LeftLion Magazine - April 2021 - Issue 134

#134 April 2021

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Alan Gilby MilleniAL alan.gilby@leftlion.co.uk

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

Emily Thursfield Assistant Editor emily.thursfield@leftlion.co.uk

Adam Pickering Sales and Marketing Manager adam.pickering@leftlion.co.uk

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

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

Curtis Powell Creative Digital Assistant curtis.powell@leftlion.co.uk

Hamza Hussain Web Developer hamza.hussain@leftlion.co.uk

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

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Eileen Pegg Music-Editor eileen.pegg@leftlion.co.uk

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

Laura-Jade Vaughan Art Co-Editor laura-jade.vaughan@leftlion.co.uk

4

Rachel Willcocks Art Co-Editor rachel.willcocks@leftlion.co.uk

Sub-Editor Lauren Carter-Cooke

Laura Phillips Faith Pring Georgianna Scurfield Andrew Tucker Nadia Whittome

Writers Matthew Benton-Smith Jagoda Brown-Polanowska Emily Casey Graham Caveney DD Dobbins Jason Edgar Rory Evans Rob Green Aidan Hall Alex Keene Emilie Mendham Sam Nahirny Kelly Palfrey

Photographers Alice Ashley Dani Bacon Sandra Bartley Ian Cumberland Tom Errington Hollie Jones Andy Keate Tom Morley Tom Patterson Kam Rahmoun Georgianna Scurfield Steve Wallace Naomi Williams

Cover Jay Wilkinson & Rupert Rennie

leftlion.co.uk/issue134

Tom Quigley Photography Co-Editor tom.quigley@leftlion.co.uk

Anna Murphy Fashion Editor anna.murphy@leftlion.co.uk

Illustrators Jon Aye Charlotte Clarke Anna Keo Kasia Kozakiewicz Leosaysays Kate Sharp Katie Smallwood Emmy Smith Smugcomputer Illustration Alison Squires Ali Taylor-Perry Carmel Ward

patreon.com/leftlion

Featured Contributor

Andrew Tucker

Once the singer for teenage band IVORYSERFS (earlier Great British Weather), Andrew had a road-to-Damascus moment by the memo blocks in Paperchase, choosing then to try his hand at writing. He won a Young Creative Award in 2019 and “will be damned if he lets anyone forget it”, going on to work as a trustee for Young Creatives, although he is now only youngish and makes a pretend creaking sound when sitting. A herbivorous man with dark brown plumage, Andrew's been called “the leading literary voice from North-West Beeston”, although only, it must be noted sadly, by himself.

You can read Andrew’s article on the Young Creative Awards on page 19

editorial illustrations: Emily Catherine

/leftlion

@leftlion

@leftlionmagazine

Contents 14

33

2M

One in Four

We talk to some of the individuals, organisations and groups who are striving to end the taboo surrounding infant loss

34

2M

Write of Passage

Family Matters

Photographer Naomi Williams shares Grandad, her intimate, emotive and personal photo series shot during lockdown

Writer Graham Caveney talks ambition, alcohol and ageing as he reaches 56 – an age he never thought he’d reach

A Midwife in Notts

29

Leap of Faith

Tiny Takes

38

Inspiring the Next Generation

Create Expectations

40

Give it up for Trent

21

Come Clean

42

Movies and Me

22

University Challenged

43

Sophia Ramcharan: A Tribute

23

Level the Field

46

Out of Time

13 17 19

TV might have you thinking that being a midwife is all tea, cakes and babies, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that

Are you sick of hearing adults moaning about lockdown? Us too. Let’s hear what some of Notts’ littluns think instead...

With the Young Creative Awards just around the corner, former winner Andrew Tucker explores the importance of creativity

The No Fake Orgasms campaign looks to help young people understand that sex isn’t just about male pleasure

The editors of NTU and UoN’s student magazines discuss what life has been like for students during COVID

Emilie Mendham talks to homeless charity Framework about Level Up, their new campaign to end digital exclusion

Editorial

While being an atheist might not be the taboo it once was, living a life without religion can still prove difficult

Eileen Pegg talks to Shekayla Muragh about CUBE, the Notts based musical development agency helping young people

Arts Editors Rachel Willcocks and LJ Vaughan explore some of the big names in the art world who learnt their craft at NTU

Legendary Notts writer William Ivory discusses the films that influenced his life, and how his tastes have changed over the years

After her tragic death last month, we talk to some of the people who knew producer and filmmaker Sophia Ramcharan best

Our regular history feature explores the Pierrepoints, a family of hangmen who were responsible for executing almost 850 people

Putting together a ‘generations’ themed issue made me feel far more nostalgic than I’d anticipated.

Naturally, the past twelve months have made us all a bit more reflective than we otherwise might have been, but trying to collate a magazine that spans the life cycle of an average Nottingham resident made me realise something that, as a recently turned 33-year-old man, people are fundamentally all the same, regardless of their age. We might have different interests, worries and opinions but, fundamentally, we have far more that binds us together than separates us, and the way we are when we’re young is essentially who we are throughout life.

It’s nice to think that by the time we reach adulthood we’ll be better equipped to deal with the world, and in some respects maybe we are, but fundamentally, I’m just stuck being the same idiot I was when I was seven, but older, fatter, balder and a good distance closer to life’s finish line.

Nostalgia is a tricky thing. There’s an element of novel comfort in reliving your (hopefully) happy childhood, basking in the comparative simplicity of collecting Happy Meal toys or thinking of new ways to irritate my sister Emily. As if to prove my point, in the two-decades between then and now, I’ve essentially swapped the toys for books and replaced annoying one Emily with another, our Assistant Editor Miss Thursfield.

But it’s all too easy to get trapped reliving the past or fantasising about the future, so we’ve tried to use this issue, and its exploration of life’s different eras, to explore some of the societal issues we’re currently facing. We start with the life experiences of a Notts midwife, a woman who has brought countless babies into the world, and end with the story of the Pierrepoints, a dynasty of hangmen responsible for taking nearly 850 people out of it. There’s a huge amount of real estate in between those two points, and each generation is facing its own set of challenges.

During my nostalgia-fuelled trip I uncovered some old school reports, one of which, written by my wonderfully named Geography teacher Mr. Burns, read, “Ashley needs to realise that my classroom is not a stage, and he is not a cabaret act.” Like I said, people fundamentally don’t change.

Until the next one...

Ashley Carter, Editor ashley.carter@leftlion.co.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue134 5

@wildclothingnotts @wildclothing

www.wildclothing.co.uk

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Goss Nottingham’s most opinionated grocers on...

with Jenny Joss I’m not one for wicked whispers, but I’ve just overheard the most extraordinary argument taking place outside my boudoir window and couldn’t wait to spill. Picture this, Joe – it’s 11pm, Hockley is deserted and you’ve got some punk screeching at his old lady down the blower at full volume, getting more and more riled by her antics. All of a sudden, you hear the chump shriek, “It’s called cognitive dissonance, Amy. GOOGLE IT!” Hmm... a chump no longer. I’ve dished out some cutting put-downs in my day, but hitting your opponent with psychological jargon as a means of securing the upper hand? Now that’s a technique I must try to adopt.

Seems the biggest news of the month is that the city has clung to its John Lewis store by a thread, and according to my dickie bird friend, it’s all anyone can talk about. One man said it was the best news he’d heard in months, while another broad named Jean reckons she’s got the inside scoop on future operations, claiming ‘reports have it’ that the Notts team will be stripping staff of accrued benefits with a fire and rehire scheme. I’d have lamented you for leading such colourless lives if it wasn’t for those fools over in Sheffield mourning the loss of their store – one bird admitted to shedding tears, and another exasperatedly shouted into the ether that

15th Century Thompsons

the “#Nottingham store, is #dire – an unpleasant place to shop – bad layout and staff that aren’t anywhere near as #customerfocused.” How about #GetALife, bronco?

In more sanguine news, sources informed me last week that the Duchess of Sussex donated tenthousand clams to Notts-based charity Himmah, leaving their directors utterly gobsmacked yet delighted that they now had cash to stock their food bank and purchase equipment for the Salaam Shalom Kitchen, the only Muslim and Jewish community kitchen based in the UK. All sounds peachy, no? Not according to some of you grumbletonians, who started spitting feathers over privacy and tax dodging, with one dunderhead going as far as bringing her ‘Ginger whinger door mat’ down with her. Honestly, loves, this starlet thinks it’s pretty ironic that you’re branding her an ‘attention seeker’ when I spy you in our Facebook comments every week gagging for a fight.

Right, kiddos. That’s enough from me. I’m going back into hibernation until April 12, when this little hussy shall be found frequenting every watering hole in town. As always – keep your lips loose, your ears to the ground and your eyes on the goss.

ld e an o t f ok s lik “Sh e lo hat 's been le t ” le d w n o d ca h ot win n ea r a

“He's go ta pair of lo face like a worn ng joh ns ”

e ok s lik “Sh e lo sed u r a n ove o a r d ” gb ironin

Peter Thompson (1932-2020)

Our father started as a parks apprentice at Woodthorpe Park when he was sixteen. He’d gone to a grammar school and his father wanted him to work in the bank, but he wanted to be a gardener. He studied agriculture at Brackenhurst poly and got very good at it. But there were rules back then that to work in the parks and gardens service you had to be single. So after he met our mother he resigned on the Friday and married her on the Saturday. He later became head groundsman at Notts County and spent 37 happy years there.

Future Thompsons

We’re both single men with no children. However, our two sisters have six children between them. Elizabeth has a boy and a girl and Rosemary had four girls. None of them are interested in running the greengrocers shop though. We work long hours and don’t get many holidays, most people would think we’re mad! So after we go it will probably be another few hundred years until the next Thompsons Greengrocers.

JJ x

illustration: Carmel Ward

ea ok s lik “Sh e lo ud that 's b cot ton t down th e s ” lo n e e diator b t h e ra f o k c ba

My father’s cousin Robert Thompson did a family tree for us a while back. He managed to get it back all the way to the 15th century. There was a spinster in the family quite a few hundreds of years back who ran a greengrocers shop in Lincolnshire until she was eighty years old. Fancy that, hey?

It seems a remarkable coincidence given that we’re both bachelors too.

“Sh e lo burst ok s like a t i n of b ea n s”

s u go Mark “W h en yo you can s, and Spark lity. q ua taste th e i go to Ald Th en you ll it ’s te n ca u and yo e o u t of been m ad ey ’ve th st u sawd e floor” th swept off

ke a look li “ Th ey Like th ey . couple you’d get ke look li th e sam e th em in ” et Le go s

“His te an ab eth looke d like a of G u n d o n e d ga m e e ss W h o”

“I’ve nev e r e ve n m et h im in p erson, b ut I just know th at h ch eap aft e sm ell s like ershave a disappo inted pa nd rents”

it for n’t wa o “ H e c a s t a u ra nt s t re o Indian so h e can g n re - ope y a korma jo a n d e n s” ip h c and

“It ’s COV like you com ID are and h w h o p e t i t i o n av i n g a c to s a n th e m os r u in m e e y ye t” ar

s h er? ” ou kis “Did y er kiss th e th “I’d ra d of a e ss e n in s u b ” ra p b ea r t

“Sh e ’s dum just youn b and g, “... a burn full of…” in of t h e p a t g h a t re d riarch y”

f la sor t o as th e ar his “He w e w ould t h at w h o es at ls o o h sc ” ekend w th e e

d

“ S orr y th e d I didn’t r ealis re e paed ss- code was o - ch i c”

to a rd r y h ’re e v g u t r y in u t yo “I’m e you b D” r U o ign so… LO j us t …

leftlion.co.uk/issue134 7

words and photo: Georgianna Scurfield

‘

Andriana Ward

I’m Andriana, I’m eighteen years old and I’m a bad bitch. I’m a level two beauty therapist, currently working on my level three and hopefully going on to work in a salon when lockdown is over. I don’t understand how the college expects us to practise massage at home as much as is needed – I know I have my mum and dad but they work full-time, I can’t be giving them massages every day... no matter how much I’m sure they’d love it.

Lockdown has been stressful because I’ve had no work or furlough – I’ve missed out on my driving test and celebrating my eighteenth birthday. I just want to go to a club and dance. I love dancing, you’ll find me dancing in the queue at Sainsburys car park, ‘cos why the hell not.

One of the best things to come out of lockdown is that I’ve been able to try out new cooking recipes and help out around the house more which my mum and dad are grateful for, so it’s not all bad.

I hadn’t cooked loads before, but my mum got fed up with me trying all the time and said I could only cook one meal a week. One of the first things I made was a lasagne which was beautiful, I do a good sweet and sour pork, and I’ve perfected my egg fried rice. More than anything I’m just really enjoying it.

Pick Six

Film

Song

Whiplash Listen – the performances in this film are off the chain, and the way they put you in the adrenaline filled ambition of the main character is incredible. Check it out and hold your breath!

The Search – NF Okay so I’ve picked the song I’ve been rinsing most recently. This artist has been out for a while but I’ve only just discovered them. The flow, the lyrics, the delivery... I love an artist that’s open with their story and personality and, man, this is IT.

Holiday Destination

Notts Spot

Book

Meal

Valencia I mean, there are so many places, but I think this is the one place I could live full-time. It’s busy and cultured, with lots of heat, sangria and even a beach. What more could you want?!

This month, we’ve tasked musician Rob Green with choosing a few of his favourite things... photo: Fabrice Gagos 8

leftlion.co.uk/issue134

Stillness is the Key – Ryan Holiday This book kept me on track through lockdown. As a songwriter and artist I focus so much on the future and the past and rarely focus on being still and present. It’s a wonderful guide to finding real happiness in the present moment, however your day is going.

Coffee Shops I’m a coffee shop guy! I love coffee, so Blend, Cartwheel, 200 Degrees, The Specialty... all of them! I’m there all the time.

Teriyaki salmon Ugh. Enough said. Don’t @ me.

robgreenmusic.com @RobGreenMusic

Nadia on...

Nadia on...

Homelessness Hate Crime in Nottingham

words: Nadia Whittome words: Fabrice Nadia Whittome photos: Gagos photos: Fabrice Gagos

When Meghan Markle sat down on Oprah’s sofa in Nottinghamshire. At the time, hate crimes in early March, the revelations she divulged about linked to misogyny were not being recorded her treatment struck a chord with many of us. by the police. Nottingham Women’s Centre, Despite her immense privilege – marrying into working with Nottingham Citizens, put forward Since 2010, the number of rough sleepers willshould soon be its 20th the Royal Family, carrying the titleinofthe Duchess, herFramework, the casewhich that they be.celebrating As a result of UK increased 165%,–with around peoplewere all anniversary, helps around 18,000 people every year, hugebywealth some of her 4,677 experiences their efforts, Nottinghamshire Police now goes sleeping in the streetstoon any given nightRacist before street homeless and vulnerable too familiar people of colour. commentsincluding beyond national policepeople guidance and records hate from being held to arough different standard people incidents women. the start of thein-laws, pandemic.

However, sleeping at risk targeted of losingagainst their homes.

While primarily white counterparts, and being treated is only thetomost visible form of homelessness.

Foras an based in Nottingham, the charity also covers outsider common occurrences in our society. Nottinghamshire, This was an important localLincolnshire, victory, but we still every person who are ends up in the streets, there Derbyshire, North have a long toield. go inHomeless making hate crimerarely a are many more people without a stable home: in Lincolnshire andway Sheff people interview was ahostels reminder whether you’restay thing the past.

In 2018, survey of 4,170 people temporaryThe accommodation, or that night in oneofplace, explains itsaCEO Andrew Redfern. a taxi driver abused for yoursofas. religion by in Nottingham found 36% had been the victim of shelters; squatting or being crashing on friends’ a waitress regularly catcalled on your a hate crime. Between January 2020 and August Homelesspassengers, charity Shelter estimates that around way home from a princess smeared 2020 a total of 1,614 hate crimes were reported 280,000 people in the UKwork, wereor homeless atbeing the end in the press and on social media because of your in Nottinghamshire. of last year. race, we can all be victims of hate and the toll on our mental health can be severe. Of course, most To better understand the problem in our city, I of us don’t have the option of moving to California recently met with Framework, a specialist charity to try to escape it. based in Nottingham supporting homeless people and those at risk of homelessness across the East Nottingham has a proud history as a pioneer in Midlands.initiatives In this month’s column, I’d like to talk to tackle hate crime.

Before I became about what found out. anI MP, I had a job as a hate crime worker so I got

Charities like Framework are a lifeline for the hundreds When I spoke to people of people in Nottingham, and who had of experienced hate thousands people around person person thecrime, country, whoafter don’t have told me that often even worse secure accommodation than the hate crime itself was Homelessness can’t be seen or addressed separately frompeople its underlying causes. It always has a context standing by and to it: whether that’s addiction and mental ill health, doing nothing domestic violence, or poverty and unemployment.

to see first-hand both the devastating impact it Despite the evictions in place can have andban thebeing incredible workuntil many in our September this year, are an average community doing. of two new rough sleepers were reported in Nottingham every week.

The Everyone which saw thousands of to or HateIn is policy, behaviour motivated by hostility street homeless people housed in temporary prejudice against aspects of a person’s identity, accommodation atrace, the start of the pandemic, didn’tor That’s why Framework not only helps people find a like their religion, disability, sexuality help thosegender. who lost the hateful roof over their heads since but also supports them in other areas of life.

Some behaviours break the law home When I spoke to people who had experienced – those are hate crimes. can include verbal On top hate person after person told that3000 often the first lockdown started.

Rising They unemployment, ofcrime, providing accommodation forme nearly threats, harassment, assault people even worse than hate also crimeoff itself was people especiallyabuse, amongintimidation, low-paid young people, domestic each year, thethe charity ers specialist andfamily bullying, as well as and damage to property standing by and doing be home violence and breakdown, renters being physical and mental healthnothing. servicesWe andcan’t a care passivewith bystanders hate and bigotry. unaware of their rights have all contributed to for people complextoneeds; it helps people gain Back in 2014, Nottingham Citizens launched a this situation. skills and find work, and prevents homelessness commission into hate crime in Nottingham, whichfor example So what by cansupporting we do if weprison witness someone being leavers or by resulted in 90,063 the report No Place forbeen Hate. It found harassed or abused?

In 2018, Nottingham-based On a national level, people have mediating between tenants and landlords. that there were 2,800 unreported hate social enterprise Communities Inc set up National threatened with homelessness since April – andcrimes

more than half of them have already lost their accommodation. In Nottingham, Framework’s City Outreach Team has worked with a total of 634 rough sleepers since the first lockdown started – half of

While all homelessness is political, some cases in particular are a direct result of government policy. For example, a proportion of the homeless population are people with No Recourse to Public

Bystander Awareness Day to teach more people how to help. It took place for the third time last month and, as incidents often occur in public spaces, the information it provides is invaluable. asylum seekers, others moved here for work but then jobs to, andthere found Iflost youtheir feel able arethemselves direct waysdestitute, to tackle with nowhere to go.

Because localto. authorities hate incidents you are witness You couldcan’t try fund to interrupt thetoabuse the programmes help through them offdistracting the streets, Framework perpetrator, suchon asfundraising by spilling ato drink or asking has had to rely support this for directions.

You could show your disapproval, vulnerable group. by saying what you think out loud or speaking to others at theFramework scene. Or you directly Charities like arecould a lifeline for the challenge perpetrator, by telling them their hundredsthe of people in Nottingham, and thousands behaviour right. of people isn’t around the country, who don’t have secure

accommodation. “Unlike many companies, we These kinds actions may not always possible couldn’t justofsuspend our work duringbelockdown,” or you might not feel safe or comfortable explains Redfern.

The people they worktaking with need them, but there are also indirect ways to help support every day. victims – remembered through the phrase “see, report, support”. If you witness someone being However, to end homelessness, individual solutions abused or harassed, observe the situation and will never be enough. We need to address its root pay attention to the details. You can report it in a causes: spiralling rents and the lack of social range of such waysas – to the police, to Crime Stoppers, housing, the severe underfunding of mental health or to a number of third party organisations.

In an and other support services, and a benefi ts system emergency, you should call 999. You can checkthat lets the cracks.

Austerity in with thepeople victim fall afterthrough the incident and offer measures have contributed to growing numbers your support. of rough sleepers over the past decade, and a fresh roundisofmore cutsthan would even more people Oppression justrisk isolated losing their homes.

The is hostile also occurrences.

Our society built inenvironment a manner that makes peoplemany homeless, which is why I have been disadvantages of us in a range of different campaigning to abolish No Recourse to Public Funds. ways.

But we can all play our part in trying to change this. And challenging hate when we see it isI want a good place to start.homeless charities become a future where obsolete and no one has to fear spending Christmas For morestreets. information about hateI’m crime, visit Communities in the Until then, thankful for the people Inc’s website in our city who dedicate their lives to helping those who find themselves without a place to call home. communitiesinc.org.uk/report-hate-crime People like Framework, but also Emmanuel House nadiawhittome.org which provides shelter and support for vulnerable adults in Nottingham, or Host Nottingham who help house destitute asylum seekers – these are the quiet heroes working every day to save and transform leftlion.co.uk/issue134 9 lives. Thank you for all you do.

Notts Shots

“Alfred, fetch the gun” Sandra Bartley - @sandrabphotography

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

She’s a big Frozen fan Dani Bacon - @danijuliette_ Midnight train to nowhere Steve Wallace - @jamesgraceart

Trunk with power Tom Errington - @mrerrington 10

leftlion.co.uk/issue134

Snow place like home Ian Cumberland - @iancumberland

And we’ll all float on, okay Tom Quigley - tomquigley.co.uk “Please note: views may be restricted” Alice Ashley - aliceashley.co.uk

All hail broke loose Sandra Bartley - @sandrabphotography

The Dark Night Rises Tom Patterson - @tapatto leftlion.co.uk/issue134 11

A Midwife in Notts I was in secondary school when a girl who I was close to had a baby. I went to visit her on the postnatal ward and was astounded that she and her partner had made a human being. I remember her asking a question and receiving a terse response – maybe because she was a teen mum – but I made the decision there and then that I wanted to be a midwife. And what’s more, if I was going to be part of something so monumental that happens perhaps just once or twice in a person’s life, I wanted to be remembered for the right reasons.

There is no typical day or night on the labour ward. We run a 24-hour service that never stops, meaning we have to be in a constant state of readiness. On some shifts I can walk straight into an emergency with very little introduction to the family or the situation, whereas on other shifts I can spend a whole twelve hours supporting and getting to know a family, but never getting to meet their baby. I chose to work on the labour suite early on in my career because I prefer the unpredictable high-octane nature of intrapartum (labour) care.

The science and biology behind making and growing a person within another human body still amazes me every day, and midwifery is a profession that relies on touch and feel as well as expert knowledge and intuition. 12.5-hour shifts are gruelling and breaks are not regular or even guaranteed. Almost every shift is busy and you can often reach the end of one to realise that you have not even been able to go to the loo. Due to the changeable manner of our work we obviously have very little control over how many, or how quickly, babies arrive, but as a more senior midwife it is my job to have an overview of the labour suite and to manage the capacity and flow of workload so that the midwives can be supported and can fulfil their basic human needs.

Even if we don’t get a break, as a shift worker there is always another team scheduled to take you off duty at a certain time, whereas community midwives have caseloads that they,

illustration: Kasia Kozakiewicz

more than likely, take home with them at the end of a working day or week. Those midwives are less likely to switch off from work. I often come home wondering how the people I care for have got on after I’ve left. We usually check in with the person who took over from us, or go and visit the family on the ward when we’re next on duty.

Fetal loss is rarely talked about, and when you tell people what you do their instant reaction is to say what a lovely job being a midwife must be. I think unless the loss of a baby has touched your family personally you may not appreciate that side of our role. There is no way to describe a birth that does not end in joy or happy tears or the shrill cry of a newborn. Yet, these moments spent with families have been some of my most worthwhile. I am always overwhelmed by social media posts from colleagues during Baby Loss Awareness week because we all feel that pain and try everything in our power to help bear the burden for the families that never get to take their babies home.

I’m essentially doing something I love, surrounded by nice people in a beautiful location. It’s like an evening out for me Midwives are some of the most mentally resilient people I know. They have to be, it’s such a hugely emotive job. We cry, we laugh, we run on adrenaline, but we survive because we have such a strong camaraderie within the team. It’s physically and mentally draining, but the friendships I have built with some of my colleagues are impenetrable. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what we do; we don’t actually get time to sit around drinking tea and eating cake! Midwives don’t get to deliver a baby every day either; the birth process can take hours, or even days, and requires patience.

More than once a Dad has said “It’s not like this on One Born Every Minute!” But with that said, on a very busy shift you could well be present at two or three births, and on one of my most hectic nights we had eighteen babies arrive in the space of twelve hours.

I try to keep my professional life separate to my personal life, but there are a few people that I may have formed an extra special bond with.

Generally, I will try and catch up with someone I have cared for before they are discharged, but once they go home they’re busy with their newborn. I will occasionally be recognised in the supermarket by someone I cared for if they’re local. On one occasion, my Mum was in a coffee shop talking to a new mother about her baby and her birth experience. She happened to mention that I was a midwife and the young woman said how well she had got on with her midwife and proceeded to show my Mum a picture of me that I’d had taken with her after the birth!

I can’t imagine ever doing anything else other than being a midwife. I’m a people person and am at my happiest when face-to-face with others. I had an office job briefly as a student and didn’t particularly enjoy it, yet no one in my family had any medical background or training when I announced my career path. When I trained and qualified, midwifery was like a ‘black art’. No one really knew what you did, just that it was a hugely responsible and privileged position. However, the media, with programmes like One Born Every Minute have opened the doors and lifted some of the mystery around the goings-on of a bustling labour ward.

Over the years I have cared for friends, colleagues and complete strangers. The beauty is that every day and every family is different, no two stories are the same and it never gets boring. There was a woman who personally requested me by name to deliver all three of her children; I feel like that goes some way towards my aspiration to be remembered for the right reasons.

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words: Ashley Carter illustration: Charlotte Clarke

One in Four

Despite occurring in a quarter of pregnancies, the subject of baby loss remains one of society’s great taboos. Friends and family can feel awkward and uncomfortable around grieving parents, who in turn are forced to bottle up their grief in order to avoid being ostracised, and antenatal classes and books all too often avoid the subject altogether. We speak to Nottingham residents Charlotte Kingsbury, who experienced eleven losses in eight pregnancies, and Carly Williams and Martin Sommerville, whose son Zephyr was stillborn in 2013, to ask why Britain is so poorly prepared to deal with baby loss...

“It’s become easier to be open about fighting cancer, or COVID, but admitting that babies or children die is still too much”

“I had to plan my life around avoiding the likelihood of meeting pregnant people or babies”

The most comprehensive contemporary statistics tell us that in 2018, 523 babies were miscarried or stillborn every day, compared to the 2,060 that were born alive. That’s one out of every four pregnancies ending in baby loss. Anyone fortunate enough to have not experienced baby loss themselves might be surprised by that number, particularly in this modern, medicallyadvanced country where high infant mortality rates seem more at home on the pages of a Dickens novel than a modern maternity ward. But behind each of those statistics is a story that’s infinitely more than a number tally. They’re stories of mental and physical trauma, stories of isolation and ostracism. They’re stories of pain. But they’re also stories of hope, resilience and strength in the face of a society that is not adequately addressing the problem. For an issue as devastating as it is common, the UK simply does not do enough about baby loss.

The psychological impact of Charlotte’s experiences culminated in a diagnosis of PTSD in 2017. “I couldn’t see anyone that had babies or children. I didn’t go to my own sister’s children’s birthday parties because I knew I would have panic attacks,” she explains. “I basically spent five years not going out in the day time, because cafes, parks, restaurants and cinemas would all have kids in them and I couldn’t bear it. I had to plan my life around avoiding the likelihood of meeting pregnant people or babies.”

“For me, it was baby or death,” Charlotte Kingsbury tells me. “There were times when I said that I will not do another Christmas without a baby.” Having gone through years of fertility treatment, Charlotte experienced eleven losses during eight pregnancies before giving birth to her son Ansel last year. “I can’t really overstate the significance of the impact that it had on me,” she continues. “Because our losses were all first trimester, initially you’re convincing yourself that it isn’t that bad… I think I underestimated how much it was affecting me until I completely fell apart.” The impact of Charlotte’s experiences was immeasurable, and affected all aspects of her life, from her physical and mental health to her career and personal relationships.

“One in four is a massive number, and it’s terrifying to think about. But not thinking about it doesn’t stop it from happening,” Carly Williams explains. “It can feel terrifying for people to confront as a subject, when throughout human history it’s been the norm,” Carly’s partner Martin Sommerville continues. “But somehow or another we’ve come to believe as a culture that we shouldn’t talk about death. It’s become easier to be open about fighting cancer, or COVID, but admitting that babies or children die is still too much.”

Carly and Martin’s story began in 2013 when their son Zephyr was stillborn at Nottingham City Hospital.

Despite experiencing support from the compassionate team of midwives and doctors, they found the lack of dedicated care space only exacerbated their pain. At that point, parents of babies who had not survived were treated in the same maternity wards as the families of living babies. “In the lead up to Zephyr’s birth we’d seen people crying in the maternity ward, and naturally wondered what had happened to them,” Martin says.

“Then we were the people weeping uncontrollably while everyone around you is happy and laughing.”

Somewhat cruelly, it was to that same maternity ward that Martin and Carly had to return for their follow-up treatment too, forcing them to relive the pain of losing their son. “When you’re grieving someone, you don’t need to be in a clinical space, hearing the beeping of machines and the smell of antiseptic around you… and in those incredibly traumatic moments you focus on really specific details like the Robin Hood curtains that are on every bed,” Martin explains. “I was looking at these curtains when the doctor looked into my eyes and said ‘I’m really sorry, your baby has died’,” Carly recalls.

“To have to return to that same place again was too much.”

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As well as her personal and social life, the mental health implications Charlotte was suffering due to recurrent miscarriage and long-term infertility had an enormous impact on her professional life too. “I had an important job that I cared about in HR, a profession which tends to attract women, so it seemed that somebody at work was always expecting,” she says. “One of my largest projects was on gender equality and motherhood in the workplace, and I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn't cope with anyone talking to me about pregnancy or maternity. And then a very close colleague fell pregnant, and I just had to leave.”

“On the good days, I felt like our son gave us this amazing awareness of how precious life was and what a gift it is,” Carly says of her own struggles following the loss of Zephyr. “And on the bad days I wanted to go and dig his grave out and get in myself because I didn’t want to live. Our son is dead, so why would I still be alive?”

“Some people just disappeared out of our lives because they couldn’t handle talking to us about it” It’s during these times when having a strong support network becomes more important than ever, but Charlotte found herself increasingly ostracized from her friends. “I lost a lot of friendships over it,” she describes.

“It wasn’t something that I expected would happen.”

It was a situation Martin and Carly also found themselves in: “Some of the people who I thought would be there for us just didn’t know how. Maybe it was too hard for them,” Carly explains. “It definitely sorted the wheat from the chaff,” Martin continues.

“Some people just disappeared out of our lives because they couldn’t handle talking to us about it. We couldn’t handle not talking about it.”

Any death carries with it an element of taboo, particularly in a country as emotionally repressed as Britain. But an experience of a grandparent dying, though still tragic within its own context, has a comprehensible sense of logic to it. The process of seeing an elderly relative die can even help us come to terms with our own mortality, as a rational and natural end to the narrative of life. But the loss of a baby acts against what we’re taught to believe about the natural process – babies represent hope, innocence, happiness and new life, and we’re generally ill-equipped to deal with anything that challenges that. “People will literally cross the road to avoid you when your baby has died just to avoid a difficult conversation,” Carly sadly explains.

“One thing I’d love to change is to help people know what they can do to support anyone who has lost a

baby,” Charlotte comments. “British people seem to have this relentless urge to console people by helping them see the bright side, or telling them it’s not that bad, and it just doesn’t help. If anything, it perpetuates the stigma that I can’t be honest about my feelings.”

Comments like, ‘At least you were only so far along’, ‘You’ve got another child’ or ‘You can try again’ are common responses that, although probably wellintentioned, can have a hugely detrimental effect on grieving parents. “There’s a lot of well meaning pushing aside,” Martin agrees. “But it negates the reality of what happened, which is that our baby died.”

Charlotte explains that what she needed most wasn’t anything complicated, but just to be listened to, and to be allowed to be sad, scared, angry, envious and traumatised without people trying to cheer her up or explain what she should be doing, how she should be acting or having to pretend that her difficult emotions weren’t there. “Just holding someone’s hand and saying ‘I’m here for you, and I’m so sorry this is happening’ means the world,” she explains, “As does asking someone about the babies they lost, including their names on Christmas cards or letting them know discreetly - perhaps via text or through another friend - about new pregnancies being announced, so that they can process the information safely.” Finding new pregnancy announcements difficult is common for grieving parents, but it isn’t personal, and doesn’t mean that they aren’t happy for those making the announcements. It’s just painful for them, so it can be helpful to give a gentle heads-up if you suspect they might be exposed to traumatic memories due to personal news or triggering TV storylines.

Problematic remarks can also come in the form of commenting that, because a parent now has a living child, that their story has a happy ending, or that their loss has somehow been lessened. “I love my son more than I can say, but he’s not a remedy for my pain. He’s not a prize that I get for keeping going, or the meaning I was looking for all along. He doesn’t just make everything okay,” Charlotte explains. “Some people will want to believe that having a living child just takes all the pain away, but I’m still triggered by pregnancies.”

“We became a Mum and Dad when Zephyr was born,” Carly says. “It was excruciatingly sad, but we were also really proud that we were parents.” Martin and Carly are also parents to five-year-old Sol, and Zephyr remains an important part of their family unit. “We’ve always told Sol about his brother,” Martin adds. “It’s the same way that we might relate to each other if one of us died.”

“Who else’s fault is it if it’s not mine?”

The inability or unwillingness to effectively discuss baby loss with grieving parents has roots that stretch far deeper than simple social awkwardness. “We have a long history of equating fertility issues with witchcraft or seeing women as being cursed,” Charlotte speculates. “If someone was barren, miscarried or had an unwell or stillborn child it was considered an act of god. I think we’ve retained a bit of that, as it still seems to be a trope, or people think that it might somehow be ‘catching’.”

“There’s still a squeamishness about anything to do with women’s bodies, especially on TV,” Charlotte continues. “Whether it’s a period, miscarriage or difficult childbirth, it’s all very unemotional and hushed-up. Unless it’s a sex scene, we don’t tend to cover it very well at all.” The dual issues of having inaccurate or non-existent representation of baby loss in the

media, and having no stable support network inevitably leads to those negative emotions like guilt and shame being turned inwards. Without an appropriate platform to share their own stories, and hear the stories of others, the initial stages of grief can be exacerbated for bereaved parents. “We kept thinking ‘Why has the fact that babies die all the time never been brought up in the books or antenatal classes before?’”

Martin asks. “The textbooks are all about what not to drink and eat, and make sure you do this and that,” Carly continues. “To have gone through what felt like a really healthy pregnancy with no problems only to have our baby die at the time, I just felt like well, who else’s fault is it if it’s not mine? He was in me. He died in me.”

“You start to imagine what could be different to make this easier” Artist Martin, who runs By Our Hands We Make Our Way in Sneinton Market, explains how it was the lack of clear support that helped inspire the couple’s next steps, “It’s simple and it sounds crazy, and you can’t ask the world to change around you, but you start to imagine what could be different to make this easier?” Their answer was a unique centre providing nurturing care for bereaved families following the loss of a pregnancy, baby or child in the grounds of Nottingham City Hospital. Opened in April 2017, and named after their son, Zephyr’s offers bespoke support to over 1,000 parents and families every year, giving respite from the clinical areas that force them to relive their trauma. While at the centre – which is part of the Nottingham Hospitals Charity, and funded entirely by supporter donations – grieving parents can be supported through counselling, chatting with others who are bereaved, or meet hospital staff.

Far more than just a physical space, the ethos of Zephyr’s is very much focusing on creating a community of mutual support. “When you imagine a space that supports bereaved families, you might imagine a lot of people sobbing into tissues,” Carly says. “And that does happen, but I feel that what we’ve created with Zephyr’s is a coming together of a community of people for whom that place becomes part of their child’s life story. You might sit and sob and drink some tea, but there are also people there who love to smile, laugh and share their children’s lives as much as their deaths.”

baby loss

Helping to normalize the extreme emotions grieving parents can feel is one of the many positives to emerge from organisations like Zephyr’s. While each story of loss is unique in its challenges, there are experiences that, when shared and seen replicated in others, can help parents feel less isolated. “Someone might say ‘this might sound really weird, but I’ve been reading stories to my baby’s ashes,’” Carly explains. “And at least one person will say, ‘I’ve done that too’ or ‘I wish I’d done it too.’ Suddenly, you see these little parts of people recognising that what they’re doing is normal.”

“It’s important to find people who get it,” Charlotte agrees. “Because if your friends and family don’t, it can be really shit. For me, it was a case of trying not to think about things most of the time, while still having somewhere to go and say ‘Oh my god, I’m losing my mind,’ and have someone who understands tell me, ‘Of course you are! And it’s okay.

Just remember to breathe.’ And that’s how I did it, with one breath at a time.”

“Our ultimate aspiration is that Zephyr’s wouldn’t be needed,” Carly explains. “But that’s not where we are in society at the moment. But we have this space that gives people permission to be understood and feel normal while in that wild sea of grief.”

While society isn’t there at the moment, organisations like Zephyr’s are helping to move things in the right direction. As the subject of baby loss becomes less of a stigma, the statistic of one in four might become just that little bit less terrifying. Instead of being afraid to say the wrong thing, we can feel comfortable showing compassion, patience and support to grieving parents, providing them with the platform to express their grief and feel less ostracized in the process. Societal changes are always piecemeal and, by sharing their stories, Charlotte, Carly and Martin are helping to bring that ideal into reality.

If you or anyone you know has been affected by pregnancy loss or the death of a baby or child, contact Zephyr’s via their website zephyrsnottingham.org.uk

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Tiny Takes If you think the last year has been confusing for us grown-ups, just imagine how baffling it must have been for the youngsters. One minute life is all Octonauts and adventure, the next you’re stuck indoors watching your parents try and figure out how to set up a printer. But don’t take our word for it, here’s what some of Nottingham’s littlest residents have to say on the pandemic...

Hope, age five

What do you think COVID is?

It’s a virus and it spreads among people. It’s everywhere across the world and not just in our country. It can go anywhere and be on anything, even plants and cars and stuff like that.

Why do people wear masks?

People wear masks to protect themselves. It means when you open your mouth the virus can’t come in or go out of your mouth to other people.

What has been your favourite thing to do during lockdown?

It’s been nice spending time with my family. But I’ve missed my friends a lot. I had my birthday party on Zoom and we had Princess Belle from Beauty and The Beast there. That made me and my friends really excited.

What have you missed during lockdown?

I’ve really missed seeing my friends. It’s been really hard. I did get to see them on Zoom a little bit, but it felt like it was a long time. It was really nice to go back to school and see them again properly.

What do you think about doctors and nurses?

They help people who have the coronavirus and they work really hard. They’re also helping to give us all jabs now so we won’t get the virus. We used to clap for them a lot with the people on our street.

Is Boris Johnson doing a good job?

No, not really. My mummy doesn’t like him at all. She says he’s an idiot.

Oscar, age four

What do you think the coronavirus is?

It’s a sneeze and when it gets in your mouth you can die.

Where did it come from?

I think from my school or from Scotland.

Why do you have to wear a mask?

So you can go into a shop otherwise you can’t go into the shop.

What was your favourite thing to do during lockdown?

Probably watching Netflix or… watching Netflix.

What do you think of doctors and nurses?

If you break your leg they can put it back on or help you.

And everyone clapped for them and I clapped.

Do you think Boris Johnson is doing a good job?

I don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t want to answer.

If you were in charge for one day, what would you do?

I don’t want to be in charge, thank you.

What do you think the coronavirus is?

I think it might be a disease… Well, I know it came from a different country and I know it affects everywhere on the planet.

Why do you have to wear a mask?

Because the germs spread out of your mouth to other nearby people.

What was your favorite thing to do during lockdown?

Probably Zoom call people so I can see them. I liked having fun activities to do, but also I’m looking forward to when the coronavirus has stopped because then I’ll get to see my friends and my family a bit more.

What have you missed most during lockdown?

Probably seeing granny and grandad. I missed seeing my friends for a limited while.

What do you think of doctors and nurses?

They can help us beat the coronavirus and get back to normal. They help people feel better.

Nanci, age three

Do you think Boris Johnson is doing a good job?

Maybe a tiny bit. He’s trying to help by calling people, like nurses and stuff. He could have asked if the nurses have the coronavirus though.

But do you know what the coronavirus actually is?

I already told you ABOUT THE WORLD.

If you were in charge for one day, what would you do?

I would help everyone by letting them know that they should stay at home for a long time until the coronavirus is gone. I would also have a giant bouncy castle.

What do you think coronavirus is?

You might get a cold… I don’t know what it is.

Why do you have to wear a mask?

So you don’t get cold!

Noah, age three

What do you think coronavirus is?

It is boring.

What has been your favourite thing to do during lockdown?

I love you.

What have you missed most during lockdown?

Sausages.

What do you think about doctors and nurses?

You should get a vaccination.

What has been your favourite thing to do during lockdown?

Sausages.

What do you think of Boris Johnson?

I don’t know Boris Johnson.

Do you think Boris Johnson is doing a good job?

Hair.

Freddie, age five

What would you do if you were in charge for the day?

I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! I miss my friends though... *flees interview*

illustration: Natalie Owen

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School of Hard Notts Jagoda Brown-Polanowska has been contributing to LeftLion throughout the pandemic, updating us on the state of affairs through the eyes of a twelve-year-old. As students have returned to a COVID-age schooling, we hear how uncomfortable masks, loneliness and Google Meet are a part of the story that shaped the next generation… words: Jagoda Brown-Polanowska illustration: Carmel Ward

My name is Jagoda, and I am twelve-years-old.

I am half Polish and half English. I first started writing for LeftLion when I was eleven, and I was originally going to write this article for an issue last year, but due to Coronavirus it was cancelled.

So, here I am – over a year later writing the same article. I've started writing it in the last week of homeschooling with my school uniform clean and ironed, lying on my bed, waiting for Monday.

I didn't really know what to feel about going back. I was excited about seeing all my friends and playing hide-and-seek with them, but I was definitely not looking forward to the homework and the awfully uncomfortable school uniform.

However, on the last day of homeschooling I had a taste of how it would be when I returned to school, because I had to go and get a COVID test.

Some of my friends were really worried because they thought that the teachers will stick needles in them and take their blood, but I’d been tested before. The testing went pretty smoothly for me, but my friend said that she had to wait half an hour for hers.

After my first day back, I realised how uncomfortable it is to wear a mask all the time.

Everyone will have to wear it now in school at all times (except for lunchtime, of course) and every week we will be tested. It's really hard to concentrate because when you try and look down at your book the rim of the mask pokes you in the eye and the straps are pulling at your ears and irritating them. I think that once we'll be able to take the masks off and forget about them, our ears will be folded and bent up like dumplings from the pressure of the masks.

I actually quite liked the second time schools were closed in England because for me it was a little rest from the routine. I also felt less lonely than during the first one, but many of my friends have become depressed. I think that they probably felt very isolated and alone, especially those who didn't have the proper equipment to learn. I think that many schools worked out a better way of conducting online lessons. For example, most of my lessons were Google Meet classes (something like Zoom but made by Google). We had to have our cameras and microphones switched off unless a teacher asked us to turn them on. The lessons were much more organised than in the previous lockdown and I enjoyed them a lot more. After school, my friend and I would go and play in the park right next to my house. It was really fun. I also got to spend more time with my cat, Mela. She would always try and squeeze on the chair with me and she would sometimes push me off.

Children with better equipment or better learning conditions (having their own quiet room or desk) were contributing more during lessons. I had to do the live lessons on my phone a couple of times when my laptop was being slow or decided to update. I couldn't really see what the teacher was showing us because the screen

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was so small and I found it hard to 'type'. It was quite annoying to do so for a short while, so I can't imagine how hard it must have been for someone to learn like that all the time. That would have made me feel left out and sort of forgotten.

I think that having longer school days and shorter holidays is one of the worst ideas the government has ever thought of. During the lockdowns it’s not like we've been sitting around doing nothing, we've been working and, in my opinion, quite hard. Also, children need a rest: what would you think if the government told you that they think you should have longer hours at work and shorter holidays because you had to work from home? We are already tired by the end of a normal school day, so we'd be exhausted if we had to stay longer.

We wouldn't be able to learn and we'd just be daydreaming.

A teacher that made me smile while we were away from school was my English teacher. We were reading the book The Withered Arm, and for World Book Day, in-between reading the book, he'd switched on his camera and he'd be dressed up as characters. He borrowed the props to create the costumes from the drama studio.

One of the many reasons why I can't wait for the restrictions to be lifted is so I can see my grandma.

She lives in Poland and I haven't seen her since the summer. I really miss her. She lives in a small village in Pomerania. There have been very few cases of coronavirus there and the church is open and has a regular, but controlled, attendance.

We often talk over the phone but we can't have video calls because she only has an old phone.

But my grandma doesn't really have time to be bored because she has a really big garden and she's started planting all her vegetables, fruit and flowers. She also has a huge greenhouse, and a dog, chickens, and a cat. When I could not see my grandma for Christmas, I accepted it. I cannot see her for Easter either. But I will be very unhappy if I have shorter summer holidays and have to reduce my stay at my grandma’s this summer.

I also feel that due to our concerns over coronavirus, we are forgetting about nature and all the other animals and creatures living on this planet. We are so focused on our own problems that we are forgetting about the biggest long term concern, the one that we will only experience the effects of later on and then it will be too late to stop it: climate change. Some grown-ups think "Well it's just one plastic wrapper, how will it do any harm?". I hope that the planet will be okay for when I grow up but we can't only think about ourselves, we have to think about the people after us. One day, not so far away from now, dolphins, elephants, tigers and so many more beautiful and important creatures may be a thing of the past.

Humans are the dominant species on Earth, and as the dominant species it is our responsibility to look after the planet.

As for myself, when I grow up I want to work on BBC’s The Travel Show or be someone like David Attenborough. I've already written a letter to David Attenborough but he didn’t write back. If or when I achieve my dreams, I will raise awareness of climate change and how we can help stop it or slow it down as much as we can.

words: Andrew Tucker illustration: Kate Sharp

Create Expectations Writer and 2019 winner Andrew Tucker talks to previous winners of Nottingham’s Young Creative Awards about their creative process and how your life can change by entering this year’s competition…

Restless in lockdown, I got back onto my bike.

It was more than a trainer for my spindly legs – it was a change-of-scene-machine. I saw half the county’s streets over four months of summer, spokes whisking down the left of artery roads, any number of shirty towpaths, doing U turns out of unpromising cul-de-sacs.

It was a joy, but it was hard work.

By August I needed a day off (saddle sore) and set off on a long walk from Beeston to Strelley, podcast on, footfall inclining upwards. There’s a path that pilgrims used to walk along called ‘Monk’s Way’, heavy with sticky mud, that opens out and reveals how high you’ve come.

And a funny thing happened. I looked to my right – across to the south, where the Clifton Tower Block marks the horizon – and didn’t see the cascade of fields, the tops of trees in Wollaton Park, or the King Charles spaniel off his leash. Having plugged its geography into my brain, what I saw in that moment, I felt, was Nottinghamshire. Not the parts, but the place itself.

That’d be irrelevant if I hadn’t been plodding through a Bertrand Russell book the other day. But his polymath’s brilliance jolted this memory out of me – because that process is exactly how he describes his creativity. First, the exploration of detail, he says, then: ‘Some day if I am fortunate, I perceive the whole...the nearest analogy is first walking all over a mountain in a mist, until every path and ridge and valley is separately familiar, and then, from a distance, seeing the mountain whole and clear in bright sunshine.’

What a way to think about creativity! So often, it’s spoken of as a parcel of inspiration that arrives or doesn’t – ever the romantic, Paul McCartney says he dreamed the melody to Yesterday. For Bertrand Russell though, that moment of inspiration isn’t the first spark but the final one – when all the explorer’s learning has added up, and there’s nothing left for it to do but become an idea.

The stress, then, is on the legwork. I’ve been talking to a bunch of Young Creative Award winners about their processes, how germs of ideas grow: “I'll rediscover old unfinished voice memos that suddenly have a new meaning in my life and repurpose them,” Rob Green tells me, the R&B extraordinaire who after winning a YCA for music has had Radio 1 airplay, an iTunes top 40 record and supported Earth, Wind and Fire on tour.

that passion for a steady tread of progression is crucial. Because what his eventual vision of a ‘bright mountain’ means in practice is that even fruitless routes we take are adding to our internal maps, and talent isn’t then a characteristic fixed at birth, but the growing collection of paths we’ve mapped out. So, while eyes and ears are open to the world, and young people are given the right guidance and assurance, incredible products will, by nature, follow.

So, while eyes and ears are open to the world, and young people are given the right guidance and assurance, incredible products will by nature follow

Should unsure readers enter? ‘ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.’ says Rob in caps lock, so that I imagine he’s singing it to me in his satinsmooth baritone. “I was introduced to very influential people on the scene - that really helped me get my career moving.” Charlotte agrees: “Winning was, genuinely, the best thing that has happened for my career. The awards night is one of my favourite memories.

As a result, I came away with my first full-time job, a mentor, the opportunity to design the 2020 brochure, a commissioned project and also to be part of a social action project with other winners, which is so much fun!’

Charlotte Ashley, a graphic design winner – herwork beams with quick-wittedness – said that knowledge comes first: “I think the best designs are a result of real problems that the designer has a deep understanding of – that’s how they know the best way to solve it.”

“Recently,” says Jamal Sterrett Phoenix, an artist whose breath-stealing fluency bagged him a YCA for dance, “I’ve been trying to take more inspiration from the banality of life... I reflect a lot more on my day and try to see the connection between everything, big or small.”

The most surprising thing for me about the award, when I picked one up in 2019, was what came after the rush of theatre, trophy and cheques. Personal emails arrived with connections between disciplines and with projects to help my development. I got to know the team at Young Creatives first hand.

These people, I thought, care.

And if Bertrand Russell’s right about creativity,

If lockdown has scuppered some end products, then it hasn’t stopped young minds searching – when I’ve been exploring on my bike, they’ve been putting in their own miles, slide by slide in animation, brick by brick in architecture. Learning, charting themselves and the world as they view it.

The mists will roll back. They’ll look down from the hill and see then – the form it’ll take – their hit single, sold-out play, talk of the film festival – their idea at last, the whole mountain, the lightbulb that refuses to stay unlit.

The Young Creative Awards is open to anyone aged 11 to 24 who lives, studies or works in Nottingham. There are 11 categories: Animation & Digital Media, Creative Writing, Dance, Design & Architecture, Fashion & Textiles, Film, Graphic Design, Music, Photography, Theatre and Visual Arts. Entry is free. youngcreativeawards.org

interview: Emily Thursfield illustrations: Alison Squires

Come Clean Frustrated by the lack of education for young people around consensual and pleasurable sex, fitness coach Rebecca Ounstead and graphic designer Emily De Aguilars have collaborated on No Fake Orgasms, a clothing collection designed to shout loudly and proudly about their effort to de-stigmatise not climaxing...

Where did the idea for No Fake Orgasms come from?

It came from my own frustration! Sex education is still too heavily focussed on hetero-male pleasure and avoiding pregnancy, and I just feel that we deserve so much more than this – It’s time to broaden the conversation. Sex is about more than just penetrative sex or achieving climax. I wanted to get people talking about orgasms – both how to achieve them and normalise NOT having them. I wanted to encourage exploring, discussing and communicating with your partners about what you like and dislike, so we can all work towards having healthy, consensual and fulfilling sexual relationships. It’s not just about orgasms, it’s about pleasure for people of all genders.

I also think there can be too much focus on the responsibility of females to determine their desires and communicate them to their partner. While I, of course, believe women should express their desires, it is no more the woman’s responsibility to do so than anyone else’s. Regardless of our gender, we are all responsible for that communication. It’s about creating a safe environment for people to do so. The No Fake Orgasm campaign intends to open up conversations around safe, consensual and pleasurable sex.

The clothing was just an idea of mine that I wanted to pursue, and I asked Emily (@e.egda) as a young female designer to help me bring it to fruition. I try to do a couple of charitable projects per year to raise money and awareness on certain topics. I usually do this through my business as a health and fitness coach (find me at @s.c.u.l.p.t) but I have also donated my hair to raise money for the Little Princess Trust too.

You have chosen to give the designs a “seventies soft-porn aesthetic” using the font Armante [as seen in this article’s headline]. What made you gravitate towards this particular style?

I like the aesthetics of seventies soft-porn titles, and I love the titles for the softcore film Emmanuelle. I like how this aesthetic adds a softness to such a bold statement. I wanted the words to catch your eye but for it not to feel too aggressive. Emily chose this font – by female font-designer Karolina Lach – based on this brief.

Can you tell us any more about the collection’s design?

The t-shirts and jumpers will be available in white and black with the text ‘NO FAKE ORGASMS’ across the front centre... you’ll have to check them out to see the colourways! They are unisex, and we hope people will make them their own as they see fit.

Why do you think young people feel pressured to fake orgasms?

This isn’t easy to answer, but I think it’s partly to do with our education and access to resources from a young age. Our education is mostly around avoiding

pregnancy and safe sex, not about consensual and mutual pleasure. I think a lot of people learn from porn or movies – which of course is performed sex for entertainment, and we have to remember this is not a real experience. A lot of women start to have sex before they have started to explore their solo sexuality – this can be for all kinds of reasons, but cultural and social pressures definitely have a part to play, which I think can also be part of the problem. A lot of women I have spoken with have had sex with a partner before experiencing a solo orgasm.

I’m hoping it will build confidence in young people particularly to start these conversations and take ownership of their pleasure experience.

What do you remember about your own sex education at school?

It was incredibly limited – but this was quite a number of years ago now. I remember learning about pregnancy and STIs, and I remember feeling like sex was predominantly for men and something we performed or did for men – I felt extremely underserved! I didn’t learn anything about non-hetero sexuality or non-cis genders, and not much was covered in terms of consent either. It didn’t help me feel prepared for a life of sexual experiences.

When you personally decided to look for more information on pleasure, where did you turn?

I am still very much on this journey. I have attended sex parties and workshops, I like to read and write erotica (check out the latest issue of MOAN zine which I have work featured in). I started opening up the communication with my partners as much as possible, I had therapy, I journalled. I spent time exploring my solo sexuality; a lot of tools have helped me on my ongoing journey.

What sort of conversations do you hope this project will open up for young people?

I am hoping it will normalise talking about pleasure, and all that surrounds it. De-stigmatising not climaxing, erectile dysfunction, sex anxiety and all of that stuff. I’m hoping it will build confidence in young people particularly to start these conversations and take ownership of their pleasure experience.

You’re keen to stress that this project is aimed at everybody, not just hetero-females. Who else do you think could learn from the project, and what would you like them to take away from it?

I wanted to make a bold statement that caught people's attention. And although I use the term

orgasm, really I wanted to discuss faking pleasure as a whole. That could be theatrical noises, or not communicating what you do or don’t enjoy and so on.

Plus, typically we think of it being just females who fake an orgasm – partly due to the narrative sold to us in movies and porn… enter Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally – but I’ve heard stories from men too. I wanted to initiate conversations between people of all genders that are engaging in sexual pleasure.

100% of the profits will be going to the charity Fumble. Why is their work so important for young people?

A lot of young people are now finding their resources online, particularly social media platforms, so Fumble being a free online sex education and sex-positive platform by young people, for young people, seemed like a great organisation to support. People can also donate to Fumble via their website and host events or fundraisers.

When is the campaign launching?

It launches Thursday 1 April and will only run for thirty days. We are running it through Print Social, a presale platform where the merchandise is printed after the sale period ends, so there will be no waste. The t-shirts will be £20 and the jumpers will be £30.

Are there any future plans in the pipeline?

I have lots of ideas, but no plans to speak of just yet.

I will be part of a group panel for an online event hosted by MOAN in April too, so check out their Instagram for details.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Please send me stories of your fake orgasms! Send your message to @mama.papa.89 on Instagram, where I will post them anonymously throughout the month of April. The more voices, the better!

To support the campaign or purchase, please go to weareprintsocial.com/explore and search nofakeorgasms fumble.org.uk @fumble.uk

University Challenged

words: Emily Casey, Aidan Hall and Faith Pring illustration: Katie Smallwood

Often overlooked during the past twelve months, and being excluded entirely from some of Boris Johnson’s key COVID briefings, university students all over the country have been left feeling anxious, frustrated and forgotten during the pandemic. We talk to three Nottingham students to find out how they’ve coped during the past year…

Faith Pring (NTU) Back in March of 2020, my life was plunged into chaos, much like everyone else’s, and all the plans I had for the remainder of the year evaporated. I was in the final year of my undergraduate degree, in the midst of writing my dissertation and preparing for my final exams, all of which were suddenly up in the air.

Adapting to a new environment of online learning, online exams and new technology while maintaining enough composure to complete my assessments was a challenge, and doing everything from home only exacerbated the emotions I was feeling about suddenly not knowing what I was doing or what was happening. the hardest part was never finishing university properly. My graduation ceremony was postponed to this summer, and I never got the chance to say goodbye to my friends. One day we were all in class together, the next we were spread out across the country. I was never the most extroverted person, but suddenly relying on my unstable internet connection at home for all communication and interaction had a huge negative impact on my mental health.

Like everyone else, I was adapting to a new normal of feeling cut off, my only company being my family and my thoughts. I felt more fragile than ever, just the mention of my cancelled graduation made me burst into tears because it was something I had been working towards for almost four years, and suddenly that celebration was gone.

For me, Now, I’m halfway through my Master’s which is much more practical than my undergraduate degree, making adapting to online learning a lot tougher. Some classes have been easier to replicate online, but it’s no surprise that there is a rather large gap where the social element of university life used to be. The support from our university lecturers has been great however, and I’ve felt more able to cope with the changes thrown my way. While I’m still holding out hope that I’ll be able to graduate this summer, I’m grateful that I, and the people around me, have stayed safe throughout the pandemic.

Emily Casey (UoN) As a twenty-year-old white female student when the pandemic began, I was very lucky to be in the demographic group least likely to be badly affected by coronavirus. However, trying to get a degree when your teaching comes to an abrupt halt, you have to move back home where your WiFi can hardly muster up a Google search, and churning out four print editions as the Editor-in-Chief of the uni magazine, has not been easy.

The switch to online learning only widened the educational inequality between affluent and lowincome students But I have been one of the lucky ones and I do want to share my gratitude for this. I study English which means that, although teaching has been different, a lot of the resources have been made available online and I can still buy my core reading material. My lecturers have also gone above and beyond to ensure that we have the same quality of teaching and, if anything, they’ve actually offered even more support than usual.

Running the uni magazine, Impact, has been challenging – our team hasn’t been allowed to meet, and trying to encourage enthusiasm for online socials has been much harder than just going to the pub.

An upside has been that everyone has had more time, meaning we’ve been able to produce much more online content. I also think it’s been a welcome extracurricular activity that can still be done from your bedroom, when so many others have had to stop entirely.

My student experience has been affected by COVID, but it has also taught me so much, and for that, I am grateful.

Aidan Hall (UoN) When students were advised to travel home in March 2020, I was just over half-way through my first year at university. As I walked out of my halls of residence for the final time, I remember noting the brutal juxtaposition between the nation’s impending isolation, and the fact I had, not two weeks ago, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of students in a sweaty Nottingham nightclub.

Summer came and went, and as the time to go back to university fast approached, I couldn’t help but think I felt like I was going into first year again. I had hardly had a first year due to the university union strikes and the pandemic, and up to that point I had sat only two formal in-person exams. Summer exams were either entirely cancelled or made into poorly designed takehome exams that departments had rushed to create.

Thus, going into second year I was no wiser than I was in going into first year about university exam and coursework procedure. Moreover, I was moving into an entirely new environment: a student house in a suburb of Nottingham I had only visited once before.

Quickly, however, I was a number of months into my second year and, bar the near-police-state conditions in Nottingham’s student area, Lenton, the online university experience was much like I had expected.

From what I could see, the switch to online learning only widened the educational inequality between affluent and low-income students. The former group, I witnessed, were able to buy printers, faster laptops, multiple monitors, etc, for their rooms. Affluent students also had the funds to pay for larger, more comfortable housing – no small factor when you are only meant to leave the house once a day for essential journeys. I couldn’t help but think that the pandemic had strengthened the case for more measures to be taken to democratise higher education.

Nevertheless, looking back on the past twelve months, I cannot help but feel grateful for my friends and family who have always been at my side, just as I have been at theirs.

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Digital exclusion is becoming an increasingly important issue as the world becomes more and more digitised, with studies indicating that more than 90% of jobs now require a level of digital skill. While many homeless people have access to phones, they are increasingly being left behind by advancing technology. Throughout April, Framework are encouraging locals to utilise their own gaming skills for a fundraising campaign, Level Up… When a certain politician advocated for free internet access for all, it sparked a debate as to whether it is a necessity in our current world. This discussion first gained traction back in 2016, when the UN’s general assembly began to discuss the people left without access to this new virtual world we were busy building.

And we all know what happened next: we were thrown into a world of uncertainty, and our reliance to survive depended on technology. The argument has never been more important.

With voices calling from every corner of our social media feeds, sharing their opinion on whether or not people deserve access to the internet, it’s easy to forget the people being affected by the issue can’t even share their take on it all. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) states that in the last three months, 2.7 million people in the UK have not used the internet – that’s 4% of a population that spreads the majority of its information online.

Access to technology is no longer simply a debate to be had among the privileged, it is a lifeline being cut in front of us. Gone are the days when having access to WiFi or smart devices to access it on is a luxury.

With the pandemic increasingly making more jobs remote, Universal Credit schemes requiring an email address, and needing tech for access to education, it is clear digital exclusion is causing havoc among our society. When you begin to factor in an unstable living situation, it’s possible that people can’t even rely on having a concrete address where they can redirect the mail they need to stay in the know.

Tackling this issue is Framework, the Notts-based charity that believes everyone in our society deserves to live in a community of inclusion. They have modernised their approach thanks to COVID-19, which now means digital inclusion is a priority. With their beliefs embodied through housing, education, and every other means of support, they recognize the importance of having access to the online world we all are required to live in – especially in current circumstances.

Throughout the pandemic, there have been many passing comments on how we’re fortunate to be living through this experience while we have access to all this technology. Without hourly BBC Breaking News updates, or livestreaming Boris Johnson’s Downing Street Briefings updating us on restrictions, it’s no wonder we all feel such a reliance on technology.

From our phones which are never more than armslength away, or the laptop I’m using to write this article on, digital exclusion runs deeper than simply not being able to post on Instagram; in today’s world, it dictates who gets to share their story and have their voice heard.

When you remind yourself that only 59% of the world has access to the internet, only then can you understand the levels of exclusion happening worldwide.

Access to technology is no longer simply a debate to be had among the privileged, it is a lifeline being cut in front of us Not just stopping at Internet access, Framework wants everyone to own devices too. This also includes gaming consoles. A lack of these for children can be highly detrimental – both education and socialisation has moved online, meaning they miss out on the chance to chat with friends and enjoy their downtime. Gaming devices have long been one of the most sought after toys for families, and losing out on the sense of community and belonging they can give children is yet another potential setback.

Gaming can allow children to take charge of their own entertainment, and provide escapism for their everyday lives.

To some, it still may not seem essential, but the overwhelming evidence that children who are excluded from society grow up to lead lives that are

damaging to both themselves and others shows that it’s time we reconsider what is deemed essential in this digital age.

Launching Thursday 1 April and running for thirty days, Framework’s Level Up campaign gives people the chance to fundraise using their own digital challenge, and will hopefully provide over 1,000 people access to the internet and tech devices. Whether it is a virtual tournament, simulation game, or just smashing a personal record, you can help raise funds to give these young people a higher chance of avoiding digital exclusion. Raising just £100 could provide a tablet, and £300 can provide internet access in supported accommodation for a year. Work up £500, and you could provide someone with a laptop, potentially changing their entire life.

In a world where people expect those living on the breadline to be sufficient with the bare minimum, Framework’s mission is a controversial opinion to some. But when we can't imagine our own lives without these devices, why do we think others aren’t deserving of the same? Though it would be easy to argue that an XBOX isn’t essential to good mental health, the science actually implies otherwise.

A study from Oxford University suggests that not only can it better your mental health, but also improve your coordination. And let’s not forget that one of the biggest challenges the pandemic has presented to our mental health is the lack of social interaction – something many of us are fortunate enough to still catch a glimpse of through phone calls or Zoom. Now imagine a world where even this isn’t possible.

Framework’s Level Up campaign launches on Thursday 1 April and will run for thirty days. You can sign up to take part on Framework’s website. frameworkha.org/events/level-up

words: Emilie Mendham illustration: Smugcomputer Illustration leftlion.co.uk/issue134 23

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leftlion.co.uk/issue134

My Photo Moment Hollie Jones

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viral infection

words: Ashley Carter illustration: Ali Taylor-Perry

Our Editor Ashley Carter explores his changing relationship with social media, and whether it might not be the right place for a middle-aged man to exist any more...

It’s the prerogative of all mankind to lament, when reaching a certain age, the sudden reality that things just aren’t quite as good as they used to be.

dependent on a product that is slowly driving us all insane, and offering fewer and fewer legitimate benefits in the process.

I can still hear the tone of disgust in my Dad’s voice as he lamented the death of music. On one dreary Sunday afternoon car journey, after finally succumbing to the whining pleas of a fourteen-yearold me, he mercifully provided a brief respite from the otherwise relentless Rod Stewart soundtrack that filled every other audio moment of my childhood. A flick to Radio 1 and all of a sudden Sir Rod’s dulcet tones were replaced by Missy Elliot’s Work It. “That’s not music,” I heard barked from the front seat, Missy barely even having enquired whether it was, in fact, worth it. “She’s just shouting about sex.” And like that, we were Sailing again. ‘How can you possibly be so out of touch?’ I arrogantly thought, grimly unaware of the fate that lay in store for me too. And here I am, entering the Autumn of my life, and with a simple statement weighing heaving on my ageing heart: the way my Dad felt about music is how I feel about social media - it used to be great, and now it stinks.

I think there’s something to the argument that people aren’t meant to meet in groups without cause. Whether it be to hunt, pray, celebrate, fight or whatever else, throughout all of human history, we’ve only ever gathered together for a tangible reason. Now, millions of us all exist in the same space, hour after hour, day after day, without any clear purpose. And when people don’t have a reason to justify their self-destructive behaviour, they’ll do anything to find one – hence the endless, pointless arguments about any minutiae of modern life that consume Twitter.

I’ll leave it for the people who actually know what they’re talking about to discuss the dangers of polarizing political debate, spreading misinformation and creating echo chambers of restricted thought, I’m here to focus purely on the superficial. While fully aware that I’m strapping a giant pair of rose-tinted glasses to my face, I look back fondly on the early days of social media as some sort of technological Shangri La. It was a place where you could connect with friends who you’d otherwise have lost touch with, get a glimpse at the lifestyles of actors, musicians or athletes that you admired, and just generally exist in a non-physical space, free of the pressures of having to interact with real humans. When I was invited to my ten-year school reunion, it felt freeing to say no without an ounce of hesitation. After all, I was ‘friends’ with all of these people online, and could have talked to them at any point and actively chose not to. Why spoil that with a cheap pint and sweaty, nervous small talk in some awful rented room above an Ilkeston pub? But all of that feels like a distant memory, replaced by nameless, faceless people screaming at each other and horrible edited inspirational videos.

One minute I’m enjoying a pint at Broadway, the next I’m being called a nonce in a thick Sydney accent I single out Twitter, that miserable haven for solipsistic narcissists, swirling in their cesspool of performative, insincere outrage, as the main culprit in this shift, but it’s far from being solely to blame for the decline of social media. Facebook exclusively exists, it would seem, as a platform to expose your racist elderly relatives, and for people to engage in needlessly hostile debates, safe in the knowledge that they’d fold like a cheap tent if they ever had to do the same in person. Whereas Instagram seems to have surrendered itself to an army of bots invading every comments section with requests to check out giant arses, no-talent singers or conspiracy theories about 9/11. Sure, there’s still your least successful school friend sharing inspirational quotes and the odd photo of a mate on holiday, but they’re lost in a sea of adverts, spam and nonsense.

I should make it clear that I’m under no illusions that it was ever a perfect platform. Take the time that I was mistaken for a paedophile, for example. An Australian man with the same name and a passing physical resemblance got exposed in the days when it was still fairly normal to have your phone number on your Facebook profile. One minute I’m enjoying a pint at Broadway, the next I’m being called a nonce in a thick Sydney accent, the first experience of an avalanche of abuse I’d receive for the next two weeks, until I changed my profile picture and name to that of an elderly Chinese woman.

I was also quite content living the lie, reinforced repeatedly throughout childhood, that we’re all unique and special in our own way, without having it shattered by social media. Gone are the days where someone will say something funny, people will laugh, and that’ll be that. Now any joke that is made online exists in a timeless bubble, doomed to be repeated over and over again until the very concept of what humour is has to be challenged. Whether it’s a dance, a meme or a certain turn of phrase, we’re like lemmings desperate to shamelessly copy and paste some minor variation of a theme to our own pages. The concept of originality has been replaced by the anxious desire to be exactly the same as everyone else. It’s like that one friend who has to shout “What’s in the box?!” every time the film Se7en is mentioned. But it’s every friend, it’s all the time and it’s about literally everything.

Social media got its hooks in us the same way certain areas of New York got addicted to heroin in the seventies. Almost overnight the streets were flooded with cheap, uncut and readily available dope and then, once they’d got you all good and addicted, the price rocketed and the quality dropped way down.

In the space of a decade or more, we’ve become

I used to believe that social media was a reflection, albeit exaggerated, of real life, but as I get older, I’ve come to believe that it’s actually an entirely separate world of its own.

The abyss between the two has grown so wide that statements any of us would make in normal, everyday conversation seem out of place on social

media. There have been several instances in the last year alone where I’ve posted something innocuous that I either have said, or would say, in person, only to receive DMs asking if I was feeling okay.

It’s become a breeding ground for insincerity that’s making us worse human beings, and a great chasm has grown between it and me as the realization that I’ve poured hours of my life into a false economy dawns, and I question whether I have the power to separate myself from it.

I’m acutely aware that the problem could well lie with me, and that the social media era of 2010-16 is just my Rod Stewart. Fear is a powerful motivator, and the comfort of blaming the world for my own inability to keep up with its changes is far more appealing than accepting the fact that the party at which I once felt most at home is now uncomfortable and baffling with its loud music and confusing terminology. I suspect that’s just the nature of life: a steady stream of increasingly uninteresting parties preparing you for the big one that you’ll have to leave permanently. And I don’t mind admitting that, for all I hate about social media now, it’s something of a comfort knowing that long after I’m dead and gone the part of me that called a complete stranger a dickhead during a forgettable Facebook argument in 2012 will live on forever.

leap of faith illustration: Leosaysays

Between 2011 and 2019, the number of British people who identified as being non-religious increased by a staggering 46%. To put that in context, that made them the fasting growing group in the country and, with the new census currently being undertaken, that number is expected to grow further. While being an atheist isn’t quite the taboo it once was in an increasingly secular country, for some people, turning away from god can pose huge mental, physical and spiritual challenges. We talked to Notts residents Tony Challis, the President of Nottingham Secular Society, and Amir X (whose real name has been retracted at his request), a former Muslim, to find out how difficult it was to leave religion behind…

“Even now I’m incredibly nervous talking about it. On one hand, I know from experience how dangerous antiIslam sentiment can be in this country, and I don’t want to do anything to stoke that flame any further. But this is also my truth, and there are plenty of reasons why I no longer call myself a Muslim.”

Within two minutes of our Zoom call, Amir X stressed that he doesn’t want his real name to be used at any point of the article. Until earlier this year, he hadn’t spoken to his immediate family since telling them he had lost his faith, and is genuinely concerned about his wellbeing. “I initially tried to talk to them about my reasons for leaving Islam, but their main concern was for the family’s reputation,” he tells me. “I heard that some of my wider family had made threats about me, so I had to delete my social media and keep a bit of a low profile.”

At first, Amir still considered himself a Muslim “in the sense of tradition and family”, but found the faith side of it so constricting and painful: “It constantly enforced this rigid set of rules that, for someone who always felt a bit different, made no sense to me. Like an endless ritual that had no time for anyone who dared to question why.”

Tony Challis was nine years old when his mother became an “enthusiastic convert” to Catholicism. Attendance at an all-boy Catholic Grammar School, catechism classes and his Catholic confirmation led to an initial enthusiasm in the faith. “I was very much into it at that point… at sixteen I was a narrow-minded little prig! I really believed in the one above who could see everything.”

But disillusionment at the structure of religion and a period of self-discovery soon saw his faith waver, “It just seemed illogical to me. And around age seventeen or eighteen, I became aware of myself as a gay man, and the church was horrific in its attitudes.” Those attitudes manifested themselves in the likes of Joseph Ratzinger – the future Pope Benedict XVI – describing homosexuality as an abomination, and the impact of those atavistic

attitudes left a lasting impact on Tony. “It led to a period of self-loathing as a person who was a gay man and who had been rejected by the church. It was very depressing.”

Around age seventeen or eighteen, I became aware of myself as a gay man, and the church was horrific in its attitudes But from the depths of that rejection, Tony found himself presented with new opportunities. “It was a very down period, but in terms of thinking afresh, it was a new birth as well.” One of his teachers, ironically a priest himself, encouraged young Tony to read widely and think critically. “He threw everything at us from Sophocles to Sartre, and didn’t worry that we would debate the existence of god,” he says. “I read a lot of Bertrand Russell, who was very inspiring… it felt like I’d gone through the darkness before the dawn, and then found this new life where I could look at things rather differently.”

But while atheism presented stimulating new cerebral pursuits for Tony, the same couldn’t be said for Amir. “I know there are large groups and communities of atheists and stuff, but I don’t consider myself part of them. I just want to be my own thing for a while, and don’t see much to celebrate in what I’ve done,” he explains. “Maybe one day I’ll feel differently, but right now I just feel like there’s a huge hole in the centre of my life; I don’t have my family, I don’t have most of my friends. I had to change my job and I live in an area that’s very new to me. I feel like I made the right decision, but at the moment it’s a pretty hard road to walk down.”

As the President of Nottingham Secular Society, Tony dedicates much of his time to the cause of separating religion from the state, striving toward a society where human rights always take precedence over religious demands. He describes the state of religious privilege in Britain, from having bishops in the House of Lords (“they have quite an influence on debates”), assisted dying (“there are a disproportionate number of religious people in Parliament, which is why it has been so heavily blocked”) and faith schools (“in certain areas of the country, there just isn’t an option to send your children to a non-religious or non-Anglican school”). But his stance isn’t to eradicate religion, rather that it shouldn’t have undue advantages in society, or that the religious have the authority to hold sway over political decision-making.

Being one of seven children, it was Amir’s siblings who he missed the most after being ostracized. Less than a month before our conversation, he received a phone call from his sister, who he hadn’t spoken to for years. “She found out where I was working and got in touch one day out of the blue. She said that she had lost her faith as well, and had gone through a similar experience with my parents as I had,” he tells me. Having fallen in love with a non-Muslim, Amir’s sister had chosen to ignore her family’s wishes and get married. “She had a choice between happiness and love, or a life that she didn’t enjoy and which made her feel trapped. I’m really proud of her for choosing the former. It makes me feel more confident that I chose the right way, too.”

And while some find structure and happiness in the community and routine of religion, others can only find true happiness away from it. As Tony tells me, reading from a Robert Green Ingersoll quote on his wall, “Happiness is the only good... the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so.” nottinghamsecularsociety.org.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue134 29

interview: Jared Wilson photo: Kam Rahmoun

Reflections of a Mature B-Boy Many would have you believe that hip-hop is a young man's game. However, Frisco Boogie (aka Duncan Mitchell) would beg to differ. Twenty years ago he turned his back on a record deal and took two decades out of making tunes. Now, nearing his half-century, he’s back enjoying making music (and breakdancing and graffiti) more than ever…

How did you first fall in love with hip-hop?

I grew up in Hyson Green in the eighties when the riots were rife and there was a lot of friction, but as a child all I wanted to do was play outside and have a laugh with my mates. I first found hip-hop through breakdancing. We used to get into school early to practise our backspins and freezes and from that point I was hooked. The rapping and graffiti both came a year or two later. I remember when RunD.M.C. released Sucker MC’s and we sat in Chemistry class learning the words and banging out the beat on the desks.

In the late nineties, you were half of the rap duo Lost Island, releasing music on Son Records. How did that come about?

Styly Cee interviewed me on a radio show for Heatwave FM and we just hit it off. We shared the same love for hip-hop and put some tracks together.

Styly knew the people at SON Records and sent a tape of our stuff to them. They loved it and signed us.

We released a few EPs and an album called Forbidden Ground in 2000. The album was licenced in Japan and it sold all over Europe. These were the days of physical copies and it was on general release in all record shops, HMV, Virgin, etc. It was a buzz to see it in stores.

What happened after that?

I recorded a solo venture but never released it, I still have it on a CD somewhere; it was going to be called Still Lost. But I stopped writing for quite a while after that. I felt like I didn’t really have much to say at that point in my life. I was still on stage hosting and MCing at events, just not writing and recording new material.

One of those shows you hosted, in the early/midnoughties, was UK Takeover…

Those days were amazing, we felt like we were doing it for the whole country as there were no shows like it at all. Joe Buhdha and MistaJam worked so hard to put it together and it was all for the love of hip-hop. We had anyone who was anybody on those bills – Blade, Taskforce, Roots Manuva, Rodney P, Skinnyman, Estelle, Professor Green, Roll Deep and so many more.

How does the song creation process change as you get older? What made you want to make music again after all of these years?

In 2017 I released an album, The Internal Masquerade with

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ChatOne, and found my voice again. I really enjoyed writing it and it motivated me to buy some equipment and start to produce. I followed it up with The Masks of the Morning Son. At the time I thought that it would be the last project that I would release, but the way it was welcomed made me think there was space in the market for me to release more. I feel there is less pressure now I'm older. We all used to want to be the greatest MC, but now it’s more important for me to just make music that I like.

For people who haven’t listened to your music before, what should they listen to first?

Start with Rainbows in the Rubble as it expresses where I am in life now. If you like it, then work backwards.

I feel there is less pressure now I’m older. We all used to want to be the greatest MC, but now it’s more important for me to just make music that I like

pressure on yourself to keep up with anyone apart from yourself. Dance to express, not impress.

You’re also a graffiti artist. Where can we see your artwork?

I’ve painted around the country at various graffiti jams and festivals and I was lucky enough to be invited to paint at the Breaking Convention Park Jam 2019 in London, which was a great experience. I have some of my work still up in Beeston as part of the Beeston Street Art Festival. I write as AONA, which stands for All Or Nothing Always. I love painting and there is no better feeling than losing yourself on a wall for a few hours. I just zone out and lose track of time and life.

There seem to be a few other hip-hop heads in Notts from your day still active…

Yeah, I love the fact that we are all still making music, but even more importantly we are passing on the torch. The work that Joe Buhdha, Trevor and Nick from CRS and Courtney from Take 1 do with the younger generation is essential. I still listen to everything that comes out of Nottingham. Karizma’s last few singles were great, The P Brothers have always represented to the fullest and Cappo is just a machine when it comes to releasing music. Nottingham has a whole world of talent crammed into a small city. It really is legendary!

You’ve been a B-boy for many years too. Do you still have moves?

I actually entered my first battle in many years at the Notorious IBE Breaking festival in Holland in 2019 and qualified into the top eight, which was a surprise as I was clearly the oldest person on the floor. Over the years I’ve hosted dance battles, including Breaking Convention for Jonzi D, which is amazing because I get to meet so many of the greatest dancers out there. I’ve also taught and been part of dance classes for QMX and hosted classes for the university and various other workshops around the city. I’m still here doing it all because I love hip-hop culture.

How does the scene compare now to when you were coming up?

There were a lot more jams back in the day. Live hip-hop was very popular, but these days a lot of it is online so the need to go out and find it in its rawest form is no longer a requirement for a lot of people. Making and releasing music is easier, but there’s probably more competition as a result. I also feel that the corners of hip-hop culture, as in the five elements, are not really practiced by a lot of the new generation. We have a lot of beatmakers, rappers, dancers, beatboxers and graffiti writers, but not many people try to do them all.

What’s it like trying to breakdance in your late forties?

I don’t B-boy anymore, I dance more funk styles like poppin’ and lockin. Until last year I was training once or twice a week, but my stamina is different now and you get to the point where you realise that you can’t do everything you did as a kid. I would advise anyone considering dancing in my age bracket to know your limitations, dance to enjoy it and don’t put any

Jay-Z once said that “Thirty is the new twenty.” Is 48 the new 28?

No, not at all. I didn’t have the aches and pains at 28 that I do now. But I do have more experience in life now so at least I don’t make as many bad decisions and mistakes.

friscoboogie.bandcamp.com

Write of Passage Writer Graham Caveney, author of The Priest They Called Him: The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs and Screaming with Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg, shares his reflections on the process of growing older...

“He was a man of forty-five. Forty-five! In five more years fifty. Then sixty – then seventy – then it was finished. My God – and one still was so unestablished. How did one grow old – how could one become confident?”

I was seventeen years old when I first read those words from D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow – an A level text I'd elevated to the status of secular bible.

The words belong to Tom Brangwen, his internal monologue, jolts of mortality and self-doubt fizzing through him like electrical currents. I remember being affronted, horrified even. If grown men are still waiting to grow up, what chance has a seventeenyear-old boy with acne scars? Maybe adults were not as adult as I'd thought. How did one grow old – how could one become confident? I don't know Tom. I was kinda hoping you'd tell me.

I'm now a decade older than the character who did those calculations, twenty-five years older than Lawrence when he wrote them. I'm 56 – a number I tend to bury in the phrase my mid-fifties, neither milestone nor millstone. I'm a ‘man of a certain age’ – a peculiar phrase, one used for those whose age remains uncertain. I can feel ageing's scripts hanging over me – the ones that begin 'you won't remember this but...', that sees 'youths' rather than young people. I catch myself imagining my sixtieth birthday.

My father was dead at 65, my mother at 67. I sometimes wonder if my genetic code will simply split the difference, clock me out at a nice round 66, thus satisfying my preference for even numbers.

56! It's an age I never thought I'd reach, convinced like other boys with too many Smiths albums, that I'd be dead at 27, 33, 44. I would conveniently revise the age limit – the dead line – as each of those birthdays approached. I wanted to be a writer and everyone knew that writers died young. It was part of the job description.

I began by writing reviews for the New Musical Express. The NME is what I had instead of art school; a learn-as-you-go creative writing course before such things existed. They offered me space to write about my serial obsessions – new American writers,

words: Graham Caveney illustration: Jon Aye

underground filmmakers, post-punk music. I wrote on an Olivetti manual typewriter and posted my copy in the mail. Occasionally they even paid me.

How did the stardust of my twenties melt into the bad, bad trip that was my thirties and early forties, a decade plus spent either behind closed curtains or on psych wards?

By the end of my twenties I was a full-time writer. There seemed to be a dizzying amount of magazines and papers to write for, not just specialist publications (Literary Review, Publishing News) but men's fashion journals (GQ, Arena), music monthlies (Q, The Face), weekly listings mags (City Limits, Time Out).

I wrote for them all. I wrote about New York poets and country music, IMAX films and Fred Perry shirts, alternative comedy and Desert Island Discs. In 1991 I published my first book – Shopping In Space, a study of new American writing, written with my friend Elizabeth Young. The book did well. We flew to New York to promote it. I saw a world I thought only existed in celluloid. Life was ripe, full of promise. It was, as we used to say, rock 'n' roll.

So why did it turn to shit? How did the stardust of my twenties melt into the bad, bad trip that was my thirties and early forties, a decade-plus spent either behind closed curtains or on psych wards?

The answer to that question is the subject of my next book. The short version is that I drank. I drank to oblivion, a joyless quest for total anaesthesia.

Drinking made me ill. I switched to drugs. And then I drank some more. Anyone who thinks there is glamour associated with the image of the selfdestructive writer should spend five minutes in a rehab unit. The shaking, the sweating, the shitting.

Romantic tragedy it ain't.

I used to lie to myself that drinking is what writers did, an occupational hazard. I had lots of role models: William Burroughs about whom I wrote my second book, his friend Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Carson McCullers, Johns Cheever and Berryman. The list goes on, a roll call of excess all lined up and ready to burn. I was entranced by this myth, became intent on adding my name to the tally. If I couldn't write like my heroes I could sure as hell drink like them.

I got sober at the age of 44, the same age Lawrence was when he died. It had been ten years since I'd written my last book – a monograph on the poet Allen Ginsburg; I wasn't sure I'd ever write again.

Or who to write for. The music journalist had been replaced by the blogger, arts mags by websites. I felt like Rip Van Winkle awaking from his slumber utterly baffled by an unrecognisable world. What the hell is this? Where the hell am I? I discovered that a day consists of 24 hours, that meals must be eaten, sleep slept, clothes washed, conversation conducted. I may have looked like a 44-year-old man, but I was as helpless as an infant. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous and began to count my clean time, celebrate sober birthdays. I may be 56 but I am twelve years dry. Age is much more than the date on your birth certificate.

In early sobriety I spent my nights at the Broadway, days in the newly-opened Five Leaves bookshop. The owner, Ross Bradshaw, talked for hours to me about books, writers, writing. He did not ask me about my history, or why I still had shaky hands. He let me give a reading from my book on Burroughs even though it is out of print. Eventually he gave me a job.

Working at Five Leaves was like remembering a line of poetry I'd thought I'd forgotten. The books reminded me of who I was, where I belonged. In the evenings I started writing again, once more listening to the rhythms inside my head. It felt like coming home.

Graham Caveney's memoir The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness is published by Picador at £9.99. His new book On Agoraphobia: Reading, Writing and Other Empty Places will be published in May 2022, also by Picador.

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Family Matters It was a single beam of light which inspired Notts-born and Bristol-based photographer Naomi Williams’ Grandad, a series which explores the feeling of loneliness during a global pandemic, and how the interiors of a house represent a person through their belongings...

Can you tell us a bit about your photography series, Grandad?

My series is an insight into the life of my Grandad during the pandemic.

I wanted to show the feelings of loneliness and isolation faced during a global pandemic by focusing in on my grandad’s present life whilst contrasting this with images of his life from the past, reflecting on life before the pandemic.

The images were captured during the first lockdown – how universal do you think the feelings of isolation and loneliness represented in the photos were amongst older people all over Britain?

I can only imagine how lonely and isolated older people would be feeling in lockdown, especially people that live alone. Seeing the emotion this pandemic has brought among people, I hope that my images give people a sense of warmth and hope.

What was the inspiration behind the series?

I have always been inspired by my Grandad's unique way of living and the belongings he holds in his home. He has lived in that house for 49 years, which was once his family home and the place he brought my mum up in.

I was also influenced by Latoya Ruby Frazier, an American photographer. I was intrigued by the way she views her family members, in her series, The Notion of Family.

How personal was this project to you?

This has been one of my most personal projects. It’s the only project I’ve done where I have focused on a close family member, so this series is very personal to me. Some of the images show the vulnerability of my Grandad, so I have had to consider his privacy and respect his boundaries and really think about what I should and should not post.

The sunlight was hitting the pot lid perfectly, nothing was staged and I just knew I needed to photograph it How did you first approach the subject matter?

The first image I took for this series was an image of the draining board, with the pot lids and the rosemary. I just looked around and thought, ‘my Grandad is so interesting!’ The sunlight was hitting the pot lid perfectly, nothing was staged and I just knew I needed to photograph it.

I didn’t go into the series thinking that I wanted to make a series. I just wanted to photograph cool stuff, which then turned into something bigger.

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Where has the series been showcased so far?

The series has been exhibited with the UK Black Female Photographers twice. One in Walsall and one Birmingham. I was also published in The Guardian and was interviewed on BBC News Midlands. I also have upcoming exhibitions this year.

What has the reaction been like?

The reaction has been amazing! Everyone has been so kind in asking how my Grandad is and have been genuinely interested in where I plan to take the project. In the past I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome, so the reaction for this series has been overwhelming but has also helped me to overcome it.

What are your next plans for the project?

I hope to capture more moments of my Grandad's life and create a photobook of images based on him. naomi-williams.co.uk

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meat your heart out

photos: Curtis Powell

Amidst the general misery within the food and drink sector during the past twelve months, one chain has managed to not only survive, but thrive. Ohannes Burgers, with their four – and soon to be six – Nottingham branches, pride themselves on putting the freshest ingredients and commitment to quality above all else. And with their West Bridgford and Mansfield locations set to open soon, joining their branches in the City Centre, Arnold, Hucknall and Sherwood, we thought it was high time to catch up with Cen Shevket to find out the secret of Ohannes’ success...

What makes Ohannes stand out from other burger restaurants?

There are a few things: we only use fresh ingredients, so there are not nasties or additives, our taste combinations are next level, we include our famous seasoned fries and handmade aioli free with every burger, our restaurants and packaging are a work of art, and we always listen to feedback in order to continually improve. We also pride ourselves on our range of sauces, which are made daily using only the finest and freshest ingredients – we make sure no preservatives or additives are included.

We emphasise our use of the freshest ingredients, because fresh is always best. We pride ourselves on creating great tasting wholesome burgers, which is why we call our food ‘guilt-free’ because we only use the finest ingredients. The crunch of fresh lettuce, the sizzle of our handmade locally sourced burgers, the softness of our pretzel buns, all topped with sauces we make from scratch – there’s no other burger brand that can claim to make it all themselves. We care about people, the planet and the food we put into our bodies, that’s why it’s important to us.

The crunch of fresh lettuce, the sizzle of our handmade locally sourced burgers, the softness of our pretzel buns, all topped with sauces we make from scratch – there’s no other burger brand that can claim to make it all themselves How have you managed as a business during the pandemic?

As you can imagine, it’s not been easy. Opening four branches during a pandemic has been a challenge but we have pulled it off. Educating staff and drivers on keeping everyone safe and changing procedures has been a big challenge. Luckily, as we offer takeaway, we were already set up to keep getting our food out to people.

Ohannes is set up as a franchise programme – how does that work?

Our franchise programme works by interested parties getting in contact with us and going through an application process. We have a rule regarding distance between branches so we have reached full capacity in Nottingham, but have our Liverpool branch opening really soon. Our team of designers, in-store experts, and retail professionals work with the franchisee to create their branch. We have plans to expand the franchise nationally – so watch this space.

You currently have four venues open in Arnold, the City Centre, Sherwood and Hucknall, and a further two about to open in Mansfield and West Bridgford. What do you have planned for the future of Ohannes?

We want to see an Ohannes on every high street in the UK – why not? It’s always good to dream big and we believe we have the right structure in place to deliver it. Our franchisee programme is well established and our brand is growing through our social channels. We have a real passion for what we do and we believe we have flipped the idea of ‘fast food’ into a new era. Because of the fresh ingredients we use, our strong brand values, and our commitment to delivering a unique customer experience we believe we have the formula for franchise success. Life is short, eat the burger! ohannesburger.co.uk @Ohannes_Burger

food for thought

What’s your favourite burger on the menu?

The Big Lebowski burger – we like to call it the bad boy of burgers – 100% British beef patties topped with salsa, red kidney beans, jalapenos, cheese slices, fried onions, handmade aioli, fresh lettuce, tomato, pickle, ketchup all stacked in a sweet pretzel bun and served with our seasoned fries and fresh aioli.

It’s a perfect combination of meat meets Mexi, the flavours work well and it’s one of our best sellers.

Our sides come a close second – the spicy strips and mozzarella sticks.

New Business – Faux The gang behind No.12 have launched Notts’ first vegan butchers and delicatessen premises in Sherwood. Get on it immediately. fauxbutcher.co.uk

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To Nosh – Chick’n Tenders (13th Element) The highlight of an all-round incredible menu, eating 13th Element’s chick’n tenders is an almost religious experience. @13thelement_

To Sup – Monsoon Malabar (Stewarts) Stewarts of Trent Bridge don’t do bad coffee, but this heavy-bodied, smokey brew is amongst their best ever. stewartscoffees.co.uk

German doner kebab At my old age of 24, I’m not afraid to admit that I’m well past my clubbing days. I hate the sweaty smell, strangers stepping on my feet and the hangover-headaches that are enough to cause me anxiety for the rest of the week.

It’s safe to say that during lockdown I wasn’t one desperate for the dancefloor. But one thing I will admit to craving in the past year has been the after-club food – a £1.99 wrap of the day or, if I’m feeling particularly ravenous, a £4 doner.

On a trusted recommendation, I gave German Doner Kebab on Uber Eats a go at healing my hankering. Described as gourmet, their kebabs are made using premium lean meats, with each piece of the dish being handmade. Their signature dish is described as a ‘trademark kebab sandwich’ featuring your choice of doner meats, plus fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, red cabbage and three signature sauces (garlic, yoghurt and spicy), served in toasted sesame bread. For meat I picked chicken, and settled for some curryseasoned fries as a side.

no homers When you think of contemporary American pop culture, two shows rise above all others: The Simpsons, which dictated how an entire generation of people laughed, talked and referenced current events, and The Sopranos, the HBO series which redefined not just the mobster genre, but TV itself.

Now imagine that someone combined the unique characters of the former with the iconic deli meats of the latter. Now imagine that company is in Nottingham. And now imagine that their entire product range is vegan. Marone a mi.

outside dining from april 12 words: Emily Thursfield illustration: Natalie Owen

If you’re still with me – and who could blame you if you weren’t – then you’re in for a treat, because No Homers might well be my favourite vegan company ever. If you’ve taken the pledge to go meat-free but miss rummaging through cold cuts in the fridge (white robe and panic attacks optional), the Notts-based purveyors of vegan ‘meats’ have got you well and truly covered.

Magic Garden They transformed the old Jamie’s Italian into a Wonderland-inspired hangout just in time for last summer, and catching rays in that decadently decorated garden became a past-time for lots of us in 2020. They’ve announced their reopening with news of festival-style stretch tents to protect us from the rain too.

24-26 Low Pavement, NG1 7DL

It’s safe to say they’re not shy with their portions, and I’ll admit I was slightly intimidated when I saw the size of the sandwich on my plate. Kebabs often have the ability to make me feel like a bowling ball of bloat afterwards, but to GDK’s credit, their promise of premium is sound in my book. The veggies tasted fresh and there was no sign of grease on the meat – in fact, I snuffled the entire potion and still felt as light as a feather.

My favourite component had to be the sesame bread, which I’d probably eat in loaves if they let me.

For under a tenner, I was impressed, and I’ve been a repeat customer since. Here’s to more sober doner sarnies. DD Dobbins 42-44 Upper Parliament Street, NG1 2AG germandonerkebab.com

Not only are they incredibly tasty, but they’re all named after Matt Groening’s finest creations.

It’s unpossible to think just how far crueltyfree meats have come in a relatively short space of time, and No Homers are the finest example of what can be done in the cruelty-free meat market. Having sampled pretty much everything on their menu during several visits to their stall at Sneinton Vegan Market (their products are also available in several Notts spots, including The Avenues, Prickly Pear The Dice Cup and more), I can highly recommend the salami-style Don DiMaggio, the Fat Tony (pastrami) and the turkey-esque Professor Frink. They even do full roasts (which I had on Christmas Day), as well as pie and sandwich fillings. Things really are coming up Millhouse. Jason Edgar nohomers.co.uk

Fothergills Hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the city, grabbing a pint or two at Fothergills will now mean glimpsing a sneak peek of Nottingham Castle’s renovation, set to open later this year. The pub has changed their opening hours too, meaning they’ll be open every day until at least 9pm.

5-7 Castle Rd, NG1 6AA Fat Hippo The new kid on the block will be opening its doors for the first time on 12 April, and have even started taking bookings for the occasion. If you can’t wait any longer to sneak a taste of their menu, described as ‘good old fashioned, roll up your sleeves + get it all over your face’ food, you can catch ‘em on delivery now.

9 Broad St, NG1 3AJ Canalhouse Folk are so happy at the prospect of grabbing a cold one next to the canal that the Canalhouse is already booked out solidly for the first week. The good news is that it's just for the tables under the canopy – if you’re willing to chance a little rain, you can still get your Castle Rock fix.

48-52 Canal St, NG1 7EH Pitcher and Piano On a hot summer’s evening, you’ve hit the jackpot if you’re lucky enough to grab the final outdoor table at Nottingham’s Pitcher and Piano. Probably one of the most desired beer gardens in the city, but it’s easy to see why – gothic architecture and sunset skylines.

High Pavement, NG1 1HN

To Follow – Clemie’s Vegan Cakes From cupcakes and brownies to shortbread and cookies, Clemie is the undisputed queen of the vegan sweet scene. @clemievegancake

Want your Nottingham foodie business featured in the mag?

Fancy writing for us?

Email our Food Editor at eve.smallman@leftlion.co.uk

Blend Oh, how we’re excited to see a bustling Sneinton Market again. Blend has continued to brighten our day throughout lockdown by still offering takeaway during limited hours, but nothing quite compares to a toastie and iced latte as the sun beats down on the wooden benches.

Sneinton Market, NG1 1DW

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MUSIC

interview: Eileen Pegg illustration: Anna Keo

inspiring the next generation Tenacious, driven, yet always humble, Shekayla Maragh is a cultural producer making moves for musicians in the Midlands. Supporting minority musical talent on a regional level, encouraging people to have ownership, equality and build careers with integrity and longevity is important to Shekayla. She turned down a traditional industry A&R role in London to carve out her own organic career path; staying curious and being empowered by her work is also key. Led by her passion, she launched musical development agency, CUBE, in 2019.

Following the impact of Coronavirus on the arts, this local focus has never been more important, alongside the need to support and create wider opportunities within music. Using lockdown as an opportunity to “prioritise rest and develop a deeper understanding of what it means to centre care in my practice”, this doesn’t mean that the past twelve months have been quiet for Shekayla – CUBE has just finished its first virtual music production course for womxn and gender minority talent, powered by Ableton and led by respected singer/songwriter and producer, Emmavie.

Ahead of CUBE’s next workshop at the end of April, Shekayla shares more about her agency, her work and her plans for the future…

Can you tell us some more about CUBE? I wanted to create spaces for the thinkers, dreamers, and doers of my music community by providing inclusive industry opportunities and bring value by helping to build inroads to the wider music sector. We have worked with industry professionals like Musicians' Union, Ableton, Suzi Analogue and more to make the above happen.

I love building ideas and giving them a form through music because I want to invite voices who are overshadowed by those better equipped to tell their stories. Meaningful access to the arts is foundational to my work identity.

That said, I recognise it is going to take a collective effort across the sector to help smash that popular imagination of there being "a lack of infrastructure".

While that is true, I do think things are beginning to shift in the right direction to lessen that imbalance.

It's a marathon, and we need tailored investment in regional talent so that we can be seen as the vibrant cultural melting pot that we are.

You’ve spent time working in Birmingham before returning to Nottingham – what experience will you bring back with you?

I chose Birmingham because I love its creative energy.

It gave me my first stable, industry job and breathable space to test ideas. It hasn't been that long since I

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reconnected with Notts – a lot has changed, in a good way!

I'm learning about the creative scene and incredible individuals who are doing good work and championing the city. Collaboration and working interdependently with the right people can cook up some powerful remedies. This is something I have witnessed through our music production courses.

Being aware of what is happening locally and contributing to the ecosystem helps me to understand the needs which influence project design and how it can bring value to the community it intends to serve.

It is super important that projects are steered by those who have lived experiences in the city because we understand how to make it land authentically.

You’ve also been working in other events across the UK and the EU with Keychange, how did you get involved in that?

There's a lot of responsibility that comes with freelancing, a large part of that is being in the right networks that can support your career trajectory.

As overwhelming as the creative industries are, you have to show up for yourself and trust the process. I got involved with Keychange as an innovator because someone I had met at the Sorveiv music summit in Norway a few years ago encouraged me to apply.

Having mentors and people that champion you and your work are so important because they might see something in you before you see it.

Do you think having this wider experience impacts any of your work back in the Midlands?

100%. When I go to new places and spaces, I am here to learn and when necessary, speak up. It has enabled me to build relationships with good people who are interested in what CUBE does and support the vision.

Sometimes I leave feeling energised and I want to use that currency to do good work, hopefully.

What drives you to work in music over other creative practices?

Music is boundless and provides a voice for storytelling, and it's through the sharing of our stories that closes the gap of misunderstanding. Music

intersects so many different art forms effortlessly.

Art forms continue to blur the lines and I find that crazy fascinating. It is the melding of disciplines that keeps me curious to see how far music and art can go, especially when you work from a place of inclusivity and provide artists with the right tools to create, experiment and play. Also, please pay them.

I have an affinity for creativity but I don't consider myself as a musician or DJ, although I can curate a banging playlist! [Shekayla has been showcasing these skills on Mimm radio, hosting 'Where it's warm' playing a selection of sounds that make us feel warm] I have a sensitivity for artists, especially those working in the independent sector, because choosing a career in music isn’t easy. There is an ongoing knowledge gap between artists and the business because it's in constant flux with the development of new technologies like NFTs, which looks promising for artists in having more control over their Intellectual Property. And then there's finding your audience to make a livelihood in a highly competitive market.

Those challenges increase when you sit in a marginalised group. It's still 95% of men who make up the workforce in music tech roles and that remaining 5% is still unrepresented with gender minorities and women of colour. It makes sense to create work that helps people who need it most and, inevitably, I'm driven by that because I'm part of that community.

What are your plans for CUBE in the future?

We have another online music production course running at the end of April with the wonderful artist/ producer Emmavie for womxn based in the Midlands, powered by Ableton. If you are interested in learning about the fundamentals of production this is for you.

And it's free.

There are a couple of projects developing behind the scenes so if you want to keep in the loop, get involved or support what CUBE is doing, let's connect. @wearecubespace @shekayla_maragh

Reviews Swantjé Flavour Swantjé’s latest single, Flavour, is perfectly sung with vocal tones that echo the calming confidence in her lyrics. A tale of growth and empowerment, digging deep and taking control of her relationships, encompassed in an irresistible melody that oozes warmth and addictive qualities. Though only three releases in, it’s clear that magic happens when Swantjé, Chawe and AndretheProducer collaborate.

There’s plenty more to come from this artist, we’re sure. Eileen Pegg

Babe Punch Glitter

Zig da kid VHS Vol 2

Although still a relatively young band, Babe Punch are becoming known for their specific brand of loud, proud punk. Glitter provides the in-your-face instrumentals and melody we’ve come to expect from this quartet, with inspiration forming from the band's experiences growing up in a male-dominated music scene. Showcasing equal amounts grit and melody, there's a powerful story of strength told throughout this tune. Alex Keene

Full of individual ideas and sounds with memorable, repetitive bars that take you on a trip to another planet. Powerful beats almost overpowered the vocals in some tracks, but if you’re going to do everything else differently, why not experiment with it all? Zig uses a mix of genres and styles as well as different collaborations to create his own, rather unique, trademark. It really works. Matthew Benton-Smith

Son of Philip Play Monotonous

Do Nothing Glueland

Well known party crew, Wigflex, has re-launched its label after a six-year hiatus and Play Monotonous is an exquisite return to action. Sticking to its mantra of releasing wonky electronic numbers made in Notts, this record has the rare quality of being beautifully chaotic and peaceful simultaneously. It is easy to see why tastemakers like Ben UFO are calling it “an instant classic”. Rory Evans

Following the triumphant release of their 2020 EP, Zero Dollar Bill, Nottingham’s hottest band release Glueland, a toe-tapping fivetrack record full of signature off-kilter guitars and acerbic lyricism which also explores new sonic territories and time signatures.

Garnering top reviews from tastemakers, Do Nothing somersault from strength to strength in a series of agile manoeuvres, set to propel them as a household name in modern postpunk. Laura Phillips

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.

Beau Presley BP has a fascinating contrast in his music. He sounds like he’s 67 years old, lived a wild life, and has been playing his guitar since he was a youngun. But, turns out he is a youngun – at just sixteen Beau has already written a bunch of #bluesybangers, and this is just the beginning.

Plus – once COVID naffs off we know this is gonna be WILD live.

@beaupresleymusic

Saffron Managing to surf the line between soul and pop, while flirting with a bit of ‘people in Shoreditch could love this too’, Saffron has already managed to find a very distinctive sound. One that has her as ready to dominate cool radio stations as much as TikTok. Wherever she ends up – get hyped, because NG has a new megastar on the block.

@saffronmusicc leftlion.co.uk/issue134 39

Art

words: Rachel Willcocks photos: Andy Keate

UNDER COVER ARTIST

(Left) Simon Starling, 2016. Installation view, Nottingham Contemporary. (Right) Donald Rodney, The House That Jack Built, 1987. Exhibition view, The Place Is Here, Nottingham Contemporary, 2017. Courtesy of Museums Sheffield. Photos: Andy Keate

Give it up for Trent Turning what you love to do and what you're passionate about into something that pays the bills ain't an easy job. Being creative and finding your place within the industry can be a challenge at the best of times, but one route many artists take to further develop their practice is to study at university. Our Art Editors run down some of the biggest names to have honed their skills at Nottingham Trent University...

Despite the recent controversy around art schools – the ridiculous course prices and the plague of the millennial generation with so-called "pointless" degrees – having the chance to study at university offers many the time, resources, and expertise to grow as artists.

Nottingham Trent University is a cornerstone of Nottingham's creative community. Many students come to the city to pursue their artistic talents into a career. Needless to say, Notts is an excellent place to study art. The University's artistic talent feeds the creative community around the city, and local, national and internationally well-known artists have cut their teeth and mastered their practice in Notts.

Some of the most renowned, influential and successful NTU alumni in the art world include...

Simon Procter, an artist and photographer born up in Lancashire and raised in Royston, a small mining village in South Yorkshire. He studied Fine Art for many years, specialising in Painting and Sculpture.

A big name in the fashion world, Procter's work can be found on the glossy pages of magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and he worked with Karl Lagerfeld to create the photo book Lagerfeld: The Chanel Shows, highlighting the beloved designers most iconic Chanel runway shows over the last ten years. Plus, Procter's work has been exhibited worldwide. On the commercial side of things, he's snapped up advertising jobs for big names such as Chanel, Dior, Nike and more. Procter has also become one of the most collectable photographers of his generation. simonprocter.com Donald Rodney (18 May 1961 – 4 March 1998) was a leading figure in Britain's Black Art Movement. Born in Birmingham, he was part of the Midlands-based BLK Art Group with Keith Piper, Marlene Smith and Eddie Chambers. Rodney became recognised as "one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his generation." His work appropriated images from the mass media, art, and popular culture to explore racial identity and racism. Rodney lived with anaemia his whole life and used his condition as a metaphor for black emasculation, racial stereotyping and wider socio-political concerns in contemporary society.

Rodney died from sickle-cell anaemia, aged just 36 in 1998. His artistic career spanned two decades and produced some of the most innovative work by a British artist of his generation.

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Jon Burgerman is a NYC-based artist instigating improvisation and play through drawing and spectacle. Think googly eyes, pizza and squiggles.

His brightly-coloured images create characters and humour that jump off the page. Jon is often referenced as the leading figure in the popular 'Doodle' art style.

His work includes murals, paintings, books, videos and animations.

It is Burgerman's belief that through these playful, creative acts, art can act as an agent to change the world, by being the catalyst to allow people to change their worlds. Burgerman's work has been shown in exhibitions worldwide, and he has collaborated with big-name brands such as Apple, Instagram, Snapchat, Coca-Cola, Nike, Disney and more. jonburgerman.com Diana Ali is an artist and curator whose practice involves fictional narratives, play on language and text through drawing, experimental photography, installation and direct animation. A broadcast star in her own right too, she features as a mentor on the BBC's Big Painting Challenge show.

Ali is interested in exploring correspondence, communication, connectivity and collaboration through art. She travels, gets lost and collects found and hidden images, embedding narratives within them. Her work has been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally. dianaali.com

Artist Jay Wilkinson talks us through his second LeftLion cover, a collaboration with Rupert Rennie...

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by a lot of eighties and nineties nostalgia, movies, graphic novels and album art.

What was the inspiration behind the cover?

With this issue's theme focused on generations, I wanted to represent both genders' journey from childhood to death. We all start and end at the same place.

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

For me it was taking a different visual direction from the last cover I illustrated (LeftLion #119, November 2019) using clean linework and simple design practices rather than my usual high detail/grunge textures.

The biggest challenge was probably stepping back and knowing when to stop which, if you ask any creative, is always tough.

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

I always take any projects that are given to me; creating artwork for bands, t-shirt designs, etc. Most recently I worked on a charity t-shirt design for The Chameleon, which has been struggling during the lockdown period. It’s a good feeling to help out such a great independent venue.

Simon Starling is a conceptual artist interested in physical, poetic and metaphorical journeys. Using video, film, slide projections, photography, event and sculpture, Starling's work uncovers unexpected and complex histories. Other areas of investigation include lost histories of manufacture. Leading on from this, he has explored issues such as engineering, mining, excavation and geology through art.

What have you got planned for the future?

Grasping any opportunities that come my way! I’ll hopefully create work for some big events in Nottingham and showcase my work to potential new clients. I would love to do more work for magazines and printed media.

Starling won the Turner Prize in 2005 for his work Shedboatshed – a shed that was transformed into a boat and sailed down the Rhine before being reconstructed back into a shed in a gallery. Starling's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin and is a professor of Fine Art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.

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

I hope you enjoy the artwork for the generations issue! If you’d like to see more work or contact me for art, hit up my Instagram.

@mindlines.uk

young at art

words: Kelly Palfrey photos: Tom Morley

Young people are our future, and we need to invest in them to ensure they can thrive and reach their full potential – for everyone’s benefit. In a time when youth services are being cut, access to spaces that allow young people a chance to develop skills, foster a sense of community, and feel valued are of increasing importance. Some of Nottingham’s art galleries and organisations are investing in the city’s young people through their art collectives...

Pending Collective BACKLIT’s Pending Collective offers emerging artists a chance to get involved with creative projects that help them build a connection with the local culture and community, with the intention of enriching the lives of all involved. Gina Mollett, the Learning and Community Coordinator at BACKLIT, said of the collective; “We want to provide an accessible entry point to the local arts scene.”

While the ongoing lockdown restrictions have meant that BACKLIT is closed, members have been actively engaging in projects both online and outside of the gallery, including virtual artist workshops and socially-distanced gardening sessions in King Edward Park.

The members of Pending Collective are also currently working on a Community Cinema project and an Allotment project for the summer that aim to bring the people of the local community together. backlit.org.uk/pending-collective

Young Producers City Arts’ Young Producers supports 18-30 year olds in participation in the arts, and was born out of the World Events Young Artist Festival that was held in Nottingham in 2012. It was formed after the under-eighteens that City Arts had previously worked with expressed a desire to continue their involvement with the organisation. When asked what the main aim of the collective was, Alma Solarte-Tobon, the creative producer at City Arts, said: “We hope to support members to keep being creative after leaving education, when opportunities often drop off.” The collective offers participants resources, funding and advice, bringing young creatives together to learn new skills, collaborate on projects and meet new people.

Young Producers have been active online throughout lockdown, primarily on Instagram.

One project, ‘Isolation Creations’ saw the group upload daily creative activities to keep people motivated at home. The project lasted two months and featured sixty different activities, including crafts and poetry readings. city-arts.org.uk/meet-young-producers

1525 Collective Nottingham Contemporary’s 1525 Collective offers young people aged 15-25 a space for critical engagement, to share resources, support each other’s creative interests, and discuss ideas. Wingshan Smith, Nottingham Contemporary’s Youth Programmer, said that the collective “pledge to connect and respond to the issues that affect young people in the city.” In the spirit of this, the members of 1525 Collective responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by creating an online open resource document that directed local residents to helpful links and information on the pandemic. They also launched social media takeovers on Instagram, which was an opportunity to use the group’s social media platform to raise the profile of young artists.

The pandemic caused the 1525 Collective to take a pause, but Wingshan informed us that this time was used to, “reflect and research the rapidly changing needs of young people,” and that “fundamental to our work is a desire to increase young people’s sense of agency in a time of uncertainty.” Fostering a strong sense of community, and creating a space for young people to think creatively and to dream is at the heart of 1525 Collective. nottinghamcontemporary.org/exchange/collabor8-15-25-year-olds

All Black Connect New Art Exchange’s (NAE) All Black Connect (ABC) offers young people a space to creatively explore the issues facing young black people in the UK today. ABC continues to discuss the themes from last year’s A Blank Canvas exhibition, which featured black creatives from across the East Midlands and moved away from the often misrepresented displays of black pain and anger, instead exploring a nuanced view of passion, joy and radical softness. Jade Foster, New Art Exchange’s Creative Programme Coordinator, says they hope “the collective gives young people a chance to explore issues and creativity, allowing space for those who often feel marginalised in the arts.”

The ABC programme has unfortunately been paused due to the current restrictions, but this time has been used to reflect and think of new ways to engage the group in the future, including the upcoming online reading group Reading Beyond, and the informal reading group Between the Lines Book Club, which is in collaboration with NAE’s Beyond Black History Month Programme. nae.org.uk

Film movies and me: William Ivory Southwell’s own William Ivory, BAFTA-nominated screenwriter of Made in Dagenham and Burton and Taylor, discusses the films that have influenced him throughout the years – from the scarring impact of Bambi to the rage-inducing absurdity of The Lighthouse.

What’s the first film you remember watching as a kid?

I saw Ring of Bright Water, which is a film about an otter, at the cinema and I remember crying all the way home.

Then I remember watching Bambi and I was similarly traumatised after that.

What was your favourite as a teenager?

Babette’s Feast. I remember seeing that when I was about sixteen or seventeen, and just thinking it was exquisite; what art should be, in a way. The other one is Top Gun. I bought myself some dog tags and the aviator shades – it was appalling!

Which film inspired you to get into filmmaking?

The Lost Weekend. I remember watching that when I was about fifteen and it’s one of the most devastating films. It showed me you can make powerful films that are funny as well and I believed that was something I could do.

Do you have a favourite Nottinghamproduced film?

I really admire Shane [Meadows’] work.

A Room for Romeo Brass is my favourite Shane movie. It’s got a tighter script than some of his other work, and his genius is that he can flip tone on a sixpence.

What’s the last film you saw at the cinema?

Monos, which is about a children’s army out in the jungle. Everyone raved about it, but I hated it. Another one I watched was The Lighthouse, which I similarly hate with a vengeance. Someone was taking the piss there.

What’s your favourite film of the 21st century so far?

I thought Jojo Rabbit was incredible. I had to be helped out of the cinema because I was crying that much. It was sensational. I saw a film recently called A Ghost Waits, which was beautiful as well.

What’s the best that you’ve seen from home during lockdown?

I saw Handsome Devil, which is a gay rom-com. I thought it was really nicely put together, and I felt good watching it. And Green Room, about this American punk band that gets hired to play in real redneck territory. It’s like Deliverance meets a Green Day concert.

Is there a film that you think more people should be aware of?

Golden Balls is this romp through low-life Spanish society; it’s funny and Javier Bardem’s brilliant. The only other one would be Loves of a Blonde by Miloš Forman. It’s just the most beautiful, simple story.

What’s your favourite film that you’ve been involved in?

I’m going to use film loosely and say Burton and Taylor. I thought Richard Laxton, who directed the film, was spectacularly good and Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic West were also astonishing. @williamivory

Box of Chocolates Film, like theatre, is posed with a challenge: to tell a compelling story within a single sitting.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but when someone says “Let’s watch a movie”, they probably don’t have Abel Gance’s almost six-hour Napoleon (1927) in mind.

Nonetheless, some films attempt to tackle the mammoth task of condensing a character’s entire life story into just a few hours.

When it works, it’s a spectacular reminder of the power of cinema.

One of the earliest to do so, and still held as the gold standard, is Citizen Kane (1941), in which the titular character’s whole life is laid bare as audiences attempt to decipher the single dying word he utters in the opening scene. A few years later, Frank Capra would offer a more optimistic variation on the formula with It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), demonstrating how one person’s good deeds can have further-reaching consequences than we could ever imagine.

While subsequent additions to the canon mostly borrow heavily from either of these two, there have still been some interesting takes on the concept over the past few decades. Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday (1991) meditates on how our early experiences shape the way we see the world as adults, switching between protagonist Taeko’s present-day life and her childhood memories over the course of the film.

Though perhaps the most iconic summation of human life in cinema is the “box of chocolates” quote in Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (1994). Penned by screenwriter Eric Roth, its succinct melancholy has resonated with moviegoers of all ages. A few idiosyncratic twists on the life story film later arrived in the new millennium, including Tim Burton’s shaggy-dog tale Big Fish (2003), David Fincher’s inverted Benjamin Button (2008), and those tragic first five minutes of Pete Docter’s Up (2009).

But what unites each of these movies is their ability to give us perspective on our own lives; how each day is but a scene in a larger story, and that all things must pass. Good films keep us entertained for two hours, but great films stay with us for life.

words: Jamie Morris

illustration: Emmy Smith

sophia ramcharan: a tribute The Nottingham film community was shocked by the passing of producer, filmmaker and activist Sophia Ramcharan, who sadly lost her life last month. As a universally respected and loved member of the city’s creative community, she worked on countless projects, creating opportunities and offering advice and support to all who were fortunate enough to work with her. We spoke to some of the people and organisations that worked closely with her over the years to hear their tributes...

Nottingham Writers’ Studio

It's hard to find the words to express what great sadness we still feel at the news of Sophia's passing.

Not only will NWS miss her enthusiasm and vision for change, the whole creative community will too. When Sophia accepted the invitation to join the Board of Nottingham Writers' Studio, we were beyond excited.

The opportunity to work alongside someone of her standing in the Nottingham arts community was such a thrill, and her inspirational ideas flowed from the very first meeting she attended.

Though Sophia has sadly left us too soon, we can at least take comfort in knowing she will be long remembered for her many outstanding achievements. Her input and contributions to the Studio and beyond cannot be overstated. She will be sorely missed.

Tristan Ofield

I can’t speak of Sophia socially because that wasn’t how I knew her. We only worked together for two projects. I won’t be able to speak as others will, those who knew her so much better. For the next minute or so, I beg your forgiveness while I tell you what she meant to me.

During my first meeting with Sophia she asked so many questions I remember thinking, “I’m glad she’s on my side.” She stunned me with her intelligence, professionalism and quiet self-belief. She was a source of strength because she never doubted the projects. She believed in one of them so much, she fronted her own money and entered us in a film festival in L.A. that I wouldn’t have dared enter. Not only did we get in, but we went. We both felt this was the beginning of something.

The way to honour her, as I see it, is to keep making shorts, music videos, documentaries and feature films. At those times when it’s not going our way and we feel like quitting, to take one more step forward, because she believed in us.

Dr Ifran Malik

I was extremely shocked and saddened to hear the news of Sophia's passing. We worked together on the team organising Nottingham's annual South Asian Heritage Month over the last four years. She was a very friendly person, having a positive attitude towards many community projects that she was involved with. I recall in 2017 she assisted in getting the movie Victoria & Abdul to Broadway Cinema.

Shrabani Basu, who wrote the book the film was based on, was invited by Sophia for the Nottingham launch, taking part in a question and answer session.

She will be sadly missed by many who knew her.

Broadway Cinema

A true cinema-lover, both as a viewer and a creator, Sophia had an unerring eye for talent and was an immensely gifted event producer, film programmer and creative professional. Her role at Broadway since 2015 was to liaise with groups from all areas of the community to enhance screenings and create exciting events for everyone to enjoy. She did this in her own unique way, bringing in writers, musicians, poets, craft-makers, artists, DJs and a whole host of creative and thoughtful people to respond to and engage with great films. In doing so she created great memories, and enriching and joyful experiences for audiences.

She was always brimming with ideas and enthusiasm for her work and could magic up a special event like no one else because of her deep connection to Nottingham and its people. Because of her natural warmth, intelligence and empathy, Sophia was the consummate ‘community connector.’ She was an integral part of Broadway, and will be most sorely and deeply missed.

Steve Deery

Occasionally Sophia and I would meet in John Lewis’ cafe. Over tea and cake we’d discuss our hopes and frustrations with various projects. We’d laugh at the frequent absurdities the film business fosters. Yet, after she left I never quite knew where she had come from, or where she might be going. She valued her privacy. But friendship and professional relationships require only that we know enough, not everything.

On the other hand as a Producer she was open, honest and direct. A few days ago I came across a notebook entry: “Fly boys – discuss with Sophia”. We had discussed the project during the first lockdown.

Her first questions were, “Why this project? Why now?” She always knew the right questions to ask.

In the East Midlands there are talented individuals in the film business. Sophia was adept at finding them, in whatever department. If you took your work seriously, she took you seriously. We all know talented young people in film and television today who had their start on a Stella Vision production.

The projects we completed together were a success because of Sophia’s passion, professionalism, and dedication. There was no problem to which she did not have a solution. I had hoped to repay my personal debt of gratitude. Sadly, I, like many others in the community, will remain forever indebted.

Sophia’s talent was clear and bright. We mourn her passing, but grateful for having known and worked with her.

Sophie Black

It's hard to know exactly what to say, or how to really put this into words, so let me share a quick memory instead: I was lucky enough to work with Sophia as a producer, when she was one of the two producers on my short film Night Owls in 2014 (which I directed).

As with all independent film projects, there were a lot of hurdles for us to overcome, a lot of challenges that cropped up along the way, so I often came to Sophia for help. Whatever over-dramatic story I'd just told her, no matter how stressed I was, Sophia would always listen quietly, pause for a moment, and then calmly say "Okay". No matter how big the problem, how worried I sounded, she'd always give me that soothing "Okay", before she'd lay out an action plan of steps for me to follow. She never lost her cool, she'd always process the issue at hand and help me sort it out, and I felt calmer just by talking with her.

Sophia was a private woman in many ways, always ready to listen instead of talk, and such a warmhearted, dignified presence on set. I had, and always will have, so much respect for her - as a local businesswoman working in the world of film, but also as a friend. I'm lucky to have known her and to have worked with her, and I'll never forget her.

New Art Exchange

Sophia was a dedicated NAE Trustee, respected filmmaker and community activist. She was an inspiring woman who championed truth, justice and being good and kind. Her creativity, sense of inclusion and openness, energy and enthusiasm made her a very special person to work with.

As a Trustee Sophia brought leadership in the fields of digital arts, culture and voluntary sectors to NAE, gained through her impressive career.

She joined in 2019 but her relationship with the organisation goes back many years. Alongside her own successful career as an independent filmmaker, she was passionate about supporting others and curated events and set up initiatives to showcase emerging filmmakers from culturally diverse backgrounds.

She built strong relationships locally and nationally to make voices from the community seen and heard. She worked on many projects with a focus on diversity and inclusion, including Stephen Lawrence Day, Windrush 70 and the Nottingham Carnival film project. She sat on several boards and steering groups in Nottingham and UK-wide, her experience was unmatched. She was an expert in her field and a strong, independent woman who will be sorely missed. leftlion.co.uk/issue134 43

Back in the Day

We delve through the archives of LeftLion to let you know what was happening in Nottingham on this month many years ago…

words: Jared Wilson

nine years ago...

From the pages of LeftLion #46

Derren Brown

Master of magic, mind control and manipulation; Derren Brown has made an international career of persuading people to think and do things they otherwise would not. So when we asked him if he fancied an interview with LeftLion, before an appearance at the Theatre Royal, we were elated and yet filled with trepidation when he said “yes.”

Dilk and Montana

Graffiti went mainstream in Nottingham last year with thousands of people queuing up to have a selfie taken outside a ropey-looking beauty salon on Ilkeston Road. However, the likes of Dilk and Montana have been working in our local street art scene for decades. Issue #46 featured an interview we did with him to celebrate the tenth birthday of the city’s favourite paint shop.

Graham Coxon

While his Blur bandmate Damon was poncing around the world pretending to be a cartoon character, Graham Coxon was going back to his roots touring the Rescue Rooms with his pop rock album A + E. We sent Andrew Trendell, one of our young upcoming music writers along to do an interview. Nowadays he’s the News Editor of NME. Good lad!

eleven years ago...

From the pages of LeftLion #28

Selectadisc Closes

In a world where music in a physical format seems unnecessary and where most people’s music tastes are decided by algorithms, it’s genuinely quite hard to explain the importance of Selectadisc.

But for four and a half decades this record shop stood proud in the city centre and was the hub for people who loved music.

When it closed a former worker told his story and we collectively wept.

Hillsborough Disaster

A Canadian Goes To Hooters

Paper Lace

Bent

It often goes under the radar that there were two teams playing on 15 April 1989, when 96 Liverpool FC fans lost their lives.

The FA Cup semi-final day that was meant to be filled with joy for at least one of the teams, but ended up being one of world football’s darkest days. We spoke to a few of the thousands of Forest fans who had no choice but to sit there and watch people die.

For thirty-odd issues up to 2012, LeftLion had a column by a ‘Canadian In New Basford’. We sent him to places around the city and his thoughts on them were bloody hilarious. Perhaps none more so than when we sent him to the home of chicken wings and non-chicken breasts.

The fact that Nottingham remains the only UK city to be able to hold down a branch of the gaudy American glitz still fills us with a strange pride.

sixteen years ago...

From the pages of LeftLion #4

Gotham

For those of you that still don’t know, that little village in Rushcliffe we pronounce “Goat-ham” really is the genesis of Batman and Gotham City. We repeat: the shared name of Gotham and Gotham City is not a coincidence! For any local superhero fans, it’s a story that has its roots in sixteenth century literature, the unwillingness of eleventh century peasants to pay taxes and the early settlers in New York. Holy History Batman!

Back in 1974 (when being number one in the charts basically meant you were the most important people in the country that week) a group of lads from Nottingham made it with a song about someone who went to war and didn’t come back. We had a natter with lead singer Philip Wright to reminisce. If your grandparents are still around, ask them what “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” means and it’s bound to raise a smile.

The electronic duo made up of Neil "Nail" Tolliday and Simon Mills released a new album as recently as last year, but it was back in 2005 that we first interviewed them in our pages. For two blokes who were being flown across the world supporting the Scissor Sisters, they were delightfully down to earth. When we asked them about their favourite Nottingham haunts, they namechecked Wilkos on Parliament Street.

To read these issues and more from our archives visit overallmag.com and leftlion.co.uk/magazine

hockley hustle launch collaboration album for Emmanuel house Hockley Hustle has announced an album of collaborations featuring the cream of Notts’ music talent and emerging artists, the proceeds of which will go to homeless support charity Emmanuel House. The result of a successful Arts Council funding bid, each of the ten tracks on the album will be available to purchase exclusively from Bandcamp with an option to make additional donations to Emmanuel House, with the full digital album being available later in the year.

Denis Tully, CEO at Emmanuel House, said: “We are thrilled to be involved in such an exciting project and would like to thank Hockley Hustle for choosing Emmanuel House again. We are so lucky to be connected with Nottingham’s creative community.”

The first track sees rapper and poet Ty Healy team up with soul songstress Harleighblu, beginning a strong line-up of musical talent that also includes Do Nothing, Megatrain, Rob Green, Natalie Duncan, Bru-C, Jah Digga and spoken word poet Bridie Squires.

Tommy Farmyard, festival director, added: “Not only will this Album of Collaborations help a charity that works tirelessly across the city to support the homeless community, it also funnels money to artists right now and gives them an opportunity to connect and work together. We’re excited to see what they create!”

Four local artists – Honey Williams, Emily Catherine, Soz Mate and Jasmin Issaka – have also collaborated to design the different elements of the cover art, each creating a different quarter of a map of Nottinghamshire.

Hockley Hustle has also announced that the festival will be back this year on Sunday 24 October. Announcements are coming soon on the line-up as well as a number of other live events throughout the year to look out for.

To keep up-to-date, follow Hockley Hustle socials. hockley.hustle.bandcamp.com @hockleyhustle

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words: Ashley Carter ilustration: Natalie Owen

From rather innocuous beginnings in Sutton Bonington, Nottinghamshire, Henry Albert Pierrepoint – who simply went

by Harry – would go on to create a rather unique, gruesome family dynasty. For at various times during the first half of the twentieth century, Harry, his son, Albert and brother, Thomas, all held the position of Hangman of England, executing 849 men and women between them…

“The sentence of the Court upon you is, that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution and that you be hanged by the neck until you be dead…May the Lord have mercy on your soul…”

It’s a fitting testament to the societal change in attitude toward capital punishment that those evocatively macabre words feel so archaic and alien to the modern ear. So much so, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to imagine a time when, not only were executions held frequently and in full public view, but the role of executioner was seen as a desirable profession.

Queen Victoria’s reign as monarch had ended just three weeks before Harry Pierrepoint applied to become a hangman. Her 64 years on the throne had seen wholesale change in the manner in which the law was applied and justice was served. While at the beginning of her reign, the death sentence could be applied for burglary, rape or attempted murder, it gradually became reserved for all but wilful murder – though, somewhat remarkably, executions were still carried out in public until 1868.

As the fourth child and second son of Thomas and Ann Pierrepoint, Harry’s early life in Sutton Bonington was largely uneventful. His parents ran the King’s Head pub in East Leake, before his father uprooted the family to Yorkshire, where he’d found work looking after quarry horses. While working at a worsted mill in Clayton, a thirteen-year-old Harry read about the exploits of the well-known Bradford executioner James Berry, whose career as the country’s leading hangman had come to an infamous end after a series of botched executions.

Harry was enthralled by the idea of life as an executioner.

For eleven years the dream consumed him as he relished reading newspaper reports of James Billington, a contemporary hangman responsible for executing Charles Thomas Woodridge (the man immortalized in Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol) and Thomas Neill Cream, whose alleged final words of “I am Jack the…” were tantalizingly cut short by Billington’s noose, teasing a conclusion to the great mystery of Jack the Ripper’s true identity.

In 1901, aged just 24, Harry wrote to none other than the Home Secretary:

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“I wish to inform you that I should be very thankfull if you would accept me as one of the public executioner’s should at any time Mr Billington’s term expires as I have always had a desire for that appointment. I am 24 years of age, height 5ft 8 1/2 inches. Should you require particulars of my character I shall be very glad to give you all the information you require. Hoping the application will be off no offence.”

As far as cover letters go, what wouldn’t get you an interview delivering leaflets in 2021 apparently was enough to secure a position of executing people in 1901, as the note received a positive reply almost immediately.

It was that letter and Harry’s subsequent employment as an assistant executioner, which set into motion a chain of events that saw the Pierrepoint name dominate the annals of British criminology more than any other for the next half century.

Between December 1948 and October 1949, he travelled to Hamelin several times, executing a total of 226 people, often more than ten a day Training was intense. Just over a decade before his appointment, the release of the Aberdare Report had sent shockwaves through Victorian society, as the inefficient, cruel and bungling nature of capital punishment methods were brought to light for the first time. Having been commissioned to address issues surrounding the appointment and conduct of executioners, it sought to eradicate the slap-dash culture that had seen several high-profile executions botched.

There was no set standard for gallows, nor length or type of rope, or adjustment for the height and weight of the condemned, meaning that, rather than the desired instant, painless death by separating of the second and third vertebrae, victims were slowly, agonizingly strangling to death for up to fifteen minutes on a far too frequent basis. The changes ensured that Harry’s training was thorough, and repetitive practise runs with a dummy were the key to success.

Maurice Faugeron was a 23-year-old French anarchist and army deserter who had been convicted of murdering Swiss watchmaker Hermann Jung. The exact nature of their quarrel was contested, with theories ranging from owed money to a dispute over a plot to assassinate Tsar Nicholas II, who was staying in Paris at the time. When the judge passed his death sentence with the words “May the Lord have mercy on your soul”, Faugeron replied: “I hope so. If that is what justice is in this country I hope I shall have better justice in the next world.”

Not only was Faugeron’s hanging to be Harry’s first taste of life in the execution trade, but it offered him the chance to assist James Billington, the man who had been Chief Executioner for over a decade, and whose exploits had so enthralled a younger Harry. The execution team, which also included Billington’s two sons, spent the night before sleeping in the cell next to Faugeron, where Harry was able to watch, unnoticed, as the Frenchmen contemplated his final hours. Pacing up and down his cell, Faugeron lit cigarettes one after another, pausing only to acknowledge the chime from the church bell across the road. Reaching a hand to the sky, he counted out the chimes, with each performance of the ritual bringing him an hour closer to his demise.

As 7am arrived, Faugeron ate a large breakfast before being allowed a final walk in the open air. At two minutes to eight, the team entered the room and, with slick precision, pinioned the condemned man’s arms behind his back, before marching him to the execution chamber. Faugeron showed no signs of fear as the noose was placed around his neck and, as Billington pushed the lever, he fell to his death. Harry later noted his own personal satisfaction that he’d felt neither fear nor nerves as he performed his duties. Maurice Faugeron would be the first 849 executions in which the Pierrepoints would be directly involved with.

Over the next few years, Harry worked primarily as an assistant to Billington and his sons, before being appointed as the principal executioner in Britain in 1905 following the deaths of Billington and his eldest son less than a month apart. The next year, he was to perform all eight hangings in the country. The serializations of his memoirs reveal a methodical, emotionless approach to Harry’s work, infrequently betrayed by injections of humanity, as can be seen after his assisting on the execution of former soldier Harry Williams.

After returning home from the Boer War, Williams had discovered that his wife had been unfaithful and, out of fear that she might “grow up like her mother”, murdered his five-year-old daughter, covering her body with a Union Jack. Following the execution, Harry noted in his memoirs that Williams had been the bravest he had ever hanged.

With the newfound shortage of executioners, Harry convinced his brother Thomas – who was seven years his senior – to join the profession. In 1905, a busy hangman could make far more money than a quarryman, the trade in which Thomas had been toiling. Under his brother’s now-expert tutelage, and extensive practice with rope and bags of corn, Thomas was easily accepted into the fold, eventually becoming even more prolific and respected than his brother. The Pierrepoint brothers were now the go-to names in the execution trade.

But the profession had started to take its toll on Harry.

Having taken part in over 100 executions, his propensity for drink had started to take a hold, and it was this descent into alcoholism that would eventually cost him his career.

Though he makes no reference to it in his memoirs, there was a purported event ahead of a 1910 execution at Chelmsford Prison where he arrived “considerably the worse for drink” and fought his assistant John Ellis.

Though he was never officially dismissed, the Home Office sought fit to remove his name from the list of approved executioners.

Thomas, meanwhile, continued to work steadily in a career that lasted almost four decades. During this time he presided over several high-profile executions, including that of poisoner Frederick Setton and accused-murderer Charlotte Bryant, and the hanging of thirteen US military personnel at the Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset, who had been committed for rape and murder during World War II. It was during these executions that Thomas was assisted by perhaps the most famous name in the Pierrepoint family, his nephew Albert.

After expressing an interest in the profession from as young as eleven, Albert had infrequently received training in the profession from his father Harry, and proven himself to be more than up to the task. Armed with the same stoic dedication to professionalism displayed by his uncle and father (before his descent into drink), Albert referred to the condemned as his ‘customers’ – he was there to do a job, and had the utmost desire to do it as professionally as possible. In his mind, whatever the men and women under

Object walk

his rope had done before that moment didn’t matter, and he took pride in causing as little pain, anxiety and stress as he could. In his own words, the execution process was “sacred” to him.

It’s believed that Albert executed up to 450 people during his time as a hangman – 433 men and 17 women – more than his father and uncle combined. His list of ‘customers’ reads like a who’s who of notorious criminals of the era: Gordon Cummins (the Blackout Ripper), John Haigh (the Acid Bath Murderer), John Christie (the Rillington Place Strangler), William Joyce (the British Nazi propagandist known as Lord Haw-Haw) and Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain. To give context to how recent these events took place, there’s footage of Albert discussing the execution of Ellis on Thames TV in 1977.

In his mind, whatever the men and women under his rope had done before that moment didn’t matter, and he took pride in causing as little pain, anxiety and stress as he could Albert’s reputation had so impressed his contemporaries that, following the widescale trial of Nazi war criminals after World War II, it was he that was chosen to be flown to Germany to perform the large number of executions at the personal request of General Montgomery.

It was Albert that was tasked with executing the men and women who had overseen the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, as well as other convicted war criminals. Between December 1948 and October 1949, he travelled to Hamelin several times, executing a total of 226 people, often more than ten a day. Despite the noted professionalism and efficiency with which he performed his grim task, Albert was overlooked when it came to carrying out the death sentences handed out during the Nuremberg Trials. With the US wanting to show the world that they had taken a lead-role in the punishment of Nazi war criminals, the comparatively inexperienced American John C. Woods was instead chosen, and Albert privately noted with disgust that the executions had been performed terribly.

The post-war executions brought a level of attention to the Pierrepoint’s trade that Albert had always sought to avoid. His uncle had followed his father’s path into the bottle, and ceased performing executions shortly after the war, leaving Albert as the lone Pierrepoint hangman.

Such was the secretive nature of his profession that it was only after he was married for several weeks that Albert revealed to his wife his true line of work. It wasn’t that he was ashamed as such, but rather that there were two men: Albert Pierrepoint the husband, pub landlord and jovial character always ready with a song, and Albert Pierrepoint the executioner. For as long as the two could be kept separate, Albert could lead a happy, relatively normal life.

But the publicity surrounding his duties in Germany had changed all of that forever.

Whereas at first he was hailed as a hero in a country swirling with patriotic pride, the changing attitudes toward capital punishment soon saw Albert feeling something of a social pariah. The high-profile executions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley in 1950 – both men who had been proven to be mentally incapacitated and with profound learning difficulties – followed by his execution of Ruth Ellis in 1955 had an enormous impact on both Albert and public opinion. Just two weeks after hanging Ellis, Albert Pierrepoint hanged Norman Green, who had confessed to killing two boys in his home town of Wigan. It would be his last execution.

Albert and his wife continued to run their pub until they retired to the seaside town of Southport in the sixties, where they lived in relative peace until Albert’s death in 1992 at the age of 87. In 1974, he published his memoirs, Executioner: Pierrepoint, which reflected his changing attitude toward the profession in which he’d followed his father and uncle, and that had made him a household name: “[Capital punishment] is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree. There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.”

Usually, Object Walk involves teaming up with the National Justice Museum to put objects from the past into the hands of people of the present. But lockdown means we’ve had to do things a little differently.

With our chosen object – a set of prisoner-made headphones – we invited illustrator Raphael Achache to join us for a Zoom chat where he was tasked with drawing the object based on our description. After that, we showed him the object to see how close he got...

“It’s a fantastic way to inspire creativity. I’m looking forward to this”

“Time for the grand reveal… is it a telephone?”

“Ah, I think I know what this is…”

“I’m just doing some finishing touches, then I’ll hold it up to the camera”

“Ah, of course…. They’re really impressive”

“I wasn’t far off. I got the audio part!” @raphicdesign raphicdesign.com leftlion.co.uk/issue134 47

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