Jimmy is a Wakefield poet who performs all over the UK. Co-founder of Red Shed Readings, he is a presenter on ELFM’s Love the Words, where he writes and produces the Jimmy Andrex Outside Broadcast, as well as co-curating their Writing on Air Festival.
Culture secretary enthuses about champagne picnics while artists try to work out how to make a living. Forget the grassy knoll, 9/11 or the outbreak of WWII. Can you remember where you were when Oliver Dowden announced that “music lovers can attend Glyndebourne this summer”? This writer still has lacerations of the throat from choking […]
How a Leeds songwriter is celebrating the city’s more isolated residents Has anyone ever written a song about you? Unless you’re Pattie Boyd or Dolly Parton’s love-rival, probably not, but that’s exactly what’s happening to a group of isolated older people in Leeds. Writer and poet Peter Spafford has already carved himself a niche as […]
I can dance, I can dance in my new lockdown pants! Are your pants giving you hot, sticky torture? Looking for that ice silk feel from a unique rhombus vent design? Me neither, but Facebook appears to think I need lots of pairs of elasticated shorts. I can barely find my bubble of benign bigotry […]
A Barnsley spoken word artist has produced a poetic tribute to the town’s hospital volunteers. Jeff ‘Jethro’ Platts was asked by Barnsley Hospital Charity to produce the piece as a way of saying thank you to a much valued, but sometimes forgotten, group of people who have continued to give their time in a variety […]
As the government considers changing the guidelines (at the same time as sidelining scientists), we look at why.
“Put it away, put it away, put it away now!” Spoken word artist Rose Condo wants us to put away our phones. For an hour at least. In The Empathy Experiment, the Huddersfield-based poet’s third spoken word show, shortlisted for Best Spoken Word Show at the 2020 Saboteur Awards, she asks the audience to hand over […]
The strange tale of the banned poem. Instagram has transformed poetry. Rupi Kaur, the world’s biggest-selling poet, made her name on Instagram. Put #poetry in your post and you’re tapping into a worldwide audience of millions. Poems are short, often little more than aphorisms but the platform, owned by Facebook, has become the go-to medium […]
Come into the garden, Maud. (But book in advance and wash your hands). As the UK stumbles into the open air, organisations and attractions all over the country strive to create some sort of ‘new normal’ that works. Nowhere is this more true than with the many garden visitor attractions in our region. Normally, the week […]
“A perfect storm.” That’s how Laura Chalmers, Yorkshire regional director of the Trussell Trust, who run 29 foodbanks in the county, describes the situation in Yorkshire. According to a study carried out on the 28 March by the Food Foundation, 12 per cent of people nationally are feeding families by breaking the lockdown to go […]
Covid-19 doesn’t have to infect you to affect you. As the side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic begin to manifest themselves in the form of anxiety and stress, recognition is growing of the toll this is taking, particularly on key workers. Organisations in the NHS, public health and the third sector – that reeled like […]
Improvisation has replaced ritual for those whose job is to help us at times of grief. Locked down, we are robbed of our perspective. Some things become invisible. A few days ago outside a funeral directors in Wakefield, there was a sparse gathering, mainly dressed in black. They loitered: maintaining social distance, but unsure; their awkward body language […]
How Seacroft’s Shopping Forecast is helping locals get their daily bread. Tesco Extra has plenty of everything today. Except flour. How do we know this? Because every day, Elliott Moon from East Leeds FM’s Keeping a Distance, Staying Close programme asks locals to text and phone in while they’re shopping. In fact, the other day, […]
Universal Basic Income. At last year’s G8 summit, those three words were the big story. They came from UBI proponent Rutger Bregman, whose Taxes! Taxes! Taxes! speech was all over social media. UBI is a simple idea. You address inequality and poverty by giving every adult free money, with no conditions. That’s it. Coronavirus has brought UBI […]
Lockdown. 2020’s word of the year. The word that sent us into a toilet-roll stockpiling frenzy. The word which has brought the entire world to a standstill (apart, it would seem, from football in Belarus). Lockdown, which began the week before the first national organising training of Green New Deal UK. One might expect a […]
The importance of freedom of movement for working musicians 3 chords and the truth. According to music legend, that’s all you needed. For Huddersfield Alt-folk artist Johnny Campbell, it’s held true for the last seven years as a pro musician. Touring on trains and coaches all over Europe and the USA, guitar in one hand, rucksack of […]