf to find out how society’s fear of the ‘other’ became Britain’s biggest source of entertainment

Editorial I hate being scared. I cope terribly with haunts and frights. I don’t like rollercoasters or extreme sports. I avoid horror films whenever I can. I’ve never jumped out of a plane or off a bridge, and truthfully don’t see what appeals to those that do. Essentially, I live my life in a manner not unsimilar to that of the Cowardly Lion, limiting my exposure to fear as much as possible. But I love it when other people are scared.

Now this could be because I’m a sociopath, but I think it’s far more likely that, while we don’t enjoy being fearful of things ourselves, the subject of fear itself is inherently fascinating. It feels natural to not want to do something scary, like some sort of primaeval self-preservation instinct kicking in. But seeing someone else do it? I’m in.

Maybe the entertainment value in seeing someone else scared is as intrinsic as the desire to avoid it in the first place.

It's also fascinating to learn that people are afraid of things that, to many of us, seem commonplace. An unnamed member of the LeftLion team, for example, refuses to go in buildings taller than three floors, so crippling is his (or hers, although George is definitely a

he) fear of heights. And I’m in no position to mock, as I was deep into my twenties before I developed enough courage to desist from hiding the clown figurine that adorned the wall of my now-wife’s grandma’s house whenever we stayed there. Shout out to my older sister for exposing me to IT when I was six.

So with that in mind, we’ve decided to use this magazine to explore the nature of fear itself, using each article to explore a different thing that freaks us out. From classic fears like spiders and creepy dolls to more conceptual fears, like lockdown-induced agoraphobia, or the fear of losing the Victoria Centre Market, we’ve tried to cover as many of the things that frighten you as we could.

So go on, have a flick through and see what catches your eye. What are you scared of?

Until the next one…

Ashley Carter, Editor ashley.carter@leftlion.co.uk

LeftLion Magazine is fully recyclable and compostable. Our paper is recycled or made with FSC® certified (C015932) sources, and printed using renewable energy.

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Going Underground Our mole on the ground isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to bring you the Notts stories you might have missed... illustrations: Kate Sharp The Crown Ghouls Another month, another goofy lottery winner story.

Last month saw Hucknall’s Laura Hoyle, who bagged the £10,000-a-month prize during lockdown, promise to devote her new-found fortune to her true passion: ghost-hunting.

It makes me miss the days of good old Michael Carroll, who had the dignity to blow his £9.7m fortune on drugs, prostitutes and quad bikes, rather than wasting it playing Scooby-Doo. Hand Job I’m sure I wasn’t the only mole with a tear in his eye when Diego Maradona fisted England out of the 1986 World Cup, but Notts lad Steve Hodge has turned his heartbreak into success by recently selling Maradona’s match-worn shirt for a cool £7.1m at auction. Former Forest midfielder Hodge, who played in that fateful match, swapped shirts with the troubled Argentinian maestro at full-time. He probably had no idea he was setting himself up for life.

It’s the Fort That Counts There I was, enjoying a weekend break in a little farmhouse in Greasley when, all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Turns out some boffin had been digging around on the grounds and uncovered one of the great lost castles of Medieval England. Greasley Castle, as it was known after being built in the fourteenth century, was amongst the finest buildings in Europe before falling into disrepair and becoming a series of humble farm buildings. What can I tell you?

Sometimes it’s hard to find three funny stories a month.

be able tojar of “I used to an entireket of ff o h s poli one pac h it w a sals d.” e lt a s y d rea “That's a observa nice baklava.” Territortion about Ukra An ial Army in attire ian

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know : “I didn’t Man one s a punk guy.”

Hitler wa: “He was the Man two punk guy.” ultimate

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OVERHEARD: ILLUSTRATED

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a t had.” ’s jus y “Julieborn bab new “If she w be magn as a paint, she’d olia.”

n to e dowcity m e k “Ta ingham ls are Nott e the ga e beer wher h and th unken roug itty.” - Drn train is sh inging o lad s

“When I to wear was a kid I had and it acan eye patch me moretually made popular. ”

g kin thinould t s u it w tor.” as j a “I ww nice a dict ho to be be

illustration: Pete Gray

Artist Pete Gray dives into the Overheard in Notts archive to bring some of your finest ramblings to life - this time with a pair of aliens who are desperate to fit in when they visit our city (expected arrival TBC)...

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The fear of being alone in the dark is actually the fear of not being alone in the dark.

Nottingham’s most opinionated grocers on...

Whitesnake We went to see Whitesnake at the Nottingham Arena with our friend Lizzy Baxter. They were the best we’ve ever seen them – and this is our fifth time, we’ve been to watch them every time they’ve come to Nottingham. They were polished, there was no dilly-dallying and it was just hit after hit. The support acts were Europe and Foreigner, who were both great too.

Jubilee Parties We’ve decided that we’re going to close for three days! We’re shutting the shop on Thursday, Friday and Saturday to celebrate the Queen’s remarkable service. We’re planning to go to two street parties over that time and we’ve also bought a load of bunting to put around the house and in the shop windows. We can’t wait!

words: Dani Bacon

Obi Wan-Kenobi We watched one of the Star Wars films once. It was a complete and utter waste of our time. We just can’t understand what people see in it. What is the point in all of that stuff? We do like Ewan McGregor though, he’s a good actor and was excellent in both Brassed Off and that film about Beatrix Potter.

City sTYLIN’

at the Cattle Market interview and photo: Georgianna Scurfield Back in 1988, me and a friend were in the pub on a bank holiday. We decided we wanted to go to the seaside, so we got on a train to Skegness and that night I met the woman who would become my wife. I lived in Wellingborough at the time and we decided to live together, so we flipped a coin. I can’t remember if I won or lost, but we ended up in Ilkeston.

I’m an auctioneer at Arthur Johnson & Sons, and every day has its order here.

You’re working on a weekly cycle, so you have to be rigid about where you are in that process.

On an auction day I get in at about five to nine. You don’t need to psych yourself up or anything, there’s no real prep. It’s always good to know the product you’re selling; for example, people like to know if a piece of furniture has a tear on a back corner. You have to be honest with people if you want them to come back.

As the years go by I see adults that used to come here as toddlers. I like that.

The Cattle Market is a bit like a club where no-one’s a member. I think that’s missing in a lot of society these days: that cohesiveness in communities. But the Cattle Market is, to a degree, a community.

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Pick Six

This month we’ve tasked Brew Cavern owner Matt Hinton with choosing a few of his favourite things…

Spotted Eastwood Accident near coffee and cream plz avoid

Sherwood in Nottingham Community Group What variety is the cucumber please ?

Spotted Eastwood Do ppl really have the need to urinate outside an old person’s window view?! Old ladies really do not want to see this

Spotted: Sneinton What is that weird intermittent buzzing sound at night??sounds like some kind of machine

Spotted in Carlton Question for the clever people, does anybody know where you can get Chinese food in a box like in the movies? Trying to fulfill a wish for somebody if anyone can point us in the right direction.

Spotted: Sneinton Oh dear, dead scooters in Sneinton.

Burton Joyce Village BJ Gardens...

Spotted Beeston Has anyone lost a chicken? Lovely lady found wandering about at School this morning.

Burton Joyce Village I wondered if there is a hamster in the village looking for a two week holiday…we will take super care of him/her whilst they stay with us and return him/her safely. We can provide references and a hamster bond!

Book Touching from a Distance Having two kids doesn’t allow much time for reading these days, but I’m still fairly obsessed with the story of Ian Curtis. Touching From A Distance, the biography written by his wife Deborah, occasionally gets pulled out.

I’m a sucker for a true story.

Meal Crispy Chicken The Notts food scene is a bit of alright, isn’t it? Narrowing down a favourite meal is almost impossible, but the crispy chicken in jerez sauce at Bar Iberico is chefskiss.gif.

Film Get Carter The original 1971 release - not the dodgy Stallone remake which, admittedly, I’ve never seen. Peak Caine, trains, drugs, guns, grim northern scenery and seventies architecture. What more could you want?

Notts Spot The King Billy As a beer guy, it has to be a pub, doesn’t it? Got to be the King Billy. Cosy in winter, cute roof terrace when it's balmy out, well-kept cask, lovely regulars. I don’t go there often enough to be honest.

Song Take a Chance As a DJ and disco freak, favourites are tough, and I’m going to use “song” in the loosest sense here - but Mr Flagio’s Take A Chance is probably up there. Eighties drum machines, soaring synths and a cheesy vocal, sung in English with an Italian twang. Gold.

Holiday Destination New York It’s probably a massive cliché, but New York. Name a place where you can do so much in three days and still come away feeling like you’ve barely scratched the surface!

Spotted: Sneinton I live in Carlton but was walking through Sneinton earlier....and I observed something.............do the bin men ever come to Sneinton to empty bins ?!? And do people in Sneinton eat more ?!?

Burton Joyce Village Is there anyone who can help a lost family of ducks? They’re on MillField close Sherwood in Nottingham Community Group Good evening humans of Sherwood Spotted in Netherfield My mrs found some keys on the corner of Cross Street. If you think they might be yours please message me with a description

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Spotted in Netherfield Poor puss cat soaking. Anyone any ideas who's it is? In our garden now Spotted in Netherfield Anyone seen the jewellery section yet at Poundland daleside please Spotted in Netherfield FREE LAMP. I no longer need this lamp Spotted: Nottingham Anyone missing a racing pigeon?

Blue ring on right, green on left, looks tired and confused, he's at the Lion Revived public house Bulwell Spotted: Nottingham How can I join this page

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Nadia on... the Politics of Fear words: Nadia Whittome photo: Fabrice Gagos

Sometimes, when people are most afraid, they look perfectly calm. Maybe it’s a mechanism related to fight or flight - that when filled with adrenaline and presented with threat, some people lock down and give a confident monologue to the camera. In parliament, that’s what I see every day: a ruling elite that is scared of the world around it, but swaggers nonetheless.

You can tell they’re scared, though, because the politics of fear is written into everything they say and do. When protest movements emerge like Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter - their first instinct is not to engage with the demands they raise (demands so unreasonable as an inhabitable planet), but to ban them and threaten their organisers with jail.

What they’re most interested in, though, is keeping everyone else afraid and punching down. There are two ways to look at what has happened to our society in the past decade or so. One story is relatively straightforward: since 2008, our wages have fallen further than any country in Europe other than Greece.

Benefits have been cut back and stripped away from many people altogether. Food bank use, homelessness and child poverty have all rocketed.

The other story is a psychological one just as much as it is financial. The death of industry, from mining to the textile industry here in Notts, and the retreat of the trade union movement over forty long years, have gutted working-class communities. Our high streets have gone into decline and our culture has become increasingly taken over by corporations and multinationals.

Cultural and social alienation has made many people scared and isolated, just as much as being impoverished has - and that fear demands a narrative, to explain what is happening.

The genius of our current ruling elite - in Britain and across much of the rest of the world - is that

they have managed to win elections by greeting people’s fear and insecurity with more fear and insecurity. The defining theme of our time, as far as the Daily Mail is concerned, is how refugees and migrants are stealing our homes, school places and jobs.

Emotionally speaking, the driving feature of this kind of politics - and the same can be said of the right-wing arguments behind Brexit and the election of Donald Trump - is fear. People are scared of losing what little they have, and persuading them to punch down is helpful if your aim is for nothing to really change. That’s what the culture war is: right-wing politicians and newspaper proprietors have realised that they are losing the argument on economics, so they’re inviting people to take out their feelings of alienation and economic insecurity on migrants, benefit claimants and food bank users, while continuing the very policies that made us economically insecure in the first place.

The Government is more than happy to go along with this agenda; that’s why trans people were explicitly excluded from a ban on Conversion Therapy this week in the Queen’s Speech The debate on trans rights is an excellent example of the politics of fear. Here are a group of people who pose no threat to anyone, and some of who face a tirade of violence and discrimination. But if you read the pages of many newspapers, you will find an endless roll-call of reasons to be scared of them. Partly, this is because trans people are genuinely subversive

to conservative notions of gender. But it’s also because punching down on them is an excellent way of stirring up ‘anti-woke’ sentiment. The Government is more than happy to go along with this agenda; that’s why trans people were explicitly excluded from a ban on conversion therapy this week in the Queen’s Speech.

I’m in politics because I believe in a politics of hope. That doesn’t mean I think we can’t blame anyone for the fact that our living standards are falling. On the contrary, we live in a society that is dominated by the super rich and their endless drive to exploit us and make a profit; in which the 171 billionaires in the UK own between them £597 billion - about triple the annual budget of the NHS. Successive governments have failed working-class people and ignored them. Our social housing stock has been sold off by people who live in mansions and are millionaires, and want to blame it all on immigrants. I’m angry about all this - but I don’t think basing your politics on fear gets you anywhere.

People in Nottingham continue to reject the narrative and politics we are fed. From the solid support for food banks like Himmah and St Ann’s Advice Centre, to all those involved in welcoming and assisting refugees through the Refugee Forum, Refugee Roots, Nottingham Arimathea Trust and Host Nottingham. There are so many examples in Nottingham of our city, in all its diversity, acting in solidarity and supporting one another - and that is a constant source of hope to me that society can be different.

The difference between hope and fear in politics is that hope can actually give us some answers - it can give us the real change that we need. To start with, we could have a drastic rise in the minimum wage, and in benefit levels; a publicly owned energy system that brings down bills and tackles the climate crisis; controls on rent and other essential household costs; and a ban on zero hours contracts. In the meantime, I’d urge everyone to join a union and fight for a pay rise. nadiawhittome.org

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A Skydiver in Notts When I was younger, my mum took part in a tandem skydive for charity and I thought it looked like really good fun. So later, when I was a student, I was given the opportunity to make a charity skydive of my own and jumped at it, if you’ll excuse the pun. My friends and I raised just over £3,000 and had an incredible time. From that point on I knew I wanted to learn how to skydive myself, and signed up to a course right away. Skydiving has been part of my life ever since.

Nothing compares to the feeling of jumping out of a plane; there’s no worry, no stress, the mundane of the day-to-day is left behind and you enter this world where all that matters is what’s happening right here and now. It’s amazing. Plus, the fantastic community of people has become like an extended family; you don’t get ‘boring’ people in skydiving and our friendships span age ranges, different backgrounds, all connected by our shared love for the sport. Fourteen years on from that first jump, I have given up my career as a PR Director to become a full-time professional skydiver, teaching new jumpers, coaching skydivers and teams, filming tandem skydives and being part of the British formation skydiving team to compete at the World Championships this coming October.

everything bespoke to them. While this is the biggest challenge, it’s also the thing I love the most. My brain is working as hard as my body and no two days are the same because no two people are the same. It’s incredibly rewarding and enjoyable.

We often stick around after jumping to chill and chat about the day, and our on-site cafe and bar provide meals and drinks for us most weekends, so there’s a really nice community feel. If I’m not staying on the drop zone to relax after work, I head home for dinner and often some form of exercise, usually running, sometimes swimming or yoga. I think it’s important to have other interests outside of skydiving, just so I don’t become stagnant in what I do, and keeping fit is essential when you work in a physical role. I’m also really interested in sports psychology and am currently working through an online course to learn more about that.

Nothing compares to the feeling of jumping out of a plane; there’s no worry, no stress, the mundane of the day to day is left behind

Day the life

Every day starts with a look out of the window - and fingers crossed for good weather. Providing the sky is blue and the wind isn’t too windy, we’re good to go for a day of jumping out of planes. I usually arrive at the drop zone around 8am, when I get my own equipment ready. Throughout the day, I’ll expect to do somewhere between five and eight jumps, usually.

If I’m instructing students, that includes briefing them for each jump, doing the jump with them and then debriefing the jumps with the help of the footage I capture during their skydive. If I’m filming tandems for the day, my time in between jumps is spent on my laptop, editing photos and videos. At the end of the day, we all pitch in to help put everything away and make sure the drop zone is ready to go again the next morning.

The most challenging thing about an average day is that we personalise every single experience to the person we’re sharing it with. Whether I’m instructing, coaching or filming, I work hard to make sure that the person or people I’m working with are getting the best possible service - and that means doing

I am so lucky to do a ‘job’ that I really don’t view as a job at all. In fact, it feels very strange to even say I’m going to ‘work’ when I’m headed to the drop zone to jump out of planes all day. I love being part of such an amazing team. I’ve always wanted to feel like an expert in my role and to be supported in that ambition, and I’ve never felt that more than I do at Skydive Langar. Everyone is exactly the same in their aspiration to be the best they can be, but never to the detriment of one another; everyone supports everyone else, we all celebrate one another’s successes and it’s a really awesome team atmosphere.

I think finding balance is the trickiest thing. I’ve never had a job that was my hobby and my passion before and I guess it’s how anyone feels in my position; when you really love what you do, it’s hard

to motivate yourself to take a day off or step away.

I’m certainly still working to find the right balance for myself. We’ve recently introduced ‘development days’ where the team is given a day a week to spend, if they like, doing something on the drop zone to develop their own skills and passion. For me, that’s team training with my formation skydiving team, and for others it’s going and getting coaching in their chosen discipline, or travelling to drop zones around the world to take part in fun events.

One of my proudest and equally most difficult points in my skydiving overall happened last August at the British Skydiving National Championships.

My team, Chimera, was in the running to make the podium and we knew it would be a close fight for first place. Each round was so close with our nearest competition, after one we’d be ahead, the next we’d be behind. Unfortunately, after a final jump-off, we placed second, which was heart-breaking. But that’s the joy of the sport and when I take myself out of the situation, it was actually a hugely exciting thing to happen, and something that has hopefully inspired a lot of skydivers to get into competing.

We’re seeing a lot more people coming to enjoy skydiving with us, especially since the pandemic, where the forced lockdowns took away people’s freedom to experience new things. Now, people are much keener to spend their money and time on things that enrich their lives like skydiving, as opposed to material goods. There’s a misconception that skydiving is dangerous; while nerves and, to an extent, fear are a part of what we do, they’re also what make it fun for many of us, with the reassurance that the sport is extremely well regulated, managed and taught. The developments in product design and technology have also benefited us hugely over the decades, keeping us safer than ever before.

in

The people mean our job is never repetitive. I’m working with different students, different tandem customers – from people just out of school to those in their eighties – and with new people come new challenges. Every day, my teaching and flying abilities are tested and strengthened and it feels so satisfying to know you’re ending every day with more skill than when you started. Plus, who could ever get bored jumping out of a plane multiple times a day a living?!

illustration: Kasia Kozakiewicz

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Notts Shots

Entomophobia - Fear of insects Dan Turner - @danturnerphoto

Glossophobia - Fear of public speaking/performing Ian Cumberland - @iancumberland

Want to have your work featured? Send your high-res photos from around the city, including your full name and best web link, to photography@leftlion.co.uk

Anemomenophobia - Fear of wind turbines/windmills Angelena Claire Efstathiou - @AngelenaOnline 16

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Acrophobia - Fear of heights Lollie Locke - @lollie.jpeg

Thalassophopbia - Fear of deeep water Sandra Bartley

Ornithophobia - Fear of birds Ian Cumberland - @iancumberland

Scoptophobia - Fear of being stared at/seen in public Matthew Petley - @frames_by_frames

Mechanophobia - Fear of machinery David Hunter leftlion.co.uk/issue148

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Creepin’ it Real

Spiders - they’re pretty creepy, right? Without a doubt. But they’re also remarkably smart, they play a vital role in our ecosystems, and they are mostly harmless here in the UK. So is it time to start looking at spiders in a different light? Dr Christopher Terrell-Nield, a Biosciences expert at Nottingham Trent University, certainly thinks so…

Think of a fear, and chances are you’ll think of spiders. The eight-legged freaks (as Ellory Elkayem’s 2002 masterpiece kindly referred to them) strike terror into the hearts of countless people across the country - with many of us arming ourselves with a slipper and leaping onto a sofa at the mere sight of one. In fact, almost half of the British public are at least “a little” scared of spiders, according to a YouGov survey, making arachnophobia one of the most common fears in the UK. Yet, at least on these mild-mannered shores, spiders are almost always perfectly harmless. And, as much as you might not want to hear it, they’re actually incredibly intelligent creatures, playing a key role in ecosystems across the country. So why are so many of us so frightful of the little critters?

Is it our protective human nature keeping us from harm, is it passed on by friends and family members who are already terrified of them, or is it a wider trend in society? Well, according to Dr Christopher TerrellNield, Undergraduate Courses Manager for Biosciences at Nottingham Trent University, it could be a mix of all three.

A danger seen is much less threatening than a danger that’s just disappeared “There are lots of theories as to why arachnophobia might happen,” he explains. “There’s one that says it could be an inherited issue, a genetic predisposition of the fear of the unusual as a defensive kind of behaviour. There might also be a cultural element behind it. Some people come from parts of the world where there are spiders that are genuinely dangerous, and they train their children to avoid the same sort of issues, as it’s part of their belief system that this is an animal that should be avoided.

“I think it often starts with an early experience. It’s probably many parents’ fault, in a way. They are often weary and protective of their children, so when this strange creature comes into their

interview: George White illustration: Leosaysays 18

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house, which they’ve heard might be quite dangerous - it could bite them, or cause problems - they will do the same kind of actions that they’d do for any sort of danger, saying, ‘Keep away from that, it might hurt you.’”

As influential as our childhood can be, though, our experiences in later life can add to our phobia. Movies, in particular, have a part to play in exacerbating apprehensions and misconceptions around spiders - from The Lord of the Rings to Arachnophobia, Them to Big Ass Spider! (yes, it is a real film), the critters are often used as an angst-inducing source of horror on the big screen, with directors exploiting viewers’ anxieties to get under their skin.

“Basically, anything in the natural world - even if it’s relatively harmless - can, in the science-fiction world, be scaled up to something which is: A, physiologically impossible; and B, genuinely frightening,” muses Dr Terrell-Nield.

“You think of something like Starship Troopers, for example, and the giant insects in that - if people see enough of that thing, some become desensitised, but others end up feeling a stronger reaction than is justified.”

But are films or our family fully to blame for our fears? Aren’t the creatures themselves just a little creepy? In truth, yes. Through their unpredictable behaviour and ability to sneak into our homes, our safe spaces, without being noticed, there are very rational reasons behind why grown adults become afraid of the tiny creatures, even if they know full well they are not a real threat.

As Nottingham’s spider expert admits, “Behaviour can be quite a strong component. Spiders have a tendency to come out from under your TV, then stay completely still - then you’ll look away, look back and they’re gone. This is part of a spider’s natural behaviour, because it’s how to avoid being seen by prey, but you often can’t see the stimulus for that, so you can’t predict what it’s going to do. And that’s what frightens people - because a danger seen is much less threatening than a danger that’s just disappeared.”

Yet while there are rational explanations for what is often described as an

‘irrational’ fear, there is still a strong argument that we should try to tackle our terror, if we can. After all, spiders are friends, not freaks - remarkably advanced beings that are essential to the health of our natural environment.

“They are really, really important,” as Dr Terrell-Nield explains. “They consume millions of tonnes of insects in the world every year, which helps to manage the food chain, control pests and support ecosystems. They, themselves, are also the prey of other animals that eat invertebrates, so their role is a very good one.”

From The Lord of the Rings to Arachnophobia, spiders are often used as an angst-inducing source of horror on the big screen While it’s all well and good knowing the benefits of these beasts, though, tackling a phobia is, of course, no easy task. But through doing the unthinkable - coming face-to-furry face with spiders - Dr Terrell-Nield believes it is at least a possibility. Much like with managing heights or social anxiety, progressive, controlled exposure can lead to a positive response for some. “When I do talks and I show the audience a picture of a spider, there will almost always be a reaction. We do get some very worried people, so I may use exposure, like pictures, then a video, then showing them a live spider in a box, to prove that there’s nothing to worry about. Then we can talk about their experiences and find out if there’s a reason behind their fears. Desensitisation therapy is definitely a way that you can overcome these worries.”

So before taking a slipper to a spider, try to look them in one of their eight eyes (okay, reminding you that many have eight eyes probably isn’t helpful) and power through the fear. You never know, you might find that your feelings change when you do. But, hey, if you can’t, that’s fine too - phobias are pretty scary, after all.

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Stalling for Time words and photos: Nathan Langman

For the last few months, Notts photographer Nathan Langman has been taking pictures at Victoria Centre’s iconic market - capturing the nostalgic simplicity of a long-running collective tradition. But faced with soaring rent and utility bills, many of these pillars of the community are at risk of collapse, and there is now a fear that this cherished city spot could be lost to history…

Recently I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in the Victoria Centre Market, documenting the comings and goings of the shops and customers. It feels like a real time capsule, a glimpse into the eighties and nineties, and this conjures up a unique style of imagery. After a few sessions walking around and shooting what I found interesting, I found out that a lot of vendors were looking to leave the market, and a lot of stalls had already closed.

Shortly after this, I read an article in the West Bridgford Wire which stated that there seem to be plans to close the market down, and I knew I had to continue to document it while I still could.

As I was walking around, most vendors were either occupied with customers or busy doing work in the background. However, I did speak to Mary, who runs the book stall. She advised me that her father had managed this stall for sixty years, beginning in the Old Market Square. It had been Mary’s line of work for fifty years, after she first chipped in to help her father when she was only twelve. Mary told me that Saturday 30 April was the

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stall’s last day, and that they were looking to run their shop from home going forward, as the overheads – close to £1,000 a month – and lack of footfall were becoming too much.

While taking photos, I was asked by a man at the alteration stand what I was doing, to which I explained that I was documenting the market, its vendors and its people before it was too late. He approved of my work and told me that he is in a similar position to the book stall, adding that the rise in utility bills and the cost of living crisis across the UK is making it harder for customers to justify paying for things which aren’t an absolute necessity. He told me a lot of the vendors can’t afford to stay open anymore, as rent and bills are going up and people can’t afford to shop, so their profits are going down.

Since I last visited, the fishmonger has also closed down their stall and relocated. @_meadowman2

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The Theory Scared of clowns? China dolls send shivers down your spine?

You might be experiencing the uncanny valley - that eerie feeling that comes from seeing not-quite-human figures. Confounding researchers, no one quite knows why the phenomenon exists, but Nottingham Trent University professor Andrew Dunn thinks it might be something to do with our categorical operating system. If you fancy knowing what exactly that means, then keep on reading as we dive into the uncanny, the pleasure in being unsettled, and the oddness of The Polar Express…

The LeftLion June theme is fear, and I’d really like to focus on the uncanny valley - the phenomenon where we feel disgust at things that look human but aren’t. Are you familiar with this?

Yes! So, the feeling of the uncanny valley is really an emotional response that is somewhere between disgust and repulsion. We often talk about it in terms of faces because that’s where a lot of research has been done, but it can also occur with voices and places. You might go somewhere and find it uncanny and not be able to work out why. It centres around something very natural becoming very unnatural. So if we take a robotic face and a human face for an example, there’s a point when they blend, at around 70%, where it suddenly hits a boundary between the robot and the human that our minds can’t tolerate, and then we start to find it uncanny.

Wikipedia actually has a really great graph where they plot that point. It shows that people’s feelings toward something [imitating human features] increases and then drops depending on how blended it is between human and nonhuman. So it’s quite a fun phenomenon.

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Apparently 12% of the British population are afraid of clowns, and other common fears include life-like dolls and ventriloquist dummies. Do you think we can cite the uncanny valley as the cause of these fears? That they seem both human and non-human?

Yes, though something worth mentioning is that not everyone dislikes this unpleasant feeling. So, for example, some people love clowns precisely because they are weird. Like with a roller coaster, some people like the thrill, and it’s the same with the uncanny valley.

Some people find it weird and don’t want to look at it while others find it weird and want to experience more. We’re not sure why people experience it differently, I’m sure there will be social factors involved, but ultimately we just don’t know why some people love clowns, and why some people find dolls terrifying. But it definitely has that blend of feelings where you kind of hate it and kind of like it.

That’s why it works so well in art. It can be used as a deliberate thing, to create a kind of thrill. David Bowie is a good example because he was someone who liked to play

interview: Lizzy O’Riordan illustration: Jay Wilkinson

of eerie around with that feeling of the uncanny, he loved to blend the boundaries - whether that was with gender fluidity, or mixing high art with pop music. Likewise, the surrealists were really into playing with the uncanny.

Do we know why the uncanny exists?

The truth is that we don’t really know why, and there is a lot of controversy about whether or not we can explore it from a scientific point of view. But the science behind it comes down to the idea of human beings being categorical, and that the basic operation of the nervous system is categorical.

It’s one of the things that we as humans have relied on, that ability to categorise, to say that’s a snake, or that’s a person. We do it with everything, even things like colour - the colours of the rainbow don’t exist but we perceive them by putting a boundary in them. All of human psychology comes down to this idea of categories, and we feel that uncanny emotion when something sits on the boundary between categories. It’s a point of conflict in our mind between one category or another, and you get this emotional survival response.

So when someone is afraid of a doll or a clown, it’s because of a moment of category confusion?

Yeah. If you’ve ever seen those bistable images where it looks like an old woman and then a young woman the next moment, that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. It’s the feeling of that fluctuation between something natural and unnatural.

If you know the word penumbra, it describes the fuzzy edge of a shadow. On the light side of something you get a very dark edge, on the dark side you get a very light edge and between them is the fuzziness. And this is the same sort of thing, it’s

the penumbra of our emotional feeling. The uncanny is like that fuzziness and it makes us feel strange.

We’ve talked about it a little in the context of phobias, but where else might we see it?

So it has real world ramifications when you’re trying to design systems that people aren’t freaked out by. For example, with driverless cars you want a voice that isn’t going to creep people out, and you’d have to experiment with making it more human or more robotic. Some of the early sat-nav voices suffered from trying to get these things right.

All of human psychology comes down to this idea of categories, and we feel that uncanny emotion when something sits on the boundary between categories Finally, do you have any examples of the uncanny? Outside of the obvious ones we’ve talked about.

There’s a really good film called The Polar Express and it’s really weird because the animation style creates this uncanny feeling, it’s almost too realistic. They also had this problem with computer games and people weren’t responding to them well. I remember some games from the nineties where they tried to have very realistic images and it just didn’t quite work.

There’s been a real interest in the uncanny valley when talking about AI, but it’s really time immemorial. I’m sure the Ancient Greeks were talking about it. It can’t be a new thing because it stems from our categorical process. @drdrewdunn leftlion.co.uk/issue148 leftlion.co.uk/issue148 2323

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Inside Man

words: Lizzy O’Riordan illustration: Jon Aye

Still recovering from a Government-ordered lockdown, it’s no surprise that agoraphobia has been on our minds more than ever before, especially with so many of us being nervous to leave the house.

But even with the additional press, the phobia is still a widely misrepresented one, not even fully understood by those experiencing it. In the hopes of learning more, our writer Lizzy O’Riordan read Nottingham author Graham Caveney’s new book On Agoraphobia, and chatted with him about feelings of loneliness, the history of the disorder, and how literature’s agoraphobics acted as his ‘salvation’...

Thirty-plus years together and I still don’t know you. So writes Graham Caveney on the first page of On Agoraphobia - his new book detailing the slippery anxiety disorder that he’s been living with since the 1980s. The one that’s caused intense periods of isolation, identity crises and half a lifetime of inner turmoil, which has prevented him from attending major life events and, at its most extreme, from leaving his own home.

Yet, despite his long-standing relationship with the disorder, which he compares to ‘a stealthy lover’, it’s still something he doesn’t fully understand. “Phobia has this kind of amorphous quality to it,” Graham says. We’re chatting over cups of tea at Tough Mary’s Bakehouse, and he’s trying to describe the feeling of agoraphobia. “I have these specific phobic sites like motorways, dual carriageways, wide open spaces, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world then becomes divided up into safe spaces - because anywhere can become a wide open space. It’s very difficult to define because of it.”

Most commonly defined as a fear of particular places, agoraphobia can take many forms, whether crowded areas, open spaces or spots that seem difficult to escape from. But as Graham says, fear-inducing spaces are unique to each person, and can change constantly, “There’s no location, there’s no direction, there’s no explanation for it, which makes it absolutely terrifying.”

On Agoraphobia is Graham’s way of trying to understand his own phobia. Combining personal anecdotes, historical references and quotes from his favourite authors, it feels like a collage of Caveney’s mind, translated for the reader to understand. “This book is kind of my grand coming out that’s been bubbling away for five years,” he says. “I felt the need to explain it to my nearest and dearest, to say this is what my interior life is like.”

And his interior life has been lonely, the phobia affecting his relationships with both people and places. Raised in Lancashire, agoraphobia has made Graham’s connection with his familial home difficult. “Growing up where I did in Lancashire, you’re bombarded with stories about the Lake District and Wordsworth and the egotistical sublime, [and being afraid of wide open spaces] I felt isolated from the idea of English pastoral and the rolling green and pleasant land that we celebrate all the time.” Living with this anxiety disorder, “there feels something treasonous about being agoraphobic” in a country that prides itself on its open landscape.

There’s no location, there’s no direction, there’s no explanation for it, which makes it absolutely terrifying Seeping into every area of his life, Graham admits it’s hard to imagine his life without agoraphobia now: “It is both me and not me. It’s kind of like sexuality in that it’s something bigger than us, even though it’s within us.” As such, he believes that it will be a part of him forever, commenting that once you’ve introduced the fear, it’s “not eradicable, really.”

A moving personal history, the book follows Caveney through his early agoraphobic days, his housebound era and his struggle with alcoholism.

But alongside this, it also acts as a historical guide, with Caveney tracking the origins of agoraphobia, which etymologically stems from the words ‘fear’ and ‘market’. First arriving as a medical category in the nineteenth century, Caveney writes that agoraphobia was born from “unprecedented change, transformation at a speed that was dizzying, turbulent and seemingly boundless.”

“It’s like the flipside of the flaneur,” he continues. “That idealised figure that Baudelaire talks about, enjoying window shopping and watching

the streets of Paris. The other side to that is the agoraphobic, emerging as a response to our current moment, modernity and all its horrifying promise.”

A compelling read for any book lover, On Agoraphobia is packed with references to literature’s most famous agoraphobes - including the likes of Shirley Jackson and Emily Dickinson, the latter of which didn’t leave her home for twenty years. Referring to the authors as his “salvation”, they brought Graham solace during his most challenging point: “Reading books allowed me to discover I wasn’t alone and that other people have found this stuff equally scary.

Someone that I will never know who lived hundreds of years ago said things that resonated with me.”

Intimate and personal, the book ends on a hopeful note, and Graham likewise seems in a good place. We’ve met in a bustling cafe for this interview, and as I walk in he’s finishing up a drink with his yoga teacher. He tells me that the practice has acted as a major coping technique, and that it’s been a long time since he’s been housebound, though agoraphobia “ebbs and flows at its own pace”.

Throughout the book, he often addresses agoraphobia in the second person, speaking to it directly as both a lover and an enemy. But as I sit with him, it seems that he’s made peace with the phobia’s place in his life, managing it rather than being consumed by it. “I’m no longer trying to achieve normality,” he tells me, as we’re packing up to leave. “I’ve accepted that I will never be driving on the M6, I will never be in the Peak District, I will never be hitchhiking across America; but I still have a good life, I have people I love and who love me, I have books and films and records. And that’s ok. Once I realised that limitations don’t necessarily mean restrictions, it started to get easier, and I no longer feel as though I had to compete with this idealised version of the perfect self and life.”

On Agoraphobia can be found at Five Leaves Bookshop, Waterstones and a variety of other major booksellers grahamcaveney.com

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words: Marta Tavares photos: Curtis Powell

, If You’ve Got It, Haunt It

The fear of ghosts and other supernatural creatures, known as phasmophobia, can conjure up a mixture of feelings. For some, hearing ghost stories brings with it the giddy thrill of anxiety, or that feeling of enjoyment mixed with excitement that comes with the fear-fuelled rush of adrenaline. Having moved from its original home in Mapperley to Hopkinson on Station Street, The Haunted Museum has become Nottingham’s onestop-destination for those of us brave enough to face the fear head on. We spoke with Marie Wesson, a supernatural investigator and owner of the museum, to find out more…

The idea of a Haunted Museum was never on the cards until the day Marie and Steve Wesson, who had been collecting supernatural items for seventeen years, realised their house was too small to host so many artefacts.

A home to evil spirits, more than a thousand haunted items, possessed dolls and a promise to turn each and every visitor mad, the Haunted Museum in Nottingham is ranked the 29th most haunted location in the United Kingdom.

The previous Haunted Museum in Mapperley was initially used to store the items and to investigate the paranormal side of them, before the Wessons made the decision to open it to the public in 2018.

The haunted items went on a road trip last September when the Museum moved to Hopkinson near the train station. The building in Mapperley had become too dangerous, planning permission was needed for every minor detail, and lockdown didn’t help matters.

Many of the museum’s visitors are initially scared to enter, but as Marie says, “It’s all about educating yourself, because there isn’t much to be scared of.

You’re always scared of what you don’t know, but by walking around here you can educate yourself more on the paranormal. It opens your eyes.”

How daring and bold would you have to be to go

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inside a place that might contain ghosts or cause you nightmares? According to Marie, some of the visitors say that they get scratched during their visits, something which she claims to have witnessed firsthand. Others feel sick and dizzy - but the reaction is different for everyone, depending how open to the known and unknown you may be.

The couple host paranormal events that are open to only six members of the public at a time. Using the latest technology, they claim to have had experiences ranging from being scratched, seeing and feeling things, having tables tip over and even having members pass out. On top of that, Marie explains how she’s had tables tip over.

Among the scariest items in their collection are the voodoo dolls, because of what they represent, and how they’ve been used in the past. For the uninitiated, a voodoo doll is a life-like effigy of a person in which pins were inserted in order to inflict real-life damage, and were found in the magical traditions of many cultures around the world. But their lack of knowledge about the voodoo side of the paranormal has made Marie and Steve extra wary about the items. “If I don’t understand something I don’t trust it,” she explains. “And in my job the unknown is what I go looking for. I always go deep with everything, so If I don’t understand I am more standoffish about it. That’s what we do, we look for everything and anything.”

Events are held every weekend up and down the country, so Marie and Steve are everywhere to investigate, usually between the hours of 8.30pm to 2am. Once in a while, events take place in the Haunted Museum, but you have to be quick to get tickets, as they tend to sell out in the blink of an eye.

The next is scheduled for August, but sold out within two hours. Good news for Marie and Steve, less good news for those who procrastinated in buying.

Everyone is welcome to the Museum. Whether you want to learn, overcome fears, or kill that curiosity inside you. Whether you’re a sceptic or not, the museum and its contents should be viewed in perspective, and visitors should mind how they behave: “Ultimately, you’ve got to respect the spirits,” Marie says. “If you don’t respect them, then they’re not going to respect you back.”

A lot of the exhibits that can be found in the Haunted Museum have been donated over the years, especially from foreign countries where Marie and her husband Steve have investigated paranormal activity, from exorcism kits and vampire hunting kits to a rare Czech ghost story from Prague. If you’re brave enough, head down and check it out for yourself.

The Haunted Museum is open Monday – Sunday from 11pm to 6pm. Entrance costs £8 per person thehauntedmuseum.co.uk

Ultimately, you’ve got to respect the spirits.

If you don’t respect them, then they’re not going to respect you back

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My Photo Moment Matt Petley - @frames_by_frames

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interview: George White

Brew it Yourself Set up in January 2021 on the back of a wave of self-brewing enthusiasm caused by lockdown, Brew Day have since become Nottingham’s one-stop-shop for anyone looking to make beer at home - offering everything from beginner ingredients to highend equipment. We chat to director Matthew Franks about the company’s story so far…

It seemed like home brewing really took off during lockdown. Would you say that was the case?

Yeah, we were a bit behind the curve on that [laughs]. Speaking to other business owners who were operating at the time, they had a big uplift in demand - a lot of the time they couldn’t keep up. There were loads of new people getting into it, but existing brewers also had more time to dedicate to making beer.

I think home brewing has also changed a lot over the years, to the point where I would actually describe it less as home brewing and more as making beer at home. There are bad connotations with home brewing - people’s minds go to buying cheap kits from the supermarket that are often undrinkable. Yet you can now make beer from home that’s on par with a commercial brewery, and I think that’s drawn more people in. On top of that, beer can be quite expensive when you’re out and about. A pint that you buy from the pub might cost you a fiver, but if you brew it from home it can cost you less than a pound - once you’ve taken off the price of paying for the equipment you need for it, of course!

Is the idea of creating something from scratch quite appealing to people, too?

I would say there are two distinct camps of home brewer. There’s the brewer that just wants to make as much high-strength alcohol for as little money as possible, and is less concerned about the quality and the crafting process. And then there’s the other side where, much like cooking, there’s the joy of having complete control over what you’re doing - and designing your own recipes is fun. So there’s certainly this creative aspect to brewing, and I know that was appealing to me.

Is it something that anyone can pick up?

It’s as easy or difficult as you want it to be, really. At the bottom end of the market all you need is a bucket, some bottles and a beer kit, so you could be up-and-running and making beer for less than fifty quid. Then as your desire or skill increases, you can elevate that up to more challenging styles of beers. But there’s definitely an easy route in for beginners.

What would be your top tip to those wanting to get started?

Come and talk to us [laughs]. And test the waters. Rather than rushing out and fully committing financially, do a brew, check that you enjoy that process, get an easy introduction

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and get a few beers under your belt. Then think about where you want your budget and ambitions to go. If you haven’t done it before, you can think there’s a bit of mystique and magic to the process, but there isn’t. It’s relatively simple - anyone can make a good quality beer in their own house.

Beer’s a unique drink - while a red wine can only really vary between being dry and not dry, two beers can be drastically different beverages You have a very collaborative approach, working with local breweries like Neon Raptor and Totally Brewed. Why is this important for you?

Going to breweries and being involved in beermaking on a commercial level is one of the reasons we wanted to get into this industry. It’s a really welcoming and collaborative world there aren’t many industries where if you need something, you can ring up another company and they’ll lend it to you. Most businesses elsewhere would consider you as a competitor and wouldn’t want to help. So it’s definitely a really friendly place.

You have quite an experimental approach to recipes, creating bold beers like the cacao, vanilla and strawberry flavoured White Soul.

Is this ability to take risks something that drives your work?

Definitely. Beer’s quite a unique drink. While a red wine, for example, can only really vary between being dry and not dry, two beers can be drastically different beverages. Ultimately, I like brewing beer and trying collaborations we haven’t done before, just because I think it’s interesting. You could spend all your days just brewing pale ales but there’s a whole world of beer out there that’s fun to explore. Much like making a new dessert and bringing together unusual flavours, there’s an exciting element to doing that with recipes for beer. I mean, they don’t always work [laughs], but when they do it’s a nice feeling knowing that you’ve matched seemingly incompatible flavours and made them into something that tastes nice. brew-day.co.uk

interview: Lizzy O’Riordan

The Book of Matthew Award-winning beer writer and co-founder of Pellicle magazine, Matthew Curtis knows his way around a British pub.

That’s why he decided to write Modern British Beer, his new book all about the changing beer landscape. Ahead of his NCBW event, we caught up with him about the importance of third spaces, modern drinking culture and a more diverse future…

You’re going to be joining us for Nottingham Craft Beer Week to discuss your book Modern British Beer, which is included with the event. Can you give us a taste of what it’s about?

Modern British Beer is part-observation, part-philosophy.

The original idea came from the realisation that if you turned eighteen tomorrow and walked into a pub, the selection of beers available is vastly different to what you could have ordered ten or twenty years ago. Since 2002 the number of breweries in the UK has more than doubled, so I wanted to figure out what caused that change, why it matters, and why British beer is in such a good place right now.

It seems like a natural extension of your magazine, Pellicle, which is described as a place to celebrate what makes modern drinking culture so vital…

As I said above, beer is integral to our lives. To paraphrase one of my favourite beer writers, Pete Brown: beer is sticky when it dries because it’s the glue that holds our society together. But as well as being passionate about great beer, I’m passionate about great writing. Having the opportunity to not only use the publication to spread the word on great drinks, but also give freelance writers, photographers and illustrators a place to produce work they’re proud of is an immense privilege. One I’m thankful for every day.

It also gave me a chance to explore my own feelings on beer. I’ve been lucky enough to have written about beer for over a decade now, and over that time it’s become my full-time job. So I used it as an opportunity to get my own philosophy of beer onto paper, figure out the reasons why we drink and enjoy beer in the first place, and why British beer culture is so important.

What was the inspiration behind creating the magazine?

The idea actually came from my friend and business partner, Jonny Hamilton, who as well as being a talented brewer is also passionate about great drinks magazines.

Over a few beers he lamented to me that there weren’t as many great beer mags as there are other things like food and wine, so I took his lament and together we turned it into what became Pellicle!

Alongside the obvious interest in the drink, it sounds like the book will delve into the human side of beer. What drew you to this more community-based approach?

Pubs hold a very special place in my heart. They form a vital bridge between work and home life, that ‘third space’ (as I like to call it) where the point is to unwind and let the worries of the day ebb away. Pubs can be intense spaces if you think about it; people hold wedding receptions and wakes there, meet their partners, break up, meet their friends' kids or partners' parents for the first time. Life happens there!

But they can also be the exact opposite, a place where you simply rest and let the mind untangle itself. The common thread between all of the above is that, in the pub, this typically happens with a pint or two of great beer in hand.

We are a beer-drinking nation, and whether it's a pint of lager, a modern IPA, or a cask conditioned real ale, it forms a larger part of our culture than I think a lot of people realise.

Interestingly enough, a pellicle is a thing that forms during fermentation and it’s pretty disgusting. It’s a layer of gunk created by bacteria, but underneath it is something truly delicious. The idea is that we are delving beneath the gunk to not only reveal that deliciousness, but to make it as accessible to as many people as we possibly can.

You feature some really exciting voices in Pellicle, including the likes of Pete Brown. How do you discern which topics and voices to focus on?

We just publish the stories we want to read! We’ve tried to be as open about how to get published in Pellicle as possible, which we did by producing a pitching guide complete with the rates we pay our contributors. It’s fantastic to work with established folks like Pete, but it’s also thrilling to have worked with less well known voices, like David Jesudason, Rachel Hendry, and Jemma Beedie, among many others.

There seems to be a conversation about the lack of diversity in beer culture. With articles on Pellicle about disability, race and gender, do you think it’s important to champion a wide variety of voices?

It’s essential. And honestly, we’re not yet doing enough.

Beer has come on leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades, but it is still an intensely white, male industry.

Again, I come back to my point that being able to publish a magazine is a privilege. Part of that privilege is paying it forward, and ensuring people from a wide variety of backgrounds have the same opportunities to write about beer as I have had. Black people love beer, queer people love beer, and so on. It’s important that beer writing isn’t merely tailored for the existing crowd.

Speaking of writing, how was the process of writing Modern British Beer?

I wrote the final draft of Modern British Beer in lockdown.

It was a very insular, intense process. It was my first fulllength, narrative book, and I had no idea how difficult and stressful it would be creating it! What’s great about it is that it pulled together my beer experiences of the past ten years, which has involved visiting hundreds of breweries and pubs, and plenty of beer.

And finally, with a book named Modern British Beer, it would be wrong not to ask your favourites. What would be top of your recommendation list?

I always say I try not to have favourites, but as much as I am a writer, I am an enthusiast. Here in Manchester I am drinking a lot of beers from Track, Runaway, and Squawk.

In Nottingham, I love what Black Iris and Neon Raptor are doing, plus originally being from neighbouring Lincolnshire, I've always had a soft spot for Castle Rock Harvest Pale. And that’s just scratching the surface!

A Copy of Modern British Beer will be free with a ticket to Modern British Beer with Matthew Curtis on Thursday 16 June at The Kilpin Beer Cafe @totalcurtis leftlion.co.uk/issue148

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leftlion.co.uk/issue148

Cosmic Debris This one’s Cosmic Debris, which is a Frank Zappa song from his fifth studio album Apostrophe. The packaging was created back when Bell Fisher did all of our artwork, and he chose this piece of liquid light that has very fine bubbles that look like a salt explosion in space. It works because this is a blueberry Gose, which is a slightly salty sour style, so we’ve gone for that blueberry colour, but it also literally looks like that cosmic debris of the song. Same again, it makes sense because it encapsulates the feeling of the song and the beer.

Less Dangerous Nirvana are one of my all time favourite bands, even if they don’t fit into the sixties and seventies vibe. One of our first beers was Less Dangerous which is a New England Pale. With the colours, we were definitely drawing from the Nevermind album cover. Often with beers, people just make the can the colour of the beer, which we don’t always want to do. Here, we tried to reference both the album and the beer style, so this is quite a thick, hazy, hoppy beer, and I think that green element works for the hops, but also that blue for the album cover.

Loomer

Music as a muse Born from a passion for good music and great craft beer, Liquid Light have become known around the city for their psychedelic beer design. Delving into the symbiotic relationship between music and brewing, we learn more about how records inform the taste and design of their beers, and take a look at some of their favourite cans so far…

Bread and butter. Pen and paper. Shoes and socks.

We all know these things go together, but perhaps a less obvious (yet equally wonderful) partnership is that between music and beer, two of life’s most enjoyable pastimes. Just here in Nottingham we have a bevy of craft beers inspired by our favourite tunes, from Black Iris’ heavy metal-influenced Motorhead mix, all the way to Liquid Light’s groovy seventies concoctions, including beers like Helter Skelter and Strange Magic.

But why are the two subcultures so intertwined?

This is a question I ask Thom Stone and Jo Joyce from Liquid Light Brewery, located in Unit 9 of the Robin Hood Industrial Estate. “For us, music has always been a big part of who we are,” Thom says.

“Our name came from me watching a Pink Floyd documentary with my brother, and seeing the liquid light projections in the UFO club in London.

But my whole family has always been in bands, and Jo is in The Church of The Cosmic Skull, so we’ve always moved in those kinds of circles. Plus, we have a lot of bands around here, like Rodenhouse -

who have their practice rooms and music studios behind us, and regularly drink here.

For Liquid Light, the relationship between beer and music is so closely interrelated that it informs every part of their creative process “But more widely there’s been a massive crossover in recent years. There was a time where you’d go to a music festival and you’d have Hobgoblin if you were lucky. But I think there’s been a big shift towards craft beer in gig venues, and having bands on at craft beer festivals too. Even something as simple as Rock City now having cans of local brews shows you how it’s grown.”

For Liquid Light, the relationship between beer and music is so closely interrelated that it informs every part of their creative process. As Thom explains, “All of our packaging comes from images of our own liquid light shows. Quite often, when we’re doing the analogue light show, we‘ll have a record on and we’ll change the colours according to the music, and that might inform the beer style.

But it also works both ways. I really like coming up with the concept of the beer and then asking, ‘What song or album does that remind me of?’”

It’s no surprise, therefore, that Liquid Light regularly hosts music-themed events. “We run a lot of nights for anniversaries of album releases, like from Black Sabbath and David Bowie,” Jo says. “It’s fun because people link music so much with their identity, and it’s really exciting for them to pick up on a flavour [in a special anniversary beer] that reminds them of a song. We also try to have a lot of live music. We've got 94 Gunships coming in, and we’re going to try to have a new gig every month.”

interview: Lizzy O’Riordan

Loomer This is the Loomer, which is named after the My Bloody Valentine song. And this was really chosen by Liv Auckland, as she does all our can labels. She was really excited about this one because she’s a big My Bloody Valentine fan as well, and it really captures them. It has almost the exact same palette as the album cover of Loveless, and it’s got that wash effect you hear in the song. They describe the guitar music as a glide guitar and I think it totally encapsulates that wash of sound. Liv completely nailed this one.

With The Lights Out After Less Dangerous, we created With The Lights Out, which also references the chorus of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Even though the beer Less Dangerous came first, this actually is the first line of the chorus, so they match and have comparable tastes. Both are very hazy. We wanted them to be similar to each other, but with this one we added even more of a grunge element. I think the speckled effect kind of looks like when people throw bleach on their t-shirts or jeans, and of course, the green and the blue inform the album cover like before. leftlion.co.uk/issue148

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FOOD AND DRINK

tour de sauce

From selling twenty bottles in a gazebo at West Bridgford Farmers’ Market to being stocked on the shelves of Sainsbury’s and Morrisons up and down the country, the last eight years have been a pretty wild ride for Sauce Shop. But the Notts-based purveyors of artisanal sauces are never one to rest on their laurels, this could just be the beginning of their success story, as co-founder Pam Digva tells us…

Where did the Sauce Shop concept first come from?

Both James [Digva – Pam’s husband and Sauce Shop co-founder) and I were working for big corporate food companies in 2014. We cooked a lot at home, making sauces for our barbecues and things like that. It was that clichéd story of a friend saying, “This is really good – you could probably sell it!” We never really intended to start our own business, but we contacted West Bridgford Farmers’ Market and a couple of weeks later we were selling there. It all happened a bit quickly!

challenger brand mentality has made people far more aware of indie brands. People tend to favour them because they're a bit cooler, and they look and taste nicer. They're just more interesting brands, and you can talk to them on social media.

Companies like Heinz are just this big faceless conglomerate, and that's not really what people want these days. It's not just customers either, it's retailers. We launched onto Sainsbury's Future Brands initiative, an incubator scheme which is all about Sainsbury's bringing small brands in to add interest and personality into their range.

How much trepidation was there initially?

We're both from quite entrepreneurial backgrounds, so there are lots of people with businesses in our families. It started off as more of a hobby, but that lasted for about ten minutes before we realised we could potentially have a real business on our hands. But there was definitely some trepidation with doing our first market stall, because we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We literally turned up with a garden gazebo and eight different products, and it was terrifying!

It was the first time people we didn't know were trying things we'd made. I think we sold twenty bottles, and were high-fiving each other at the end! So to us it was a success.

You do see with a lot of brands - like Oatly milk, for example - that brands have developed their own personality. How conscious is that choice, and is it something you've done with Sauce Shop?

If so, how would you describe your brand personality?

Oat milk is a good example - I drink that in my coffee, and it's quite a bland product. But Oatly have managed to make it extremely attitudinal and humorous. Sauce Shop definitely has a personality which has been determined by us shaping up to be the challenger brand in the sauce market. We're rebelling against what Heinz are, even to the point that our branding is stripped back, black and white, which is slightly daring in that category.

I guess our tone of voice is a big part of our personality: a bit rebellious, a bit cheeky, and unafraid.

How did you see the gap in the market for highquality sauces?

We both recognised that sauce was a tired category within food, and the choices of hot sauces and ketchups were a bit uninspiring.

Supermarkets are just dominated by Heinz and Unilever. Even the artisan/craft market back in 2014 wasn't great - it was just a handful of people making hot sauces, chilli jams and ketchups that weren't very good, usually contained thickeners and cost about £6. It felt like there was no happy medium of really good quality, accessible condiments. We could see what was happening with beer - Brewdog were already making waves and disrupting that category, so we thought that the sauce market was ripe for us to do the same.

Have you noticed a consumer shift toward independents since Sauce Shop first started?

Yes definitely. Brands like Brewdog, Fever Tree, Innocent and Proper have all led the way in disrupting their own food categories. That

The last eight years have seen Sauce Shop take an enormous upward trajectory – what would you name as your personal highlight?

Launching in Sainsbury's was massive. It was incredibly stressful, and involved some of our team literally sleeping on palettes in the warehouse because we were working through the night. But seeing our sauce on the shelves in Sainsbury's for the first time back in 2017 was special.

How have you navigated the scale-up in business size?

The bigger the business gets, the bigger the challenges become. We started with just the two of us making sauces at home, and then outsourced production for a year or so but the quality was just rubbish, so we ended up building our own factory.

We started with a thirty litre saucepan, and now have a 600 litre and 1,000 litre vessel which

cook all day long, four days a week, producing 40,000 bottles a week. And it could be more now, since we've launched into Morrisons. So we’ve essentially gone from selling twenty bottles at a market to 40,000 bottles per week across supermarkets, our own ecommerce platform and lots of restaurants – that gives you an idea of the size of the scale up.

Nottingham is also the home of HP Sauce. What does being part of the Notts sauce lineage mean to you?

It means a lot to us. I'm originally from London, but feel like I'm from Nottingham now, and James is Notts born and bred. It's such a wonderful, creative city and everything is so much more concentrated than it is in London. Obviously there's the backstory of HP Sauce being created here, too, and we love being a part of that. It feels like we're bringing sauce back to Nottingham. Not many people know we're a Nottingham brand.

We actually had some press the other day that referred to us as "London brand Sauce Shop." We were screaming, “We're not from London, we're from Nottingham!”

Have you got your own favourite sauce?

This is such a hard question, and I've managed to whittle it down to three. Firstly, I could literally eat our burger sauce out of the jar like a yoghurt!

Buffalo Hot Sauce is an all-time favourite of the whole team here. Then our 12:51 Scotch Bonnet Jam, which is just such a great product.

What does the future look like for Sauce Shop?

Busy! We're massively growing the indie side of the business, as well as the food service side. We already supply to a lot of restaurants, but we're putting more resources into growing that. It's an amazing and fun bit of the business to see our products on the tables of restaurants, or being used back-of-house on chicken wings and things like that. We're also trying to get more listings in supermarkets. The feedback we get a lot is that people love our sauces but they feel like they can't always just pick them up as part of their weekly shop, so watch this space. Our e-commerce site is great, too, because it gives us the chance to sell literally everything we make, from weird inventions to collabs with people. Expect lots more flavours and collaborations. sauceshop.co

food for thought

food for thought

interview: Ashley Carter photo: Curtis Powell

leftlion.co.uk/issue143

New Business 200 Degrees

Okay, 200 Degrees definitely aren’t a new business. In fact, they’re a real force in the coffee game. But they have opened a new store right here in Nottingham - on Milton Street, to be exact. @200degs 34 34leftlion.co.uk/issue148

To Nosh The Rump Rub - BOHNS Best Burgers

To Drink Blood Dragon - Coco Tang

Not one for the faint of heart, The Rump Rub packs a proper punch stuffing jalapenos, chilli mayo, and jalapeno and raspberry jam on top of a trademark patty and American cheese. Spicy. @bohns_official

Think the name’s scary? Wait until you see the alcohol content. Made with Southern Comfort Black, Wray & Nephew and Licor 43, Blood Dragon doesn’t hold back - but it does taste insanely good. @houseofcocotang

Between us girls, I don’t mind admitting that I was a frequent orderer from 13th Element during lockdown. Justifying to myself that I was single-handedly helping to sustain a local, independent business, the truth was closer to the fact that I was a greedy little burger boy who simply couldn’t get enough of their incredible grub. And another confession: the fact that they were based in the kitchen at The Golden Fleece played into my decision to buy a house over the road. Did it play a big part? No. Was it a factor?

Definitely. Did they then leave the Fleece a week after I moved in, leaving me heart-broken? Sure.

But my loss was Nottingham’s gain, as my first visit to their new(ish) restaurant on Castle Boulevard exceeded my already high expectations. The plant-based burger kings have created a relaxed, inviting atmosphere while maintaining their impeccably high standards of cooking.

I went for my usual favourite, the BJ Burger. Now, this is a home run when you get it delivered, but getting to experience it in-person takes the whole experience to a new level. Presented inside a glass bell jar, the burger is initially hidden beneath smoke which, when revealed by our waitress, fills your nostrils with a delectable smell of what’s to come. As the smoke cleared I could see my prize, a juicy Beyond Meat patty delicately coated in cheddar cheeze and accompanied by bac’con jam, roasted garlic aioli, lettuce and a sweet, soft brioche bun. And while the burger was perfect, the accompanying Chick’n tenders were somehow better. Three succulent, crispy chicken pieces that left me wondering if I was accidentally eating the real thing.

We’ve become spoiled for choice for vegan eateries in Nottingham, and 13th Element definitely belongs in the conversation for best of them all. So, if you’ve taken the pledge of kicking meat or animal products to the curb, you’ll do well to find better vegan fast food anywhere in the country. Ashley Carter @13thelement_ 101-103, Castle Boulevard, NG7 1FE

food review: prickly pear If there’s one thing in life I truly believe in, it’s that all hard work should be met with a disproportionately large treat. Hence, after the deadline for LeftLion’s May magazine, it only felt right to wander down to Mansfield Road’s Prickly Pear, rewarding myself with a long and luxurious ‘well done’ lunch.

Joined by the rest of the editorial and design team, we squashed around one table in the small restaurant and got straight to browsing the menu. Taco Tuesday made it an obvious choice for me, and I opted for the Fish’ish tacos, alongside a Fentimans sparkling raspberry drink - as did two of my co-workers.

A 100% plant-based restaurant, the tacos were, of course, faux fish, though I’d be hard pressed to notice, with the texture and batter resembling cod with an almost uncanny likeness. Served on a fresh corn tortilla, the ‘fish’ is made from beer-battered tofu and nori, and is presented with an accompaniment of fresh salsa, avocado, pickled red cabbage, pink onions, and - most importantly - garlic and coriander mayo.

Truly delicious, tacos are, in my opinion, one of the most fun foods, and these were no exception. For me, the pièce de résistance really lay in the pink onions and garlic coriander mayo, both of which added an element of freshness to the stodgy nature of the batter and balanced out the dish.

Alongside the tacos, there are also plenty of other options to pick from, including a range of sandwiches, burgers and an extensive brunch menu which is served all the way until 3pm. Plus, there’s a selection of fully-vegan milkshakes made with ice cream and soy milk, all of which can be made alcoholic at your request.

@pricklypearnottm 127 Mansfield Rd, Nottingham, NG1 3FQ

A place so atmospheric, it feels rightly justified in taking its name from an Edgar Allan Poe story. Follow Pit & Pendulum for videos of creepy Easter bunnies, artistic shots of the pub and, of course, pictures of truly delicious drinks. @pit_and_pendulum.notts

From meeting the best beer writers to trying the most weird and wacky beers, here are five things that we can’t wait for…

Battle of the Breweries If you’re in the mood for competition then head on down to Bunker’s Hill to play this craft beer-based card game, and win a whole host of beer and brewery-inspired prizes.

Sunday 12 June 3pm, Bunkers Hill, £5

Located on the outskirts of town, Prickly Pear could easily be missed by the untrained eye, but it’s definitely worth the five minute walk from Victoria Centre, and is one that I’ll be recommending to all my plant-based and nonplant-based friends alike. Lizzy O’Riordan

To Follow Pit & Pendulum

June is here and with it comes Nottingham Craft Beer Week.

Loved by LeftLion and the rest of the city’s beer geeks alike, we thought we’d round up a list of their finest events.

FOOD AND DRINK

food review: 13th Element

Right Beer, Right Now

Want your Nottingham foodie business featured in the mag?

Fancy writing for us?

Email us at editorial@leftlion.co.uk

An Evening with Melissa Cole Tired of hearing beardy men talk about craft beer? Switch it up with Melissa Cole, a leading UK expert in food and beer who will guide you through her new book, The Ultimate Book of Craft Beer.

Tuesday 14 June 7.30pm, The Vat and Fiddle, Free The United Kingdom of Beer The Telegraph columnist and 2017 Beer Writer of the Year Adrian Tierney-Jones lifts the lid on his book The United Kingdom of Beer. Get yourself down to Neon Raptor Taproom to hear all about it.

Wednesday 15 June 6.30pm, Neon Raptor Tap Room, Free Modern British Beer Learn more about beer culture with awardwinning writer Matthew Curtis. Plus, you can pick up a complimentary paperback copy of his new book Modern British Beer.

Thursday 16 June 7.30pm, The Kilpin Beer Cafe, £13 Nottingham Craft Beer Festival La pièce de résistance. The moment we’ve been waiting for. Finish off the week at Nottingham Craft Beer Festival - packed with live music, street food and an obscene amount of craft beer.

Friday 17 - Saturday 18 June, Sneinton Market Avenues, £12 Beermat Doodles Beer lover? Want your portrait done?

Well then, you’re in luck. A crack team of illustrators are working their way around Nottingham pubs and will doodle your likeness for free.

Multiple locations and times, Free nottinghamcraftbeer.co.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue14835 35

fashion

fearless dressing

Seventies Blaxploitation

Seventies new york cop

interviews: Addie Kenogbon photos: Dani Bacon

Kids tv presenter

What is style?

For many, the clothes people wear act as a way to express their personality, serving as a first impression to people they meet. However, with a society that’s rife with judgement and pressures for people of all ages to conform, having the confidence to go against the grain and challenge societal norms through what you wear is no mean feat. We caught up with a few Nottingham style icons to see how the clothes they wear help them be fearlessly, unapologetically themselves, while proving great style needn’t have any rules…

Megan Crook

Kim Thompson How would you describe your style?

Seventies Blaxploitation movie main character, with a dash of clown.

How does what you wear help you express your personality?

I work as an illustrator and there’s definitely lots of correlation between the way I style myself and the bold colour, retro aesthetic, and film references in my work… but I’m also secretly quite shy! Dressing up has always been a way for me to ‘step into character’, feel good and represent myself with confidence.

What’s the one clothing item you own that always helps you feel confident?

Not so much clothing, but I swear by a good red lip and some big retro sunnies - a classic low effort accessories combo that instantly lifts any outfit and saves me the time it takes drawing on my eyebrows!

Jim McBride

How would you describe your style?

Eighties toddler. Kids TV presenter.

How does what you wear help you express your personality?

Colour is life. I also hope that by wearing colourful, cheerful outfits, it lets people know I’m friendly and approachable. How we dress can really impact how we feel about ourselves - we all deserve to feel fabulous in our clothes (and in ourselves), so I make garments to encourage that.

What’s the one clothing item you own that always helps you feel confident?

I have a cross-front, skin-tight jumpsuit in green and yellow leopard print that I made a few years ago and I always feel sexy AF when I wear it.

Vince Porter Sharpe

How would you describe your style?

Seventies New York cop on unpaid leave, friendly mobster or retired cowboy lost at the disco - it depends on the weather and the mood.

How would you describe your style?

What is style? It seems to be a way for certain individuals to establish a club designed to exclude those considered to be on the ‘outside’.

How does what you wear help you express your personality?

Music’s huge for me, and the fashion that goes alongside it has always been important. I’ve always loved that aspect of music. It’s also been a huge part of my partner and I’s relationship over the past eight years. There’s nothing like faking it ‘til you make it and heading into town to turn some heads on a Saturday afternoon after bagging some steals from a charity shop, then settling in at the pub for a few pints dressed like you’re ready for a twenties wedding. I guess there’s also an ethical undercurrent to it as well, as dressing like you’ve been swiped from another era usually means fast fashion does not float your boat. I haven’t bought a new item of clothing in years - and I buy a lot of clothes!

My philosophy is wear what you want and don’t be intimidated by those who tell or advise you what to wear.

What’s the one clothing item you own that always helps you feel confident?

I’ve got a great seventies beige three-piece suit with huge flares and lapels. I wear it to a lot of the big times! Bagged from Hopkinson for like £30 in 2018, it looks almost identical to the suit Mick Jagger married Bianca in in 1971, the lapels are just slightly less mega. I wore it during lockdown a lot because it happens to be incredibly comfortable, so it’s almost become my pyjamas. Still slaps though.

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How does what you wear help you express your personality?

What I do know is it takes confidence to wear anything considered beyond the current ‘normal’, whatever ‘normal’ is in terms of attire. It takes time to become confident in wearing what you’d really like to.

There are so many outside pressures driving you to conform, to be part of a certain group. Be brave, gradually, and you’ll eventually become confident and not care about what anyone has to say about your appearance.

What’s the one clothing item you own that always helps you feel confident?

I am very, very happy wearing a frivolous hat. Wide brim, high crown, sometimes with a few bits and bobs of tat attached to liven it up. I am always inspired by Nottingham’s own Albert Brown. Once you can wear a good hat at a jaunty angle (see Gregory Issacs) you’re on the way to confidence in terms of your clobber.

dopamine dressing Fear is such a powerful emotion, and it can permeate so many areas of our lives, right down to the clothes we wear each day whether it’s the fear of looking silly, standing out and drawing attention, or of simply wearing the ‘wrong’ thing.

When you were a kid, fear of what others would think often didn’t even enter your thought process whenever you were let loose to choose your own clothing. Instead, it was all about wearing what you want, when you want.

So, if you’ve been eyeing up that statement jacket or ridiculously overthe-top shirt, maybe this is your sign to go forth and be bold this month Whether it was that Batman costume your mum had to pry off you at bedtime, or perhaps a favourite bright raincoat that you wore, come rain or shine.

And, while I’m not saying we can all go around in costume at every occasion, I do think there’s power in capturing that childlike confidence to wear what makes us feel happy or empowered, free of the constraints of what we think we ‘should’ wear, due to societal pressures.

According to a study by Professor Karen Pine from the University of Hertfordshire, wearing clothes that mean something to us or that we associate with happiness, can greatly increase confidence.

There’s been no getting away from discussions on how the world of fast fashion is taking its toll on the world’s resources. However, clothes swap events are hoping to make a change by providing people with a chance to get their hands on great pieces in a more environmentally-friendly way - and Nottingham’s Big Swap Events have become leaders on the sustainability front here at home. Our Fashion Editor, Addie Kenogbon, was invited to review their latest event at Nonsuch Studios, and to find out if one person’s trash can really be another’s treasure…

Big Swap Events have become a popular staple in the calendars of many since launching last July, with visitors flocking from as far as Sheffield and London to attend. The project, formed as a collaboration between Style Swap Events founder Sarah Jackson and Big Swap founder Zoe Sussmeyer, aims to be as sizeinclusive as possible, while allowing people to swap their unwanted clothing for other preloved pieces donated by swappers.

May’s event was held at Nonsuch Studios on a sunny spring afternoon. Approaching the gates there was already an excited throng of people waiting to get in. I myself brought ten items from my wardrobe and I was looking forward to seeing what treasures I’d be able to swap them for.

Each visitor pays an £8 ticket fee and is able to bring up to ten items including clothing, shoes and accessories, and, in turn, can take home a maximum of ten items. The rails were all neatly separated by size and category and were all wellstocked with a range of amazing pieces. From Topshop and Whistles to Guess, New Look, Zara, ASOS, Ralph Lauren and more.

“We always have an eclectic mix at our swap events and it’s all about the thrill of the find, because you genuinely do not know what you’ll get,” Sarah explains. “We have had premium High Street pieces like Whistles, Reiss and Zara, but it’s the vintage ‘fits that are interspersed within that that make it more interesting.

“It’s never been about label snobbery, it’s about things that still have a lot of life in them that someone’s going to enjoy. And that might be something from Primark

or Prada. When I first started the swaps, there was a real confusion about that and people used to message me all the time like, ‘What if I bring something from Whistles and I only get something from Primark?’” Sarah continues “It’s about bringing something that’s in good condition that someone can get enjoyment out of and wear for a long time. And, when people walk away with things they genuinely love, and they can’t wait to outfitbuild with their new finds, that’s what makes these events special.”

Zoe adds, “We’re starting to see more vintage and retro pieces come through too, which is great. Now we’ve introduced plus sizes, it’s really diversified our offering. Last July we only had one rail of plussize; at this event, we had five rails.

That’s almost fifty percent of our stock.”

Seeing the bustling mix of women from all walks of life all mingling excitedly and flicking through the rails, it’s clear to see that Sarah and Zoe have created something special that goes far beyond the clothes.

“You walk through the High Street and it’s sad to see all the shops closing,” Zoe explains. “But to see how people do shop and how they are considering how they consume, it’s just so different now.”

The pair tell me that May’s event was their busiest event so far, with over seventy attendees. Since launching last year, the events have helped to keep 2,950 pieces of clothing in circulation, with 296kg diverted from landfill this year alone.

Any garments that aren’t able to be swapped on the day are donated to Nottinghamshire Hospice, who have been partners of Big

Swap Events since last year. “We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without Nottinghamshire Hospice.

They really helped me out with my second event,” Sarah explains.

“And I loved that we’re getting the opportunity to support a great local charity that helps many families across Nottinghamshire. It just made it even more special.”

“The entire ethos around our events is championing zero waste and the circular economy, but it’s also about making an impact in a number of other ways too, including supporting a local charity,” Zoe adds. “We’ve managed to make donations worth £5,092 to Nottinghamshire Hospice stores through our events since last year.

They’re approximately seven-tonine months behind on donations because of COVID, so our events are helping them when they need it most.”

From a nearly-new Ralph Lauren trench coat to a range of brightly coloured jumpsuits and dresses, statement military boots to eyecatching knitwear, there was so much to choose from. However, this slow-fashion addict managed to bag herself four really special pieces, including some Guess boots, a vintage midi dress and a sixties-style swing dress. So, all in all, I’d say it was a total success, and definitely right up there as one of my new favourite ways to shop. And, what could be better than knowing you’re helping the planet, giving your old pieces a happy new home and managing to take home some treasures yourself - all with change from a tenner?

Big Swap Events’ one year birthday swap takes place on Saturday 9 July at Sneinton Market Avenues @style.swap.events @thebigswapevents

the look

It’s a way of thinking that some have recently coined Dopamine Dressing, a movement that champions wearing what boosts your mood and makes you feel good – not simply what’s on trend. And it’s inspiring many people to be a little braver with what they wear, whether it’s bright colours, clashing patterns or retro aesthetics. There are no rules, if it makes you feel great.

So, if you’ve been eyeing up that statement jacket or ridiculously over-the-top shirt, maybe this is your sign to go forth and be bold this month.

To Follow #dopaminedressing The perfect hashtag to follow for a little inspiration on how to harness the power of fearless dressing.

words: Addie Kenogbon

fashion

words: Addie Kenogbon photos: Nigel King

swap shop

To Wear Dr. Martens Sandals Doc wearers, if the sun has got you thinking of ditching those boots, then Doc sandals are the way to go.

To Visit Blue Camel Café Hopkinson’s newest site in West Bridgford, which opened earlier this year, is worth a visit if you’re a lover of vintage clothing, antiques and cocktails in the sun.

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literature

fully booked

words: Lizzy O’Riordan

Ghost Writers

Fancy a crime writing workshop? A heritage walk? Perhaps a story told on a riverboat? Well then you’re in luck, because Newark Book Festival has all that and more. Now in its sixth year, the festival is on a mission to celebrate Nottingham’s literary community and the local area. We catch up with Artistic Director Sara Bullimore to find out what’s in store…

Formed in 2017, Newark Book Festival is a celebration of Nottinghamshire’s literary scene, spanning across four days in July in the form of author talks, workshops and a whole series of family-friendly events.

Forced to hold the festival partially online for the past two years due to COVID, this year marks their exciting return to an in-person festival, which will be held across Newark. “We started as a two day festival in 2017, stemming off from Books in the Castle,” Artistic Director Sara Bullimore tells me, “but we’ve grown so quickly since then. It feels like we’ve jumped from a small emerging festival to something that has expanded so much.”

We’ve jumped from a small emerging festival to something that has expanded so much Previously held solely at Newark Castle, the festival has stretched to include “all the brilliant heritage spaces, cafes, businesses and indoor and outdoor spaces encouraging people to explore the town a bit more.” As a part of this, the festival is working alongside the High Street Heritage Project for Newark, hosting “a couple of heritage walks that include a historian and a poet, where you can go out and look at the buildings and parks and be inspired by them.”

At the festival itself, a vibrant weekend is in store. With this year’s theme centring around music, Sara says that the market town will be taken over with street performances and, of course, literary-themed events.

After a high level of popularity in previous years, the ‘literary village’ will be taking place every day of the festival. A marketplace for all things literature, it hosts “anything from museums selling books, authors, indie publishers, all the way to craft makers who use words as inspiration, or cake makers who make book festival cupcakes.”

Sara says the festival “has a lot of family engagement because we run a lot of free activities, many of which are connected to the summer reading challenge over at the library.” However, the festival is for all ages, and has been known to draw in Nottinghamshire’s writing community as well as many tourists who are eager to visit Newark - a location that Sara describes as ideal due to its “easy transport links and lovely independent shops and cafes that want to get involved.”

Newark Book Festival is taking place from Thursday 7 July -Sunday 10 July 2022. Events can be booked on their website newarkbookfestival.org

Short stories

The festival has over sixty events in total, including a series of community outreach programmes that span past the four-day festival period. “We have our schools

programme which twelve or thirteen schools have signed up to, and our young journalists programme.

We’re also doing some workshops with Syrian families in the lead-up this year. Plus we will have a whole series of pop-up events that take place in other communities after the festival.”

To Do Writing Grief

38

Not the cheeriest of subjects, but grief is an inescapable part of the human experience. Learn how to translate that into poetry with Polari-longlisted writer James McDermott.

Wednesday 22 June, Nottingham Writers’ Studio (via Zoom)

To Read I Used To Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys Author of Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys was fearless in the face of adversity. You can learn more about her incredible life in the new biography by Nottingham writer Miranda Seymour.

To Follow Gobs Collective Missing last month’s Poetry Festival? Have no fear, there’s still plenty going on. Follow Gobs Collective to get all the details on local poetry performances as well as creative workshops. @gobscollective

From Bram Stoker's Dracula to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the horror novel has always revealed the subconscious fears of society, ever since its genesis in the eighteenth century. Whether an unease with female sexuality that manifests in horny vampiric women, or anxiety about modernity that appears as a man-made monster tale, the literature reflects back to the reader that which they already fear.

And as culture moves on, so does the genre, creating new horrific situations that delve into whatever our modern minds are stewing on. A far cry from Stoker’s fear of the feminine, the seventies saw Ira Levin’s satirical story The Stepford Wives, an ideal novel for the emerging feminist age. Following the protagonist Joanna Elbert as she moves to eerily perfect Stepford, it’s soon revealed that the neighbourhood women are murdered and replaced by dutiful and submissive robots.

As culture moves on, so does the genre, creating new horrific situations that delve into whatever our modern minds are stewing on In the modern day, we continue to explore our fears through horror. Take, for example, the new genre of ecohorror that has emerged in response to our current ecological crisis. With titles including Wilder Girls, Annihilation and The Ruins, the genre explores the possibilities of the environmental apocalypse. Asking, what happens if nature turns on us? How will we survive when we finally push it too far? First coined in the mid-nineties, ‘eco-horror’ has grown as a genre as our fear increases.

But is it good for you? As things turn out, yes. The University of Chicago conducted a study on how horror lovers fared in the time of COVID, and the results showed that they dealt significantly better with sudden emotional stress. Having already practised emotional regulation skills through the fiction they consume, they had stronger coping skills than the nonhorror heads among us, making them better equipped to deal with the real-life scariness we found ourselves in.

Ultimately a genre that helps us work out our fears by holding a mirror to them, it’s something to be celebrated. Even if it stops you sleeping at night.

words: Lizzy O’Riordan

interview: George White photo: Tamas Markos

Literature

on the front line

While still only in her twenties, Nottingham’s own Anna Kent left her job at the NHS, packed a bag and travelled to Sudan - then an active war zone - to offer her medical expertise to those in need. Now back in the UK and working as a midwife, the 41-year-old has written about her unbelievable experiences in Frontline Midwife: My Story of Survival and Keeping Others Safe, which provides a powerful story of perseverance, activism, and lessons learned…

Being honest, reading your book is quite a fearinducing experience, even from page one - the idea of being in my mid-twenties, packing my bags and heading to a conflict zone is pretty terrifying. How did you deal with it all back then?

Because I was young and inexperienced, I had this naive view of aid work that meant I was pretty fearless when I decided to make the move abroad.

But that wasn’t necessarily positive. The thing about fear is that it’s a really primitive human instinct that can help you to think and plan for high-risk situations to ensure you avoid them.

The problem with being fearless is that it can drop you into scenarios that you aren’t ready for, and because I wasn’t feeling scared, I think I definitely went into that venture unprepared.

So you were fearless before heading out to these dangerous places, but was there a moment when the reality of your situation kicked in?

The flight over to South Sudan was a huge wake-up call. I was sitting on the plane with my back-pack, wearing my DWB logo, feeling all cool, and then suddenly the cargo ramp lowered and in came the heat - it was fifty degrees and I didn’t know if I’d be able to breathe, never mind work.

We stayed in a tent and worked out of a mud hut, so it wasn’t grand by any stretch of the imagination. Then I met my first patient, who was a woman who had suffered the death of her baby, had no midwife, and the impact of that on her body was horrific. It was an injury I’d never seen before. That provided a huge moment of realisation as to what I had signed up for.

As much as I worried for my own safety - I once had a black mamba slither past my foot, we had to watch out for red cobras, we often heard gunshots firing in the background - my biggest fear was failing these patients. From a selfish point of view, I was definitely scared about living with that sense of grief and guilt, believing that I’d let someone down. The outcome of that fear was that I became hyper-vigilant. I worked for three months straight

without a break, we were on call 24/7, we only got tiny amounts of rest. And while there is a place for hyper-vigilance, the problem with that long-term is that you reach a breaking point without seeing it coming, and then suddenly you’re off a cliff-edge mentally.

As much as I worried for my own safety, my biggest fear was always failing my patients In the book you talk about how you had experienced some dangerous situations working in our hospitals’ emergency departments, such as when a man pulled a knife on you. Did your time here prepare you for the unpredictable nature of your future work more than you imagined it would?

The ED at QMC was the busiest in Europe at the time. I loved it there, we had a brilliant team, but we were met with complex cases - we saw gunshots, we saw stabbings, I saw some dreadful incidents. That definitely prepared me for trauma care in general, but it couldn’t really prepare me for not having access to an x-ray machine, or a lab, or running water - or for the types of illnesses that only come from living in absolute poverty, as many of my patients in war zones were forced to. That was definitely difficult to come to terms with.

And now that you’re back in the UK, you’re obviously working under completely different circumstances for the NHS than you were for Doctors Without Borders. But does that fear of failing your patients still live with you?

I think every NHS worker has the fear of doing something wrong. It drives us to work harder, to do more. But what makes this more challenging is that there’s chronic underfunding and a severe staff shortage. None of us want to miss anything - that’s our biggest fear, missing something that could have helped someone - but we’re being

asked to provide more services with less time and fewer resources.

To look after my own mental health, I now practise mindfulness and gratitude. I know some people think that’s a bit naff, but I’ve found that being aware of what I’m saying and doing, as well as regularly taking time to appreciate the ways in which I’m really fortunate, helps to sustain me.

I also try to practise grassroots kindness. I like people, even difficult people, and I want to really care for them, rather than rushing them through and moving them on. Taking this personable approach is so important for staying motivated and positive.

Finally, this is a very personal book, diving into some really intimate stories and life lessons.

How did you find writing this up knowing that it would be available to the wider public?

You mean knowing my parents would read it?

Look, as a healthcare worker, I have to talk to my patients about things like sex, and vaginas, and emergency contraception, and my thinking was that if I can’t be honest about these things myself, how can I expect other people to talk about them?

There are a lot of things in the book that are quite taboo, and gritty, and raw. But everything that’s in there is there on purpose.

One of the reasons for this is that taboos can kill women - if people don’t get access to timely contraceptives, for example, it can be deadly.

I’ve got the agency and the privilege to speak out without massive repercussions. Maybe some people will find it awkward to take in, but I can say things and not be silenced. What I hope is that if I can speak out about topics that matter, then maybe that can somehow help people who don’t have that ability, because it creates a dialogue that might improve situations for them.

Frontline Midwife: My Story of Survival and Keeping Others Safe is now available in bookstores and online @AnnaLouiseKent

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I am Energised We welcome you, summer!

This is the month that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice will arrive on Tuesday 21 June. It marks the longest day of the year and the start of the astronomical summer. If you refer back to December's issue, we discussed what the solstice is.

Since then, Earth has slowly been tilting back towards the sun.

Throughout the ages, humans have celebrated the summer solstice with gatherings and feasts. We’ll get seventeen hours of sunlight in the UK and the sun will be at full strength.

Stonehenge is one of the many sites that mark this cosmic dance.

Write down the things that no longer serve your higher self and (safely) burn them The sun is literally a ball of fire and the solstice is a beautiful time to soak up all that fierce, intense, electrifying, invigorating, exhilarating energy. We can use that energy to inspire us, to uplift us, to energise us. To light our spirits.

To honour this fire festival, take some time and think back over the past six months. What do you need to let go of? Write down the things that no longer serve your higher self and (safely) burn them.

After 21 June, the days will gradually get shorter until we reach the winter solstice, for the longest night. This is a time to remember to be fully in the present moment, basking in the richness of the here and the now.

For the past fifty years, Middle Street Resource Centre has been a source of help and advice for Nottingham residents, providing a variety of support groups and volunteering opportunities to promote mental health wellbeing. To celebrate this golden landmark, researchers from Nottingham Trent University will work with past and present service users, staff, volunteers, peer support groups and local residents to record and document stories and experiences.

Leading the project is Dr Verusca Calabria who tells us more…

Can you explain how the idea for a project to create an oral history of the past fifty years of the Middle Street Resource Centre first came about?

In January 2020 I was awarded a £10,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver the Hidden Memories of Mental Healthcare project. The project set out to explore and document the intangible heritage of Nottingham mental health provision. I recorded the oral history of Graham Machin, former Chair of Middle Street Resource Centre and a mental health carer and campaigner. His insights helped to identify the hidden legacy of the Centre, which for fifty years has been supporting recovery and preventing relapse into mental health crises for thousands of people with mental illnesses living in and around Nottingham. I ran a consultation where fifty or more people helped to identify the need for this project - and I was able to secure £98,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support it.

As an outsider, the idea of creating an oral history of such a large period of time on such an eclectic subject sounds daunting… What are the first steps for you?

I plan to recruit a Heritage Project Officer who will oversee the co-ordination of the project activities, including recruiting volunteers who will help to gather the memories of those who were involved with the Centre across the last fifty years. Once the Heritage Project Officer is in post, a series of events will be organised this summer to recruit volunteers. There are also some paid student placement opportunities which will support the co-production of the social history of the Centre with service users, staff and local residents.

How important is it to get a diverse range of different experiences in the project?

It is very important to engage and give a voice to a range of different experiences in the context of mental health.

The project will engage with over sixty volunteers from a wide variety of backgrounds, including young people, who will be trained in oral history, curatorial and archival skills, digital photography, poetry writing and performance

WELLBEING

golden years

and craft-making, as creative and interpretive vehicles to explore the legacy of the Centre.

What are you most excited about starting the project?

I am most excited about preserving this unique heritage.

This project will make mental health heritage visible and promote greater awareness of the needs of people who experience mental distress and, in doing so, will help to reduce stigma among wider communities who will engage with this heritage.

Attitudes towards mental health have changed dramatically during the time in which the Centre has been in operation. Are you aiming to improve attitudes further through your work?

I expect the project to help reduce stigma towards people with long-term mental health conditions, whose experiences are still highly marginalised. The planned public engagement events will provide opportunities to engage in conversations about wellbeing through heritage and inclusive art-based methods. These mental health heritage sessions will not only encourage dialogue and knowledge exchange about wellbeing between people with lived experience of mental ill health, a wider range of people will also have the opportunity to engage with this heritage as a vehicle to foster and support their own wellbeing by incorporating creativity into their own self-care.

What is the ultimate aim of the project?

To engage a wide range of people, including young people. The project also aims to develop skills for those who take part, as well as improving their wellbeing. The co-produced exhibition, which will tour in and around Nottingham in 2023, will help to share the hidden legacy of Middle Street Resource Centre with the wider public.

How can people get involved?

Get in touch with me via email, verusca.calabria@ntu. ac.uk, or Twitter @Verusca or @HealthMemories. mentalhealthcarememories.co.uk

And for our affirmation this month: I AM ENERGISED. If you have any burning questions, please feel free to hit me up on Instagram or via my website and I’ll do my best to answer.

Until next time: Be safe, no fear and stay blessed.

Love

CECE X @lovecelestene lovecelestene.com

traceymeek.com

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words: Adam Pickering illustration: Sophie Forrester

ENVIRONMENT

naturally terrified

Melting ice caps. Flooding cities. It’s no wonder more and more people are suffering from climate anxiety.

But what’s at the root of the issue? How’s it impacting people? And what can we do to steady the quickly growing feelings of dread? Our Environment Editor Adam Pickering takes a deep dive into the topic, and gives some advice on how to channel your fear into a force for change…

Eco-anxiety is defined by the American Psychological Association as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” It isn’t a peculiar phenomenon - a recent YouGov poll of over 2,100 British people found that 78% of people report some level of climate anxiety. There’s little divide along the lines of class, or age, but women feel it more strongly than men. A study across ten countries led by Bath University found that 83% of young people aged 18-25 agreed that “people have failed to care for the planet”, with over half believing that humanity is doomed, and four in ten are hesitant to have children. I know I am.

Could this imbalance be the root of our various health crises? Each day brings news of death, habitat destruction, floods, wildfires and storms.

The latest study on flying insects from Buglife and the Kent Wildlife Trust suggests that populations have declined by 65% between 2004 and 2021.

We’ve a 50% chance of a breaking 1.5 degree celsius global rise in temperatures in the next five years.

Activists at last year’s COP26 demanded we “keep 1.5 alive” - 1.5 is practically dead. We’ve reached the era of deep adaptation; billions of people are now regularly affected by deadly heat waves, and climate-related crop pressures have already contributed to huge food price rises. Pollution is now causing one in six deaths globally. We have every reason to fear this disequilibrium.

There’s a sense of sorrow even in our animal cousins; in the cetaceans – the aquatic order of mammals – who find fishing ever-harder amongst depleted coral reefs, in the hungry polar bear whose hunting grounds have melted, or the orangutan clinging to the last tree in the rainforest.

Do they know something’s wrong, and have us Earthlings ever been more validated in despairing for the future? In actuality, we might be the only species to truly grasp our sorry state of natural affairs, but escape from this cataclysmic fate looks increasingly distant, sometimes impossible.

A geological blink of an eye ago, before the Holocene - the 12,000 year temperate period which has fostered developed civilisations - our climate was a more changeable place, and we are likely already past tipping points that are rapidly pushing us away from this ‘Goldilocks’ period. Zooming out the Holocene may be, or might have once been, destined to be what’s called an interglacial period - warmer periods between ice ages and deep history being anything to go by we’d eventually return to a largely frozen world in tens of thousands of years.

However, in this short window human populations have exploded. 2,500 years ago, in the passing of less than 100 generations, there were a relatively trivial 100 million humans on Earth, less than 1.5% of the near-7.8 billion there are of us today. Social and technological developments have allowed us to proliferate, live longer, and consume more. We’ve likely been warming the Earth since the agrarian revolution - which roughly tracks the Holocene through livestock-born methane, and that’s before the industrial revolution burned greenhouse gasreleasing fossil fuels at scale. We now live in what geologists call the Anthropocene, one in which human activity is the dominant geological force.

Instead of trying to escape from the state of our environment, let’s get familiar with it as though life depends on it - because it does Mass extinction events like the one we are now driving are so rare that humans have never even been close to witnessing one - the last was about 65 million years ago (modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years), and there are tens, if not hundreds, of millions in between them. We may not be the first form of life to cause catastrophe, though - it’s thought that the first wave of the Devonian extinction (which took place around 375 million years ago) may have been caused by the quick colonisation of land by formerly aquatic plants, who deserted the ocean and with it the creation of soluble oxygen, starving its life whilst removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so efficiently that global temperatures plummeted.

But the difference between us and pioneering terrestrial plant life is that we know, albeit belatedly, exactly what we’re doing, so we have a unique power to prevent catastrophe. Here lies eco-anxiety’s potency - the best way to tackle the momentous challenge ahead may be to let that worry sit deeply, stare death and destruction in the face, and stop distracting ourselves with the folly of consumption and excess. In darkness our eyes adjust and become hyper-sensitive to light, and so in our bottomless despair, we might better see those faint stars through the clouded sky that can navigate us towards solutions.

By showing some human ingenuity, it is (still, just about) possible to fix the climate and ecological

emergency we’re causing; otherwise, why shouldn’t we succumb to extinction like the 99% of the more than 4 billion species ever to inhabit Earth already have? A little nihilism can seem like a friend at times - some form of life will go on beyond us, after all. But if we’re to proliferate, as is our evolutionary bent, we must deal with our mess and behave harmoniously. Mother Nature has set us this challenge.

We can help both the world and ourselves by tackling climate anxiety head-on: picking up litter in the street, cycling or using public transport more, or cutting down on meat and dairy - it all helps.

Making a positive impact on the environment, and alleviating the underlying dangers that cause stress, is amongst the most effective remedies to climate anxiety reported so far according to studies. You don’t have to do it alone, whatever your schtick - there are groups online for every interest, and small armies of litter pickers, tree planters, seed bombers, and bird watchers all tucked away in your area.

I enjoy the mycorrhizal (the types of fungi that inhabit roots and link plants together) feeling of taking part in group actions like tree planting, and the ongoing community care and connections that follow. We’re all like trees, in a way, in search of a forest to thrive in. The other big one is spending time in nature, so this sort of restorative action is a double win. Helpfully, nature’s everywhere - Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust runs 38 local reserves, and there are dozens of community gardens dotted across the shire, often looking for volunteers, while schemes like wild.NG, Ignite!, and Green Hustle promote ways to engage in urban nature when you don't have easy access to green space.

Humans can benefit ecosystems and live well, and Earth can support large populations, but it requires a paradigm shift - towards simpler, more interdependent, and deliberate ways of living that don’t extract, but give back. Fast-growing movements like permaculture advocate designing systems that have no negative impacts on the environment and work to grow and regenerate ecology in permanent ways - and it all starts with deep observation of nature and working with it.

Instead of trying to escape from the state of our environment, let's get familiar with it as though life depends on it - because it does. Then one day the world might actually be a less terrifying place.

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SCREEN

peak cinema

interview: Yasmin Turner

Auteur Feary We chat to one of the Kendal Mountain Festival’s directors, Steve Scott, about the global appeal of adventuring, building a tight-knit community of thrill-seekers, and what to expect when their 2022 Tour comes to Broadway Cinema…

Can you tell us what Kendal Mountain Festival is all about?

It’s really the biggest gathering of its kind, of multiple outdoor communities. It’s a big cultural festival as well, with an international film competition. But ultimately it’s just a multi-layered celebration of everything we love about the outdoors.

Where did it begin and why?

It’s just over forty-years-old, and it was started by a group of mountaineers in Kendal who were planning expeditions, sharing stories of adventures, showing slides as it would have been in those days. It progressed quickly into sharing a few films; I guess they would have had the old cine cameras. It became a gathering for the mountaineering and climbing world. But certainly in the last ten years we’ve seen a huge shift in the outdoor landscape. There are many different faces coming in and multiple sports that are evolving as new technologies grow. This is layered with all the spare time people have and with the pandemic where lots of people experienced national parks for the first time.

What draws people to undertake these challenges, to take risks and explore the outdoors via adventure?

I think everyone has their own motivation. At Kendal, we have athletes and ambassadors from all over the world sharing their incredible adventure stories. But then again, we have everyday people who are simply just walking in the fells and are sharing that common passion for the outdoors. Often, it’s those activities that create friendships for a lifetime, and at Kendal you can see what those communities are doing and get advice on new activities and skills. It’s definitely the place to get that kind of inspiration.

At Kendal, we have athletes and ambassadors from all over the world sharing their incredible adventure stories Without giving away many spoilers, what are some of the most unbelievable moments from the films you’re showing this year?

We showcase the best selection we feel appeals to both young and old in the audience, and people of all tastes. So we’ve got incredible free-solo climbing; high altitude alpinists sharing the trials and tribulations of trying to conquer a new peak and the inner workings of a proximity wingsuit flyer. That sounds all highrisk, but on the flip side we’ve got some beautiful cinematography from a film called Ebb and Flow with women surfers on the west coast of Ireland, a female group of mountain bikers, and a skier with a difference breaking down barriers in many different ways.

What’s special about your event in Nottingham?

We’ve got an incredible guest speaker, Elise Downing.

She’s a brilliant role model for lots of people. She came up with a crazy idea to run around the coastline of Britain, while not being a runner at first either. She shares her story with frankness, warmth and humour.

She’s just so brilliant on stage.

The Kendal Mountain Tour is heading to Broadway Cinema on Wednesday 15 June. Tickets are now available on their website broadway.org.uk

Short reels

How is the audience affected by living dangerous situations vicariously through the people on screen?

The audience relate to everyday people doing incredible things. It’s not always the risk-taking and the daredevil stuff, it is very much about communities coming together. We have a lot of communities working on ethnic and gender diversity, and we’re doing great work with the environmental activists. Layers of activism in

society are reflected in our event. But as for the highrisk people, Kendal is that unique opportunity where you can go and rub shoulders with these thrill-seekers in the bar afterwards. It’s very non-hierarchical.

To Do The Rocky Horror Picture Show

To Remember Loki

To Follow Toby Curson

Sure, promoting a film with ‘horror’ in the title may be a little on-thenose in a fear issue of the magazine, but how could we not highlight the chance to watch a cult classic at an actual castle?

Sunday 12 June, Belvoir Castle

It’s been a year since the career of Sophia Di Martino was launched into the stratosphere - as she brought her no-nonsense approach, and Nottingham accent, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with her popular character, Sylvie.

If you’re not following Toby already, you should be. One of the most unique voices in Nottingham, he’s already worked with the likes of Jason Williamson and had his documentaries featured by the BBC. @lockup_rec

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Recently our Screen Editor, Jamie Morris, and I had the pleasure of chatting to local legend Chris Cooke about his iconic big screen release, One for the Road. We had a fascinating chat for the LeftLion Screen Podcast (yes, that is an instant shameless plug), diving into the process of making the film, his love for Broadway Cinema and the vibrancy and tenacity of Nottingham’s Screen scene. And as the interview got me thinking about what defines our filmmakers, one thing stood out above all else fearlessness.

Chris’s work on One for the Road is a great example. Approached by Film 4 to produce a feature, he decided to take a risk by fleshing out his passion project of a short film, Shifting Units.

Without a concrete narrative in place, he took a relatively vague idea and ran with it - creating a fresh, fun and memorable movie in the process.

One thing defines Nottingham’s filmmakers - fearlessness This fearlessness, this willingness to take a risk, is something that is channelled by so many of our greatest talents. Whether it is Shane Meadows shining a light on communities that seem forgotten by so many, or Jeanie Finlay taking a massive title like Game of Thrones and focusing on the lesser-known names behind it, our filmmakers are brave enough to stick to their vision, refusing to compromise for anyone else.

What this leads to is a real identity, an authenticity that is difficult to find elsewhere. At the risk of trotting out the old notion of Nottingham’s rebel spirit, there is a defiance to our moviemakers that is clear to see. And that bravery doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere any time soon - with the likes of Jay Martin tackling important political issues in his recent documentary Redt’Blue, and Daniel Smedley exploring mental health struggles with an unparalleled animation style in his BBC short Misophonia. So, that defining trait of fearlessness is here to stay, it seems - and our film industry is all the better for it. @LeftLionScreen

words: George White

interview: Elliot Farnsworth photo: Curtis Powell

MUSIC

making tracks

There aren’t too many duos doing it better than Jimmy Rocket and LVNDLXRD (aka Curtz) right now.

Having been part of the musical fabric of the city for years, the lyrical/producer match-up is garnering praise for the release of their latest EP, Bespoke Verses, which also features the likes of Rico and Vandal Savage. Music Co-Editor Elliot Farnsworth sat down with the pair fresh off the back of a string of shows to find out more about one of the most exciting recent collaborations in the Notts music scene…

You’ve been working together for a little while now, how did the collaboration first come about?

L: We’d been making tunes for ages but only really brought them out in 2020. This new EP was made in lockdown, and one of the tracks goes back even further than that.

J: We made Bill It And Sip It around the time of our first EP, which was a lot faster and a bit more dubbier. But we sat on this song for time, and couldn’t think of an idea for the video. There was a track missing on the newest EP, so we played this song and it went seamlessly with the rest of the tunes. Music is so timeless like that - it feels like it could’ve been written at any time.

L: It was all from the times when Jimmy used to work with my little brother. We were always jamming together and getting in the studio, and it kind of just blossomed from there. Two EPs later, and there’s so much more still to come.

Does it require much adapting to each other’s styles?

L: I kind of work on a whim, and Jimmy works like that too. I’ll ask man in the room, “What are we feeling?”, “Gimme a track” or “Gimme a tempo”. And we’ll just take it from there.

J: That’s the beauty of it, we’ve hardly had to change. It’s just a matter of getting to know what each other likes. My boy Vandal Savage is one rapper I’ve always looked up to, so back in the day when we first started working together, I probably made adjustments to bring my A-game.

L: Forcing music is so see-through, man. When it comes, it comes. At the end of the day, there’s a

formula to making music, but it doesn't always need to be the same.

Has this EP felt different?

L: Yeah, this one felt way different.

J: We were a lot more organised this time, we properly sat down and put a plan in place. Even the sound’s a lot more musical – there’s a newer sound for Curtz, too.

L: Everyone who knows me probably links me to Dubstep, Grime, Garage. This EP is so different for me; it just felt good to have the chance to make something more emotionally-driven. Different lockdown pathways sparked different creativities, and the emotions came out in the music.

J: Always jammin’ in the studio, either making music or not, I like that we’ve built a friendship first and then the music follows.

I kind of work on a whim, and Jimmy works like that too. I’ll ask man in the room, “what are we feeling?”, and we’ll just take it from there What is it like trying to push forward and develop as artists in Nottingham?

J: I love it. Born and bred. For a few years I was living in London, and before that it felt like there was a ceiling - it was too small. Since moving back, I’ve fallen in love with the city – the right people

are with the right people, it’s just working. We work a lot with Mimm, Nathaniel [Coltrane - Owner/ Creative Director] is a good friend of mine. Through things like that, I’ve realised the advantage of networking and taking time to learn what someone else is doing.

L: Nottingham’s always been part of the whole thing. I started making music when I was fifteen, I’m 32 now. I’ve always been sending beats to oldschool MCs, like Shxdow, Kriptik and Vandull. The weight of what I’ve done in the last fifteen years has had a massive benefit on what I do.

J: The only thing I would say about Notts is that there just needs to be a bit more recognition from out of town. There’s still a ceiling there, but now it’s only made of plasterboard.

L: I feel like that’s got to come from the people here in Notts. There are a lot of creatives working together, but there could and should be more. For the people moving out of town, the key is to never turn your back on where you’re from.

J: This is why I keep it that way. Organic.

What music’s been getting you through the week?

L: What’s that one…?

J: Benny the Butcher’s newest album, Tana Talk 4.

L: Oh my god, amazing.

J: It's very street rap, but it’s palatable for everyone.

There’s a good balance. Then Kendrick’s new one, too. That pulls on some heart strings.

Bespoke Verses is available to stream now lvndlxrd.bandcamp.com/album/bespoke-verses @lvndlxrd_uk @younastyson leftlion.co.uk/issue148 4545

MUSIC

interview: Elliot Farnsworth photo: Curtis Powell

jah blessed

Few Notts artists have made the sort of impact Jah Digga has over the past decade. The rapper, spoken word performer and podcaster is involved with countless creative projects, from working with schools and youth groups to help combat knife crime to recording the No Blacks, No Irish podcast with co-host Derry Shillitto, he’s just about seen and done it all. We caught up with him fresh off the back of Poetz off the Endz, an evening he curated and hosted as part of Nottingham Poetry Festival, to talk about the importance of sharing a positive message, overcoming fear and what his own priorities are moving forward…

Over the years, you’ve built a strong platform locally and further afield. How important is it to utilise that?

It’s really important because we have to give an alternative option. Negative narratives are being endorsed, and not just by people, but by the industry, too. We have to build from the ground up, making enough noise for people to listen. Even larger platforms like Radio 1 - we want them to play this kind of positivity. We’ve all got kids, or nieces and nephews. We have to fly the flag.

In terms of the narrative you mention, what message are you wanting to share?

Be yourself. Don’t be afraid to be yourself, even if it’s not cool to the masses. Be 100% you, because nobody else can do that. That’s the message.

Tonight’s performers at Poetz off the Endz frequently touched on issues with social media. How do you make sure your message is heard above others?

By doing. At one time, I was a heavy procrastinator, but that’s not going to get us anywhere. Action speaks louder than words. Ideas are great, but if you’re not putting it into action…

The theme of this month’s mag is fear. How has that, or similar emotions, played a part in getting you here today?

Fear is the main reason for procrastination. I had a big fear of failing. Would people understand my story? Would people understand my truth? Are they going to get me? For me, fear is an illusion. We play mind-tricks on ourselves; we create things that aren’t even there. But if you can separate from that, it all evaporates.

I’d like to talk more specifically about your own direction. What are your priorities moving forward?

I’ve got an EP coming that’s a mix-and-match between poetry and music. I’ve got a documentary on the way which is about my upbringing. Then there’s a short film we’ve done on tackling knife crime and adversity. Also, I want to continue putting on events, going into schools, doing workshops. I’m interested in these sorts of visual skits, like theatre plays but filmed, not live, short in length, with all the skits linked as a story. Trust me, I’ve got big ideas, it’s going to be sick.

From hearing your work with Derry Shillito on the No Blacks, No Irish podcast, the flow and chemistry between you two is easy to sense. On collaboration more generally, what is it you look for in someone to work with?

Shoutout to Derry. I look for people who aren’t afraid to speak their truth, no matter their background or journey. As long as it’s your truth, and I can see the passion, I’m like, “Yo, you’re sick!” That’s how I found these lot [tonight’s performers], they’re fire! Seeing them, it touched and resonated with me. It’s really easy to be negative; I could talk about a bunch of shit that I’ve been through, but it’s not going to inspire or empower anyone. I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s kid holding a gun because he heard me.

Do you feel certain responsibilities with your platform?

Forget the platform. As artists, we’re all responsible, because we’re projecting. And the kids out there are listening. You get what I’m saying? We’re all influencing, we’re all influencers. So, we have to take on that responsibility.

upcoming vibrations

@jahdigga

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To Go Detonate Festival

To Listen Your Skin (EP)

To Follow Melonyx

Nottingham’s biggest outdoor electronic music festival, Detonate, returns for 2022 with more than sixty artists bringing everything from highenergy tech house to drum and bass, all in the stunning grounds of Colwick Park.

Saturday 4 June, Colwick Country Park

Nottingham pop star on the rise, BEKA, has just released another stunning EP, featuring lead single Your Skin, a meaningful letter to herself. @bekaontoast

Formed of Georgia Copeland and Nadia Latoya, Melonyx have recently been making waves on the Nottingham music scene with their harmonic soul. @melonyxmusic

MUSIC

MUSIC Reviews Champyun Clouds Branched Out (Album) The duo‘s most recent production sends the listener on an interplanetary journey to a far away land. With the percussion’s pulse and the sting of the synthesisers, an extra-terrestrial noise pollutes the soundscape in the purest of ways. Then, when you couldn’t feel further from home, the vocals stick you on a tram straight back to Market Square. Elliot Farnsworth

developing the dj The city’s close-knit community of record spinners and producers have been supported for years by FourFour DJ Academy. They offer tailored courses for anyone and everyone, from people who don’t know what DJ stands for, to those pushing a career in the industry.

Fresh on the scene, serving local dance music heads in a slightly different manner, Swing Dash is a brand new, 24-hour self-service studio. Despite boasting shops for records and equipment (Where Wax and Synthetic Pro Audio, respectively), this community lacks creative spaces where collaboration and development are supported and prioritised.

We plan to put on events around the city featuring the community who use the space and launch a record label from the tunes made here by residents From speaking to their director, OK Flex, it’s clear to see that they are here to push experimentation with dance and electronic music, while incorporating other genres too (ambient, spoken word, etc.).

Commenting on the aims of their initiative, Flex says that he “wants to increase the access and opportunity to make music on fun and engaging gear” by providing “affordable creative spaces and offering residencies”.

“We want to be a hub for creativity and collaboration,” he continues. “We plan to put on events around the city featuring the community who use the space and launch a record label from the tunes made here by residents.”

Nottingham’s always been welcoming of a DIY ethos, but it’s not until more initiatives like Swing Dash are in place that forces will join and push the community forward as one. @swingdash

words: Elliot Farnsworth

Divorce Services (Single) There’s little more British than a stop at a motorway rest area, and that’s where Nottingham indie quartet Divorce locate their debut single, Services. While it’s as contemporary a song as they come, there are nineties influences here both in terms of the grunge-laden guitar and the Britpop stylings. Overlaid with a bubblegum pop melody, vocalist Tiger Cohen-Towell brings a terrific energy to this kitchen sink drama, questioning, “Will you stroke me til I sleep, or bludgeon me to death?” With catchy and assured singles like this, it may not be too long before your indie club night regularly ends with Divorce. Nick Parkhouse

The Low Drift The Low Drift (Album) The Low Drift launch their debut album and the Huw Costin, Emma Thorpe and Matt Hill collaboration have made a worthy statement. I guess you could describe the sound as folk music, but this Nottinghamshire trio bring us so much more with lo-fi retro synths, acoustic guitars and a mix of stripped-back vocals to give us a gentle but restless clash of vocal styles throughout. It's probably too early to draw up a ‘Best of 2022 Releases’ at the moment, but I'm holding onto this as a strong contender. Bassey

If you’re from Nottingham and want to get added to our music writers list, or get your tunes reviewed, hit us up at music@leftlion.co.uk

NUSIC BOX

Your new Notts music tip sheet, as compiled by Nusic’s Sam Nahirny. Want more? Check out the fortnightly podcasts and live sessions on the Nusic website.

Courtney Marke An RnB Queen in the making. Courtney is an artist with a voice and style so powerful that, regardless of your personal preference musically, you can’t help but go ‘Yup, she’s an RnB superstar in waiting. Working with the prince of beautiful vocal melodies himself, Ajay Henry, plus the CRS fam, Courtney’s building one heck of a team and brand behind her. And with a new EP of pure jams out to the world, we reckon it ain’t long ‘til Mariah’s calling. @courtney.marke

KAP UKG mixed with pop and a sprinkling of hip-hop sass and… badass. KAP (real name Katie) is dominating the throwback sound our ears are obsessed with in 2022, while also keeping it real NG. Tunes that could be played in a club at 2am as much as on daytime radio, as well as tunes that are destined to make any boy that screwed her over really regret it. It’s KAP’s time, and we’re just waiting for it.

@itskapkap

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Creating edgy artwork for the Nottingham-based brewery Totally Brewed, Maxrock has always felt a pull toward the scary and dystopian. That’s why he seemed the perfect fit for our fear edition. Combining his love for beer with our theme, we couldn’t be happier with the outcome…

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I'm a freelance artist/illustrator who designs all the artwork for Nottingham-based brewery Totally Brewed. I’ve always been obsessed with creating images and, somewhere along the way, my interests veered toward the strange and unusual.

I'm a big fan of stories so naturally I tend to digest a lot of comics, especially manga, graphic novels, books, film, animation and music.

I’ve always been obsessed with creating images and somewhere along the way my interests veered towards the strange and unusual What was the inspiration behind the cover?

As this month's issue coincides with Notts Craft Beer Week, it was first suggested I do something to tie in with this. When I was told the theme was fear I thought I’d misheard and it was beer, so I tried to combine the two.

Keeping a few human elements to the hop-plant monsters rather than them being completely alien seemed to make it more unsettling. Originally, the diver was going to be in a wetsuit, but after spending a long time getting the pose and anatomy looking okay I didn’t want to draw over this, and I thought they’d appear more vulnerable without it.

How does it compare with some other projects you’ve worked on?

Less detail. I have slowly moved away from massive amounts of fine line work and tried to focus more on colour and composition. Apart from the first ideas and sketches I created, the whole thing was drawn entirely in Photoshop.

What was the biggest challenge that you faced in creating the piece?

Time. And getting the face right, though I'm still not completely happy with it.

Tell us about some projects you’ve worked on in the past…

Large-scale outdoor images for Sherwood Art Week, as well as organising and taking part in various indoor and outdoor drawing events in front of the public.

What have you got planned for the future?

For about a year now I’ve been creating a short animated film complete with my own score. Dystopian, nightmarish stuff.

Hopefully it will see the light of day next year, or I might start releasing it an episode/chapter at a time. My respect for animators has grown a lot since I began attempting this!

Is there anything else you’d like to tell the LeftLion readers?

When not drawing monsters I get commissioned to draw dogs. facebook.com/maxrockart @maxrock_art

Mastering his craft

interview: Alex Kuster

ART

OVER AR R C TI E S D T N U

Nottingham-based artist Angelo Murphy has a special way of capturing the mundane and making it beautiful. His still life pieces are reminiscent of Baroque paintings from the seventeenth century, only he’ll throw in a tin of golden syrup to remind us that this is, in fact, the 21st.

The soft colours in his oil paints draw your eyes in, giving you a hazy sense of serenity, and his stunning piece Citrus with Blue Paper has just won the Amateur Jackson’s Painting Prize. We caught up with him to hear about his creative journey so far…

How did you get into art?

Like most artists, I can’t remember not being excited by drawing. Even now, there is something magical related to the aroma of a new sketchbook and the smell of paints and pencils. The sheer anticipation and potential to create something is very palpable. Thankfully, I don’t think that ever goes away.

Despite going through the education system, I do consider myself completely self-taught.

Everything I know about painting I’ve discovered for myself. I think that’s true for a lot of artists, because every artist wants to achieve different results so that journey is unique to them.

Nottingham has always had a vibrant art scene for as long as I can remember I work full-time at Nottingham Lakeside and paint every opportunity I can in my spare time.

It can be a real challenge after work to muster up the energy to go into the studio, but it’s always worth it. The key is to have balance and routine. I paint in oil on canvas and have settled for a studio at home; after experiencing studios in large, shared buildings with other artists, I feel this best suits my time constraints and practice.

You truly have the power to make everyday, mundane objects look so soft and beautiful.

What inspires your work?

I think the first spark of inspiration comes from observation. I don’t wait for inspiration to strike; I am constantly looking for it. If I see a particular shadow or a quality of light hitting an object, I’ll make a note of it or try and remember what it was that caught my attention. There are certain qualities of light and shadow that excite me, that drive me on to try and capture and recreate in a still life.

I’m trying to create small dramas on canvas.

With every new composition, the challenge is achieving this successfully. Still life is a genre that doesn’t get the gravitas it deserves and that’s exactly what inspires me and why I embrace it.

What artists do you draw inspiration from?

The Dutch still life painters of the seventeenth century absolutely blow me away! Willem Claesz Heda, Clara Peeters, Pieter Claesz to name a few. But also Vermeer - his painting, Woman with a Water Jug, is something I never get tired of looking at. Artists from this period were pioneers of observation, of looking

at light and shadow and the rendering of colour modulation; it’s breath-taking. They knew all the secrets as well - shadow boxes, light boxes, camera obscura and all sorts of wonderful gadgets that assisted them during the execution of great compositions. What I attempt to do is explore a contemporary response to what I love to look at. An interpretation and appreciation of the Baroque and chiaroscuro are never far from my compositions, but at the same time you want the work to be relevant, hence the golden syrup.

Your piece, Citrus with Blue Paper, just won the Amateur Jackson’s Painting Prize. How did that feel?

I do feel ambivalent towards any kind of competition as it’s all very subjective, but it does create opportunities. Just taking part gets your work seen. If you’re a visual artist, then that’s what it’s all about, to get the work seen. The Jackson’s Painting Prize is a very well-respected competition, open to any artist globally. This year they received almost 9,000 entries, so I was happy to have made the shortlist. Winning one of the prizes has been a positive experience and has heightened my profile as an artist. It’s nice to a receive validation for something you love doing and I would encourage other artists to enter.

What do you think is notable about the Nottingham art scene?

Nottingham has always had a vibrant art scene for as long as I can remember. Fortunately, there has been a long tradition of affordable studio space to choose from, which has allowed artist groups to flourish. Sadly, these spaces are becoming harder to find but they are there, and they underpin a very eclectic mix of talent. What is important for Nottingham is that people have access to great exhibitions and aren’t discouraged by price barriers. Nottingham Lakeside Arts has an excellent free programme of events, as does Nottingham Contemporary.

Do you have any favourite Nottingham artists?

This is an easy one for me. I love Mat Collishaw’s work. Although Collishaw’s practice is now in London, he does hail from Nottingham, and in fact studied here for a while. I was particularly inspired by his work Last Meal on Death Row, Texas, a series of beautiful C-type photographs where he’d recreated the last meals of condemned men in the style of Baroque vanitas. They are so dark and poignant and incredibly moving. I still look at them online occasionally just to remind myself. @angelomurphyartist angelomurphy.com leftlion.co.uk/issue14849 49

words: Ashley Carter illustration: Natalie Owen

How is it that, in the space of less than a century, society’s attitudes towards people born with disabilities changed from them being exploited as the most popular form of entertainment in Victorian society to being seen with sympathy, dignity and respect? Partly based on our intrinsic fear and fascination with ‘the other’, and partly down to a myriad of other reasons - including the intervention of Queen Victoria herself - the freak show played an enormous role in shaping modern attitudes, and remains one of the most macabre, unusual and complex periods of British cultural history. Ahead of his talk at Nottingham Theatre Royal this month, Dr John Jacob Woolf, historian, author and expert on the Victorian freak show, explains more…

What is it that makes us look at unusual things? Is it morbid curiosity? Simple nosiness? Or something more atavistic? And what lengths would you, reading this now, go to see something you’d never seen before? Would you spend your hard-earned money for the promise of witnessing someone seen as wondrous and strange?

Modern sensibilities suggest that, publicly at least, you’d answer that last question with a ‘no’. But had you been born just a century earlier – a blink of an eye, historicallyspeaking – the odds would have been overwhelmingly favourable that you’d have visited a Victorian freak show.

“It was the most popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth century, available to everyone from your average man, woman or child right the way up to Queen Victoria,” explains Dr John Jacob Woolf, historian and author of The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age. “People would come to stare at freaks of nature, who would perform or answer questions, and there were all these elaborate stories told about this character on stage.” While the idea of paying to stare at people with physical disabilities seems grotesque, it’s impossible to overstate just how widespread the popularity of the freak show was, and how far-ranging its appeal spread through British society. From the showmen, like the incomparable P.T. Barnum or Tom Norman – known as the Silver King – to the performers themselves, like Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man), Charles Stratton (General Tom Thumb) or Chang and Eng Bunker, the SiamAmerican conjoined twins whose fame coined the now outdated expression ‘Siamese twins’, a cultural imprint

was made on society to such an extent that their names survive in popular culture today. The Victorian freak show was a cultural phenomenon that appealed to the very bottom of society as much as it did to the top, and owes much of its success to Queen Victorian herself.

“A performer named General Tom Thumb – whose real name was Charles Stratton – came to Britain in the early 1840s when he was six years old. He puts himself on display, but there wasn’t much interest,” Woolf explains.

“But then P.T. Barnum manages to secure an engagement with Queen Victoria, who absolutely falls in love with him [Stratton],” he continues. “She even wrote about him in her diary. Barnum then mercilessly exploited this relationship to the extent that Stratton ended up getting the nickname 'The Pet of the Palace'. Suddenly, Tom Thumb was in the press and the phrase deformito-mania was being used.”

“She was a big freak fancier, and put the royal seal of approval on the freak show,” Woolf continues. “It set a trend – the upper classes thought that there must be something in it if Queen Victoria herself enjoyed it, and if the upper classes were doing it, the middle classes wanted to as well, and so on. There was an entertainment value as well as a social status value.”

But what was the reason behind this mania? “There was a fascination with otherness and anything different,” Woolf elucidates. “On one level, it helps to clarify what is normal.

It also makes people feel better about themselves,” he continues. “You know, if you're a bit worried about your weight, seeing a fat lady on stage might help you feel a

bit better. There were all sorts of interests in the other defining the self and what we are.”

Integral to the success of the shows were the showmen themselves, and the curiosity and appeal of their performers meant little if they weren’t able to drum up interest in a paying audience. “These showmen were entrepreneurs and business people, and the key to their success was being able to spin a good yarn,” Woolf describes. “If, for example, you found a bearded lady, could you tell a good enough story about her that would create a sense of wonder and exoticism that would entice people into your show? They were involved in constructing that freak persona and advertising the show in order to bring in as many people as possible.”

Beyond that, the role of the showman stretched to the discovering and hiring of freak performers, in order to continually maintain a new and appealing roster.

“Someone like P.T. Barnum had agents – sometimes referred to as freak hunters – that would go around the globe sourcing potential freak performers,” Woolf says.

“They'd try to find the weirdest looking person in some far-flung outpost of the British Empire, and attempt to bring them back to Britain or to the United States.”

Whether it’s our modern sensibilities or just intrinsic human nature, it’s impossible to hear these stories without seeing the performers themselves as victims, mercilessly exploited by ruthless showmen who profited from their public humiliation. And, while that’s accurate to an extent, the truth is far more complicated. “The freak was very

now and then

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Angel Row, 2000

Angel Row, 2022

much a public persona, a character that was brought to life by the performer - an individual with disabilities that lived their own life off stage,” Woolf clarifies. “It was respectable, it was popular. It was the centre of Victorian culture.”

“Can we disassociate the 'freak' as a social construct from the freak performer, or the actor off stage?” he continues. “Facts and fiction very often intermingle in the lives of freak performers.” Having researched the lives of many of the most well-known performers from the era, Woolf is perfectly placed to shed a light on the true nature of their relationship with the freak show, the showmen and the audience that paid to see them.

“If you were born with a disability in the nineteenth century, your opportunities were exceptionally limited,” he explains. “The freak show offered an opportunity to earn some money and even win some fame in the process. So, within the freak show there's a very tangled relationship between coercion and choice, and exploitation and empowerment.”

Returning to the story of Charles Stratton’s General Tom Thumb – Queen Victoria’s ‘Pet of the Palace’ – Woolf describes how he was able to achieve worldwide fame and fortune, meeting European royalty and President Abraham Lincoln. Looking at the story of Chang and Eng, Woolf explains they “went on to own slave-owning farmers in the American South, fathering 21 children between them. They went back and forth between their farm and the freak show, because it offered them an opportunity to earn money.” While the thought of conjoined twins, exploited in the name of entertainment, going on to exploit slave labour for profit seems baffling, and speaks to the complexity of judging history through modern eyes. As Woolf states, “It's easy to condemn today, but the history is much more complicated than that.”

The triumph and tragedy of the Victorian freak show is represented most apparently in two films that arguably provided modern audiences with the biggest exposure to the Victorian freak show: 2017’s The Greatest Showman, which tells the story of P.T. Barnum, and The Elephant Man (1980), which portrays Joseph Merrick’s exploitation by Tom Norman. But according to Woolf, neither gives a true sense of the nature of the Victorian freak show, its performers or the showmen that created them. “The Greatest Showman really whitewashes

Object walk

Barnum, and portrays him as this great hero,” Woolf says. “But Barnum first found freak show fame on the back of a senile, paralysed, disabled slave named Joice Heth, who he showcased across America. There are so many questions around exploitation and child exploitation, and he once whipped a slave fifty times.

This was a very complicated man of his time.”

But at the other end of the spectrum, Woolf feels that Tom Norman, the British showman who had shops in Nottingham and frequently showcased his freak performers at Goose Fair, was harshly treated in The Elephant Man. “Norman was a teetotaller for a start. He wasn't this piss-head, cruel drunkard as portrayed in that very sentimental portrayal of the freak show.” He continues, “You'd expect better from a post-modernist filmmaker like David Lynch, but he relied heavily on the memoirs of Frederick Treves, the surgeon who allegedly saved Joseph Merrick.” But as with all aspects of the freak show, the reality is much more complex.

“Tom Norman wrote his own account, called The Showman, and Merrick himself even wrote an account of what happened,” Woolf clarifies. “The question comes down to who it was that really exploited Merrick: the showman, who paid him a wage, or the surgeon, who displayed him as a pathological freak. There are kernels of truth in both films in that some showmen were very good to their freak performers, and others weren't.

Invariably, the truth is some mashed-up synthesis of the two.”

You see it in Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer. The ingredients of sensationalism, voyeurism and a fascination with difference still exist in those sorts of shows While Barnum, Norman and their ilk were making their fortunes from freak shows, doctors, researchers and scientists were making enormous strides in the medicine field and, as a result, were able to explain many of the physical anomalies on display at the freak show. “A sense of wonder was a really important part of the freak show during Victorian times,” Woolf explains.

“But as advances in medicine begin to explain that sense of wonder away, people started questioning the morality of it all.” As a result, a public backlash begins to creep in toward the end of the century, with “more and more tastes starting to move away from the freak show,” Woolf states. “You start to hear grumbles of certain segments of the public wishing for freak performers to be institutionalised or locked up in mental asylums or hospitals.” As a result, the public mood turns from one of macabre fascination to one of disgust.

Like all of the major socio-political changes to occur during the last century, the biggest decline in popularity of the freak show sees its roots set firmly in the First World War. Returning soldiers, bearing physical reminders of a magnitude of violence previously thought inconceivable, filtered back into all levels of society. As Woolf describes, “The Great War produced disabilities on such a bloody, industrial scale that it no longer seemed appealing to gawp at deformities on display at the freak show.” While World War One may have mortally wounded the freak show, though, it did not kill it entirely. “The peak certainly came between 1840-1914,” Woolf clarifies. “But the freak show limped on into the late twentieth century.”

If you’re of the belief that basic human nature doesn’t drastically change, then you might wonder where the energy that fuelled society’s obsession with the freak show has filtered to in modern society. Most cultures throughout history, for example, relished in the spectacle of public torture and execution, and the argument has been made that the modern equivalent comes with the rabid ferocity with which people delight in seeing others getting humiliated, caught or ‘cancelled’ on social media. But what of our obsession with the ‘other’? “It’s still all over the place,” Woolf explains. “You see it in Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer.

The ingredients of sensationalism, voyeurism and a fascination with difference still exist in those sorts of shows, or in programmes and magazines that focus on the negative aspects of people's bodies. We're still drawn to difference. The dynamics of the Victorian freak show are still very much there.”

Dr John Jacob Woolf will be giving a talk on his book, The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Victorian Freak Show at Nottingham Theatre Royal on Tuesday 14 June @drjohnwoolf

We’ve teamed up with the National Justice Museum to put objects from the past into the hands of people in the present. This month, we took a set of hand-made playing cards crafted by an unknown prisoner to Joe Swatland, creator of beerthemed card game, Battle of the Breweries…

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They’ve not been made very well, as in, you’d normally fold the paper to cut straighter lines.

It’s like someone has just happily made them for themselves - you’d expect someone to rip away the more pronounced edges of the cards if there was more than one player.

I would have thought they’d have been able to get hold of real playing cards in prison. I can see why they’ve made them - if you’ve got playing cards, there are a million games you can play. It’s great to see how people entertained themselves with such limited resources.

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My guess is that they were made by someone who’s either older, going ‘cold turkey’ or is struggling with something, going by the slightly shaky writing. I’m not sure if some parts of the cards have been written in capitals in order to teach the person how to write.

You can see that it’s been written slowly, too. My guess would be that it’s someone with a low IQ, maybe they struggled in school and likely dropped out early. Maybe they used to play cards a lot with family and friends before prison, and are now doing the same in isolation. leftlion.co.uk/issue148 battleofthebreweries.com

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What’s on?

WEDNESDAY 1 JUNE

SATURDAY 4 JUNE

MONDAY 6 JUNE

FRIDAY 10 JUNE

SUNDAY 12 JUNE

👪 Big Blue Bath Bomb Workshop

🍴 Vegan Market

🎵 Fudge

🚲 Breakfast with Geoff Miller

🏫 Park Garden Trail 2022

🎵 Just Mustard: Live + Signing

🎵 Detonate Festival 2022

🎲 The Big Quiz

🎵 Hang Massive

🎥 Girlfriends + Intro

😂 Lou Sanders - One Word: Wow

🏫 The Multicultural

🎲 Quiz Night

🎵 Laura Veirs

🎨 Beermat Doodles

TUESDAY 7 JUNE

😂 Friday Night Comedy

🎨 Beermat Doodles

🎵 Chloe Rodgers

🎨 Beermat Doodles

🎵 The Hallé

🍴 Battle of the Breweries

Lush Nottingham £4.50, 9.30am

Rough Trade £12.50 - £26.50, 6pm The Glee Club £16, 6.30pm

🎵 Mama’s Gun

Peggy’s Skylight £15 - £20, 7pm

🎵 S-X

The Bodega £11, 7pm

😂 Count Arthur Strong: And This Is Me! Nottingham Playhouse £22.50, 8pm

THURSDAY 2 JUNE

🍴 Rescue Rooms Beer Festival Rescue Rooms £5 - £12, 1pm

🎵 Tom Sochas Trio Peggy’s Skylight £12, 7pm

🎵 Joe Egan Trio - Called Back Single Launch Rough Trade Free, 7pm

FRIDAY 3 JUNE

🎨 Hands on Holidays - The

Harley Rocks The Harley Gallery & Portland Collection £6, 9.30am

👪 Kids Tea Party

Colwick Country Park £57.75 - £75.90, 11am

Communities Of Seleucid And Parthian Mesopotamia Djanogly Art Gallery £3, 1pm

🎵 Noisy

Rescue Rooms £10, 6.30pm

😂 Saturday Night Comedy at Just the Tonic Metronome £7.50 - £13, 6.45pm

🎵 Witch of the East + Healthy Junkies The Bodega £8, 7pm

📖 NWS Monthly Social

Nottingham Writers Studio Free, 7pm

🚲 Wrestling Entertainment

Series Nottingham Motorpoint Arena Nottingham £33.98 - £315.95, 7.30pm

🎵 Live DJ Social Malt Cross 8pm

😂 Dara Ó Briain - So... Where

The Glee Club £8 - £15, 7pm

🎵 Fatherson The Bodega £13.50, 7pm

🎵 The Bryan Adams Experience The Southbank City £10 - £25, 7pm

👪 Phoenix Samba The Sumac Centre Free, 7pm

🎵 Live Music Social – Circling

The Lion at Basford 9pm

🎵 Black Bear Bones

Waterstones £5, 6.30pm

🎵 Sad Boys Club The Bodega £9, 7pm

🎵 Bad Religion Rock City £25, 7pm

🎭 The Clones - A Two Person Improvised Play The Lord Roberts Free, 7.30pm

🎭 An Evening with Reverend Richard Coles & Friends Nottingham Playhouse £28.50 - £36.50, 7.30pm

WEDNESDAY 8 JUNE Rescue Rooms £12, 6.30pm

📖 Book Launch: Ashe Dickinson

🎵 Black Doldrums

Peggy’s Skylight £9, 12pm

🎵 Jeanie Barton - Sunday Jazz

Hamilton Nottingham Playhouse £21.50, 7.30pm

🎵 Agent Zig Zag

🎵 Amyl and the Sniffers Rock City £17.50, 7pm

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £11.50 - £37.50, 7.30pm

👪 Calling Planet Earth Albert Hall £15 - £24.50, 7.30pm

🎵 Live Music Social – Bradley Spacer Malt Cross Free, 8pm

🎵 Martin Burch Band The Lion at Basford 9pm

SATURDAY 11 JUNE

👪 Commercial Photography Workshop The Cattle Market Free

🍴 Sherwood Vegan Market Sherwood United Reformed Church Free, 10am

🎨 Beermat Doodles - Cock

Luddites Bikes Love You £15, 2pm

🎨 Beermat Doodles - Malt Cross Malt Cross Free, 4pm

Broadway Cinema £5 - £10, 2.45pm The Barrel Drop Free, 1pm Neon Raptor Free, 1pm

Liquid Light Brew Co Tap Room Free, 4pm Bunkers Hill £5, 3pm

MONDAY 13 JUNE

🚲 Free Football and Cricket for 8-15 Year Olds Nottingham University Samworth Academy Free, 6pm

🎲 The Big Quiz Malt Cross 7.30pm

🎵 Ronan Keating

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £45 - £47.50, 7.30pm

📖 Beyond the Touchline: Eddie Hapgood Five Leaves Bookshop £3, 7pm - 8.30pm

TUESDAY 14 JUNE

🎵 Sinead O’Brien: Live + Signing Rough Trade £13.50 - £24.50, 6pm

🎵 Vile Creature The Bodega £12, 7pm

📖 An Evening with Melissa Cole The Vat and Fiddle Brewery Free, 7.30pm

WEDNESDAY 15 JUNE

🏫 The Establishment Of

Junkyard Free, 4pm

🎵 The Wonder Stuff

🍴 Off The Tracks

😂 Just The Tonic Comedy Club

🍴 United Kingdom of Beer with

🎵 The Underclass

🎵 William Prince

Out In The Wash Nottingham Playhouse £24.50, 7.30pm

🎵 Youth Killed It

🍴 Pastore Brewery Food Pairing

🎵 Walk Right Back

😂 Jinkx Monsoon & Major

🎵 Change of Plan - Debut

Music Showcase The Bodega £7, 6.30pm

Metronome £5 - £8, 7pm

Newcastle Circus, The Park Free

Iraq’s First Maritime Heritage Museum Djanogly Theatre Free, 1pm

THURSDAY 9 JUNE

🎥 Alice Doesn’t Live Here

🎵 Tempo - Nottingham’s New

The Glee Club £8 - £15, 7pm

🚲 Zig Zag Bike Tours - The

🎵 Suntou Susso

👪 Burlesque Troupe Supershow

The Bodega £21.50, 7pm

🎵 The Roy Orbison Story

Cafe The Lion at Basford 1.30pm

Anymore + Introduction from Christina Newland Broadway Cinema £5 - £10, 4.30pm

Rescue Rooms £20, 6.30pm

& Hoop Cock and Hoop Free, 1pm

😂 An Evening Out With Andy

🎵 Rob Rosa Trio

The Southbank City £15, 8.30am

The Bodega £12, 7pm

SUNDAY 5 JUNE

🎵 Denim And Leather - Metal

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📖 Bella Mackie in Conversation

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £26.50 - £29.50, 7.30pm

Malt Cross Free, 8pm

The Lion at Basford Free, 9pm

Rescue Rooms £29.50, 6.30pm

The Southbank City 10pm

2022 - Honey Cabaret Metronome £13 - £23, 6.30pm

Clubnight Ye Olde Salutation Inn Free, 9pm

🎵 Crash Test Dummies

‘Instructions for Outlaws’ Nottingham Writers Studio £3, 6.30pm

🎵 Miss Bowie

😂 Friday Night Comedy

Organ Grinder Free, 8pm

🎵 Live Music Social: Hemulen

👪 Family Workshop: The

Rescue Rooms £5 - £12, 1pm

Malt Cross 7.30pm

🎵 Flat Worms

Sounds Malt Cross Free, 8pm

🍴 Rescue Rooms Beer Festival

The Bodega £8, 7pm

Were We? Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £25.50, 8pm

Lush Nottingham £8, 10am

Gingerbread Man Lakeside Arts £10.50 - £12, 10am

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Hopkinson’s £1 - £2, 10am

Metronome £5 - £12, 7pm

Single Launch Rough Trade Free, 7pm

🎵 Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band Rescue Rooms £20, 6.30pm

😂 Henning Wehn: It’ll All Come

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £27, 7.30pm

🎨 Beermat Doodles - Junkyard

Rock City £30, 6.30pm

Special Metronome £10 - £13, 6.45pm Rough Trade £10, 7pm

Angel Microbrewery £9, 7.30pm Scales: Together Again, Again Nottingham Playhouse £22.50 - £42.50, 8pm

BeerHeadZ 6pm

Adrian Tierney-Jones Neon Raptor 6.30pm The Bodega £14, 6.30pm

Event The Herbert Kilpin 7pm

🎥 Kendal Mountain Tour 2022 Broadway Cinema £10 - £18, 7.30pm

THURSDAY 16 JUNE

SUNDAY 19 JUNE

WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE

SATURDAY 25 JUNE

TUESDAY 28 JUNE

🎥 Cult Film Club presents...

🍴 Sumac Sunday Brunch

🎵 High on Fire

🎭 A Midsummer Night’s Dream

🎵 Mannequin Pussy

👪 Space Spectacular

🎵 Alex Henry Foster and The

😂 Saturday Night Comedy

🎭 talkSPORT Live

Broadway Cinema £5 - £10, 6.45pm

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £29 - £48.50, 3pm

🎵 The Anti-Social Club +

🎵 Hannah Read & Michael Starkey

📖 Witchful Thinking: The

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Works Social £10, 6.30pm

🎥 What’s Up, Doc?

Rattlesnakes + Rouge Rough Trade Free, 7pm

🎨 Beermat Doodles - Tap & Growler Tap & Growler Free, 7pm

🍴 Modern British Beer with Matthew Curtis The Herbert Kilpin £13, 7.30pm

😂 Alan Carr - Regional Trinket

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £27.50, 8pm

The Sumac Centre £5, 11am

Peggy’s Skylight £12, 6pm

🎥 A Woman Under The Influence Broadway Cinema £5 - £10, 7pm

The Bodega £10, 7pm

SATURDAY 18 JUNE

🎨 Nottingham Queer Arts

Collective: Coffee Morning Social Nottingham Playhouse Free, 10am

🎨 Saturday Art Club New Art Exchange Free, 10.30am

🎥 Manifesto + live Q&A with

🎵 Jack Broadbent & Mike Dawes

Rock City £30, 6.30pm

🎵 Gladys Knight

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £47.50 - £67.50, 7.30pm

🎵 The Simon and Garfunkel Story

😂 Drag Bingo - Summer Camp!

Nottingham Playhouse £25, 7.30pm

🎲 Quiz Night

Organ Grinder Free, 8pm

🎵 Knocked Loose Rescue Rooms £20, 6.30pm

🎭 The Clones - A Two Person

Nottingham Writers Studio £36 - £45, 6.30pm Improvised Play The Lord Roberts Free, 7.30pm

🎵 Dionne Warwick

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £52.50 - £72.50, 7.30pm

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £40 - £45, 7.30pm

🎭 My Dear Old Things: An

Evening With Henry Blofeld Nottingham Playhouse £22.50, 7.30pm

🍴 Cocktails and Crime: Nearest

SUNDAY 26 JUNE

🎵 Billy Sullivan

🎥 A New Leaf

🎵 Bear Makes Ninja, Borrowed

Rock City £20, 6.30pm

🎵 Adam Ant - Antics

FRIDAY 24 JUNE

👪 Hatha and Tantra Esoteric Yoga 🎵 Waterparks

Rescue Rooms £12, 7pm

Rough Trade Free, 8pm

The Bodega £12.50, 7pm

Nottingham Writers Studio 6pm

Rough Trade Free, 7pm

and Deadliest The National Justice Museum £23.95, 7.30pm

TUESDAY 21 JUNE

😂 Saturday Night Comedy at

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £47.50 - £87.50, 8pm

🎵 Public Image Ltd

Malt Cross 7.30pm

📖 How Poems Happen (Zoom)

🎵 Yes

Nottingham Playhouse £3, 1pm

The Bodega £10, 7pm

Broadway Cinema £5 - £10, 6pm

Rough Trade £7, 7pm

Nadia Whittome Savoy Cinema £5 - £6.95, 6pm

Just the Tonic Metronome £7.50 - £13, 6.45pm

🎵 Hey Colossus

🎵 Bright Young People

🎥 Wanda

Atlas, Fauxchisels & Kolubara JT Soar £7.70, 7pm

🎵 Bama Lama Sing Song Rescue Rooms £9, 7.30pm

🎵 Live Music Social – Hemulen

Broadway Cinema £5 - £10, 5.15pm

🎵 Hanson

Rock City £28.50, 7pm

🎵 Mushroomhead Rescue Rooms £18, 7.30pm

MONDAY 27 JUNE

Sounds Malt Cross Free, 8pm

🎲 The Big Quiz

😂 Friday Night Comedy

🎵 Love with Johnny Echols

🎵 James Morton’s ‘Groove Den’

🎲 Quiz Night

🎵 Scotty & Flowing Locks

🎥 Highlander

The Glee Club £8 - £15, 6.45pm

Peggy’s Skylight £13 - £18, 8.30pm

The Lion at Basford 9pm

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £37.50, 7.30pm

WEDNESDAY 29 JUNE

🎵 Definitely Oasis

The Playwright 38 £3 - £5, 7.30pm

The Bodega £14, 7pm

JT Soar £7 - £10, 7pm

THURSDAY 23 MAY

🎵 Elvana: Unplugged

🎲 The Big Quiz

🎵 Death Valley Girls

🎵 Hit Like a Girl + I Feel Fine

Metronome £20, 7pm

MONDAY 20 JUNE

🍴 Nottingham Craft Beer

Rescue Rooms £23, 6.30pm

Wise Woman’s Handbook For Creating A Charmed Life, with Zoë Howe Five Leaves Bookshop £3 - £18, 7pm

The Glee Club £10.25 - £18, 6.45pm

🎵 Femme Fatale Girls

FRIDAY 17 JUNE

🎵 Bob Mould

Long Shadows The Bodega £12, 7pm

DH Lawrence Pavillion £8 - £12, 3pm

🎭 Smash Night!

Peggy’s Skylight £17.50 - £22.50, 7pm

Festival 2022 Sneinton Market Avenues £12, 6pm

Rescue Rooms £20, 6.30pm

Malt Cross 7.30pm

Rescue Rooms £18, 7.30pm

Organ Grinder Free, 8pm Savoy Cinema £5 - £6.95, 8.30pm

👪 Schools Massive 2022 🎵 The Felice Brothers Rescue Rooms £22, 6.30pm

🎵 Acoustickle

Peggy’s Skylight £8 - £15, 7pm

🎵 Roger Daltrey

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £42.50 - £92.50, 7.30pm

🎵 Frankie Valli and The Four

Seasons Motorpoint Arena Nottingham £51.90 - £156.50, 8pm

🎲 Pub Quiz at The Lion in Basford The Lion at Basford £1, 8pm

THURSDAY 30 JUNE

👪 Schools Massive 2022 Nottingham Playhouse £3, 5pm

🎵 Cloudbusting – The Music Of Kate Bush Rescue Rooms £17, 6.30pm

🎵 Marcus King Rock City £22.50, 6.30pm

🎵 Sharp Little Bones Peggy’s Skylight £12, 7pm

🎵 Ultrabomb + Tinseltown

Rebellion + White Skull Death Snakes Of Death Angel Microbrewery £12, 7pm

🎵 The Bobby Lees The Bodega £13, 7pm

FOR THE FULL RUNDOWN, VISIT LEFTLION.CO.UK/LISTINGS

ONGOING EVENTS 🏫 Ancient Iraq: New Discoveries Djanogly Art Gallery Free Sun 22 May - Sun 19 Jun

🎨 Craig Fisher

🎨 Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS Nottingham Contemporary Free Wed 1 Jun - Sun 4 Sep

🎵 The Cher Show

👪 The Gingerbread Man

🎨 Fellows Exhibition

🎨 Ejaradini

Adventure Rufford Abbey Country Park £11 - £14 , 11am - 4pm Wed 1 Jun - Sun 5 Jun Djanogly Theatre £5 - £12 Thu 2 Jun - Sun 5 Jun

Primary Free Wed 1 Jun - Fri 30 Sep

🍴 Craft Goes Cask

🎨 Crowns: Celebrating Hair

🎭 Derren Brown: Showman

🚲 Zig Zag Bike Tours - The

Nottingham Society of Artists 11am - 4pm Wed 8 Jun - Sun 19 Jun

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £36 - £49.50 Tue 14 Jun - Sat 18 Jun

🎨 Art of Belonging

🎭 The Mountaintop

🎨 Simon Withers: Earthbound

Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall £25 - £52 Tue 7 Jun - Sat 11 Jun

New Art Exchange Free Fri 10 Jun - Sat 25 Jun

BeerHeadZ Free Sat 11 Jun - Sat 18 Jun

Nottingham Playhouse £16.50 Tue 14 Jun - Sat 18 Jun

And Head Coverings Lakeside Arts Tue 14 Jun - Fri 24 Jun

Dukeries Weekender Bikes Love You £125 Sat 25 Jun - Mon 27 Jun Wallner Gallery Free Sat 25 Jun - Sun 31 Jul

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Lakeside Arts Free , 10am - 4pm Sun 22 May - Sun 26 Jun

👪 Jungle Book - The Immersive

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BEST OF JUNE

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Meadowlands When: Friday 3 June Where: Victoria Embankment How Much: £50

Detonate When: Saturday 4 June Where: Colwick Park How Much: £55

Starring Gerry Cinnamon, The Kooks and The Mysterines, Meadowlands is returning to Nottingham in time for the start of June. Showcasing the best the indie genre has to offer, this one-day festival will be taking place on Friday 3 June at Victoria Embankment. Also presenting a new wave of indie talent, watch out for BBC Music introducing the likes of Catmilk, The Rosadocs, Michael Aldag and more.

Fancy a peaceful walk? Serene moment in nature? Well, forget it, because Detonate are once again taking over Colwick Park for a oneday summer party, fuelled by DJ sets and dancing crowds. Featuring big names like Andy C, Wilkinson and Hybrid Minds, you can look forward to over sixty live artists, alongside a bevy of other special events. Expect fireworks, floating stages, global street food, boat parties, live street art and much more.

Derren Brown: Showman When: Tuesday 14 June - Saturday 18 June Where: Theatre Royal How Much: From £36

Nottingham Craft Beer Festival When: Friday 17 June - Saturday 18 June Where: Sneinton Market Avenues How Much: £12

Brilliant magician and long-term sceptic, Derren Brown has made a career through his use of sharp psychological illusion. Now, after having taken a break from the stage, Brown is heading back to Nottingham with his newest production Showman - his first brand-new theatre show in six years. Like always, the content of Showman is a closely-guarded secret, but viewers can definitely expect the amazing, bizarre and unbelievable.

Well-loved by the local beer community, Nottingham Craft Beer Festival is returning to Sneinton Market Avenues this June. Boasting prestigious brewery names including Northern Monk, Brew York and North Brewing Co, the festival is an ideal spot to try all the weird and wonderful beers you’ve always fancied, alongside your long-running favourites. Also featuring some of the finest quality food vans, you can grab a bite from Dirty Chicken, Porco, Squeaky Beaver and more.

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A Royal Pup Up When: Sunday 5 June, 10am Where: Stockyard, Melton Mowbray How Much: Free

Amyl and The Sniffers When: Sunday 5 June, 7pm Where: Rock City How Much: £17.50

Dogs are cute, right? And A Royal Pup Up will have plenty of them - as well as demonstrations, competitions and a fancy photo booth. More importantly than any of that, though, our own Kate Sharp, illustrator of the beloved Going Underground section of the mag, will be holding her first stall at the event. Head on down for the chance to grab some brand new print designs from one of Nottingham’s most unique artists.

Following their latest album, Comfort To Me, Australian punk band Amyl and The Sniffers are set to play at Rock City this June as part of their UK tour. Performing songs from their new album, including Freaks to the Front, Knifey and Guided by Angels, the band are celebrated for their phenomenal stage presence and dynamic performances. Look forward to strong female vocals, heaps of energy and a truly anarchic vibe.

ELVANA: Unplugged When: Monday 20 June, 7pm Where: Metronome How Much: £20

Witchful Thinking Book Launch When: Wednesday 22 June, 7pm.

Where: Five Leaves Bookshop How Much: £3

Self-described as the ‘Elvisfronted Nirvana’, Elvana are the wacky tribute band that combine grunge rock with a fun fifties flare. Bringing all the glitz and glamour of Mr Presley himself, Elvana are heading to the Metronome later this month as part of their Unplugged tour.

Emulating Nirvana’s own iconic Unplugged concert, you can look forward to covers including Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam, Lake of Fire and Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Presenting her new book, Witchful Thinking: The Wise Woman’s Handbook for Creating a Charmed Life, you can catch Zoë Howe at Five Leaves Bookshop for a discussion on finding your inner power. Drawing on the age-old archetype of the ‘cunning woman’, Howe’s book takes you on a journey into witchcraft, feminism and embracing your magical mindset.

That’s the kind of good energy we like.

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