LeftLion Magazine - May 2021 - Issue 135

#135 May 2021

Credits

Supporters

Alan Gilby The Al-ai-Lama 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

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

Sub Editor Lauren Carter-Cooke Writers Peter Armitage Bassey Roshan Chandy Elliot Farnsworth Serena Haththotuwa Jennifer Joss Joshua Judson Addie Kenogbon Chris Lawton

4

Kate Hewett Literature Editor kate.hewett@leftlion.co.uk

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

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

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

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

George White Screen Co-Editor george.white@leftlion.co.uk

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

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

Al Draper, Alan Phelan, Alan Walker, Alison Gove-Humphries, Alison Harviek, Alison Hedley, Alison Knox, Alison Wale, Andrew Cooper, Angela Brown, Ankunda, Annie Rodgers, Ant Haywood, Anthony Blane, Anthony Gariff, Ashley Cooper, Bad Squiddo Games, Barbara Morgan, Barrie the Lurcher, Ben & Jack, Ben Jones, Ben Lester, Ben Lucas, Betty Rose Bakes, Bob Allison Âû, Bridgette Shilton, Carla Prestwich, Caroline Le Sueur, Chloe Langley, Chris Rogers, Claire Henson, Clare Foyle, D Lawson, Dan Lyons, David Dowling, David Knight, Dawn Pritchard, Diane Lane, Donna Rowe-Merriman, Eddie, Eden PR, Ellen O’Hara, Erika Diaz Petersen, Felicity Whittle, Frances & Garry Bryan, Friday Club Presents, Hayley Howard, Heather Hodkinson, Heather Oliver, Helena Tyce, House of Pain Wrestling Academy, Ian Storey, Ian Yanson, In memory of Anna Novak (Bradford and Scoraig), In memory of Jenny Smith, Ivy House Environmental, James Medd, James Place, James Wright, Jane Dodge, Jason Jenkins, Jayne Holmes, Jayne Paul William & Pirate Jack, Jed Southgate, Jim Lloyd, John Haslam, John Hess, Jon Blyth, Jordan Bright, Joshua Heathcote, Julian Bower, Kath Pyer, Katherine Sanders, Kathleen Dunham, Kay Gilby, Kaye Brennan, Kiki Dee the Cat, Livi & Jacob Nieri, Lizzy and Margot, Lucy Moult, Luke and Flo, Marc Weaver, Mark, Mark Barratt, Mark Gasson, Mark Rippey, Martin, Mathew Riches, Matt Turpin, Matthew Riches, Max Sherwin, Mighty Lightweights, MinorOak Coworking, Monica White, Nick G (real living wage rocks), Nicola Baumber, Nigel Cooke, Nigel King, Nikki Williams, Norman the Dog, NottingJam Orchestra, Oliver Ward, Pete Gray, Porchester Press, Rachel Ayrton, Rachel Hancorn, Rachel Morton, Reg & Lynette, Richard Barclay, Richard Goodwin, roastinghouse.co.uk, Rob Arthur, Ron Mure, Ros Evans, Roy Manterfield, Ruth Parry, Sam Hudson, Sam Nahirny, Sarah Manton, Simon Evans, Siobhán Cannon-Brownlie, Spicer, Steve Lyon, Steve Stickley Storyteller, Steve Wallace, Stuart Jones, Sue Barsby, Sue Reader, Tara de Cozar, The Sultan, Tom Markkanen, Tracey Newton, Tracey Underwood , Tracy Lowe, Wolfgang Buttress

Fancy seeing your name (or the name of your band, small business, loved one, pet etc) in this mag every month? It only costs a fiver and the money supports this magazine. Plus you get all kinds of other treats too.

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Featured Contributor

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

Kelly Palfrey Liam MacGregor-Hastie Sam Nahirny Georgianna Scurfield Bridie Squires Nadia Whittome

Chris Middleton Max Pearce Aurore Roussel Georgianna Scurfield Chris Spencer Joe Walchester

Photographers Alice Ashley Sandra Bartley Simon Bernacki Joe Bradley Lisa Cooper Tom Hetherington Kingdom Hudson Vantte Lindevall

Illustrators Toby Anderton Nat Bantoft Design Isobelle Farrar Eloise Idoine Kasia Kozakiewicz Karla Novak Carmel Ward

editorial illustrations: Emily Catherine leftlion.co.uk/issue135

These people #SupportLeftLion

Toby Anderton Toby Anderton has been a professional illustrator, designer and composer of music since 1992. His clients vary from education to commercial industries, private clients to registered charities. Among his works are ABC Bilder und Geshichten (1993) for Ernst Klett Schulbuchverlag (written by Ronald Morris, whose biography of Beatie Fry was Sunday Times/FT-listed "Books of the Year"), illustration and design for Invicta Plastics and interactive multimedia work for S.M.Es. He also created and illustrated The Bee Keeper cartoon series (2006-2011).Toby's latest publication, Calke Abbey Accessible Activity Pack, supported by the National Trust & Heritage Fund, was illustrated and designed celebrating the 200th anniversary of Henry Harper Crewe.

You can see Toby’s illustration of Joshua Judson’s poem What Work Is on page 34

/leftlion

@leftlion

@leftlionmagazine

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Contents 14

16

Skate for Life

Skate Nottingham’s Chris Lawton reflects on a difficult year, exploring how skateboarding has helped provide an outlet for Notts

18

Tentickle Your Fancy

Wellbeing is as much physical as it is mental, which is why we’ve spoken to Jayne Hyman about Tentickle, her new range of quirky sex toys

Wildest Streams

Our Assistant Editor Emily Thursfield donned her best cozzie and braved the cold to fill you lot in on the benefits of wild swimming

9

Nadia on Mental Health

22

On The House

10

Notts Shots

24

Art in the Right Place

13

A Yoga Instructor in Notts

17 28

With this being the wellbeing issue, regular columnist and Labour MP for Nottingham East Nadia Whittome explores the issue of mental health From glory holes and tyres to trolleys and robins, we’ve rounded up the very best images from some of Notts’ most talented photographers Our regular feature explores the important role yoga can play in helping people to reconnect their bodies and their minds

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Having entertained over 80,000 people during lockdown, we talk to Alex Traska and Jaaki Denton about MyHouse, Your House We explore Contemporary’s ongoing Loudspeaker project which provides artistic projects and opportunities for women in the city

Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure

Filmmaker Rich Fisher explains why lockdown gave him the perfect opportunity to finally turn his 2008 road-trip to Mongolia into a film

Summer in the City

34

Whatever Floats Your Boat

Address Your Stress

39

Out of Time: James Sadler

With the city centre continuing to re-open, we talk to some Nottingham BID businesses to find out what they’re most excited to visit Our George White explains how he overcame his initial cynicism to embrace the full range of benefits meditation has to offer

We talk to Notts poet Joshua Judson about his influences, practice and why he’s itching to get back to performing live His name might be forgotten to history, but James Sadler – the man responsible for Notts’ first ever balloon flight – was a legend in his day

LeftLion Magazine is fully recyclable and home-compostable.

We print on paper that is recycled or made using FSC certified sources, on a renewably powered print press.

Editorial

Well hello there, stranger. Welcome to the latest issue of LeftLion which, to (cautiously) celebrate life starting to resemble something close to normal, is all focused on taking care of your own wellbeing.

Yes, we’ve learnt our lesson from printing an issue with IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK on the cover, only to be chucked into another lockdown again. It’s fair to say we’re taking baby steps this time round, and taking each new Government announcement with a hefty pinch of salt.

I don’t know about you lot, but the last few weeks have felt like one of those high-concept eighties movies where a group of kids find a frozen caveman, thaw him out and see how he copes in modern society. That film might not exist, and could well have been a manic dream I once had, but the metaphor holds up. With six months of hair and beard growth and a new form of communication based mostly on grunts and hand gestures, seeing people through anything else other than the relative safety of a computer screen has been tough.

mercilessly haunting my dreams for months, how about you?” I think, before replying, “Literally nothing mate, just like everyone else.”

I reckon it’s going to take a while before we start to feel comfortable, both physically and mentally, living our normal lives out in the wild. I initially felt like I’d spent the last year in some sort of arrested development, but it’s weird to learn how much I’ve actually changed. And I know it’s not just me – plenty of people I’ve spoken to have said the same: a general sense of malaise, a lack of motivation, a shortage of patience, a feeling of helplessness. I assume that’s all par for the course after a pandemic that brought the world to its knees…

There isn’t a catchall answer to making yourself feel better, but we’ve tried our darndest to explore a few useful possibilities in this mag. Have a flick through and see if any of them tickle your fancy…

Until the next one…

Despite not seeing friends and family for the best part of a year, I’ve found we’ve got nothing to say to one-another.

“Ash! How’s it going mate? What have you been up to?”

“Oh you know, desperately fighting off that feeling of impending apocalyptic doom and that’s been

Ashley Carter, Editor ashley.carter@leftlion.co.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue135 5

Notts

Goss Nottingham’s most opinionated grocers on...

with Jenny Joss I’m not one for wicked whispers, but I haven’t been this enlivened for a long time. Now that walking through Hockley resembles a rowdy summer's night in Barcelona’s gothic quarter, I’m able to dig up the dirt without even having to chip a nail. That’s if I’m blessed enough to bag a table, mind. Unfortunately wearing the crown of the city’s most admired wordsmith doesn’t guarantee you a golden throne.

It’s been rather entertaining to witness these establishments desperately cramming seats onto the pavement in a bid to join in the festivities, and one legendary watering hole has found an ingenious way of policing COVID rules without running the risk of being a party pooper. Landlady Debbie from The New Foresters enlisted the help of drag sensations Madame Tess and Selma Clitz to enforce maskwearing and the rule of six, arguing that the presence of fun will lead to better behaved guests. While I admire Debbie’s efforts, I suspect pub landlords far and wide would disagree with that final sentiment.

My little dickie bird informed me that our town enjoyed five minutes of fame recently, after the discovery of an Airbnb in Thurgarton with a dinky difference. Nicknamed Basil’s Barn, the hideout is located on a 17th century manor surrounded by

Wellness

The secret to mental and physical health is a healthy diet and lots of exercise. At the end of every day if you have any worries, you should sit and meditate and free the mind completely of all the wrongs that are bogging you down.

We’d meditate ourselves, but we don’t have enough going on upstairs to bother. A few years ago we went to see a bloke playing the sitar at Sherwood Community Centre. His performance was amazing, but we got a really bad headache from it.

a sixty-acre estate, and is directly adjacent to its namestake’s stables. While it may never have been your intent to share a boudoir with Basil the miniature horse, the host has garnered more than a few rave reviews. If the gold stars continue to pour in, I may soon have to make this my… mane… escape.

Football Super League

Well that didn’t last very long, did it? It only seems like about twenty years ago that Man City were bottom of the second division. There’s only one club in the top division that’s never been relegated and that’s Arsenal. So the whole idea is ridiculous really, particularly when you consider that Nottingham Forest have won the European Cup more times than four of those teams combined. Why aren’t they being asked to be in it?

Finally, in a not-so shocking turn of events, antivaxxers descended on Bulwell to protest the arrival of Notts’ vaccine bus. Fifteen strong came out to bellow “We want our freedom back” and caused the vehicle enough damage to put it out of action for a few days. But the real scoop here was the uncovering of accusations against Nottinghamshire Live’s editor – claims of membership to a secret society that the rag had to strenuously dispute. This scandal was enough to encourage me to finally break the news of my own editor’s alliances, and his preferences for the ram over garibaldi red. Unfortunately for you lot, Ashley could not be reached for comment before we hit the press.

Prince Philip’s Funeral

It was a fantastic funeral! They started it off with the same music that they had at Remembrance Day last November.

Shivers went up our spines. All the people you expect were there, alongside three of his German relatives who we didn’t actually get to see. We liked that it was a small, discreet family do. It was a bit like when our father died last year and there were only four of us who were able to go. Apart from the millions of people watching at home on TV, of course.

Anyway lovers, it’s time for me to split. Something big is brewing, and I’ll be needing all my strength to spill this tea. As always – keep your lips loose, your ears to the ground and your eyes on the goss.

JJ x

illustration: Carmel Ward

e”nice” m ell s Mauric “Sh e s ing creepy be ”Stop ’s wife e ic r u a M

“A th im b le is like arm our for your fingers.”

h er o g et a ck t s e , a n d b t e g o h e’d ew n s a i d I g ot a n o n , is t h e “He f e i g me su r with h er, th e to m e.” it at f e y v a m ho g w e on “Do you kn was stro ow that man I king in A sda? ”

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n is y he klema “If Coc ng for m one n o li lf g e g s u r t s get him o t s d nee lams.”

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“We're s isters AN D o n e can call m e tr cousins. No ash again .”

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“Once I lost th e nail off m big toe. e I just had to skin ‘cos it were s paint th e um m er! ”

Woman : “No, an A PPLE a day ke eps th e doc tor away.”

Man: “N ot fi cider? Fiv ve pints of e a day, innit.”

n e wh e “ Tell m onna need g you're beard.” ty a s a fe

by a n r tist er it 's a n u rd in g a “ K i l l l i s n' t m o o t t .” r a n e ssi o expr

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“Oi s ta t rain n d o n m y ers a ga make t h e m i n , I wa n t look b e t t e d i r t y – t h to r dir t ey y”

Kid 1: “I don' t get it. W hy do th e Ch inese w th em masks ear on th eir faces all th e tim e? ” Kid 2: “It 's ‘co s th ey 're smar t, it's a sign of respec t innit.

Like if th ey 're ill and th ey sn it don' t go in eeze, th e atm osph ere.”

Kid 1: “W hy do n' t we wear th em th en?”

Kid 2: “‘Cos w e're not clever like th ey are. ”

leftlion.co.uk/issue135 7

words and photo: Georgianna Scurfield

‘

Fiona

I like to be fashionable. I look at some people I went to school with and I think, I really don’t want to look like you. Because in my head I’m not 55, I’m 21 and I don’t want to dress old-fashioned. The only thing I will not be wearing is all these baggy jeans that are coming back in – I don’t like them, so I’ll keep to my skinnies, thank you.

I’m from Long Eaton, but my son Josh has just moved back in with me and he has his daughter every weekend. I’ve lived in Long Eaton all my life, I don’t really know why, I just stayed there. I’ve just started learning to drive so I’ve bought a little Mini and Josh sits with me to give me time to get more experience. I had lessons when I was younger and I always thought I wish I’d carried on. It was when I got back in touch with my friend that he pushed me to get my licence again. It makes me feel so free.

The year before last was a really tough year; my relationship broke down and it was all really stressful and generally just not nice. I lost nearly two stone in weight in the space of two weeks mainly through stress, I just couldn’t eat. So this time last year I was in quite a bad place, but I’m getting better now. There have been a couple of things that have helped – I got in touch with an old school friend and I’ve made some new ones, and we’ve been out to the pub and stuff. Also, I’ve finally found some antidepressants that work and that’s helping as well.

Pick Six

This month, we’ve tasked Stonebridge City Farm General Manager Peter Armitage with choosing a few of his favourite things...

Book

Meal

Holiday Destination

Film

A while back I spent three and a half years travelling, so this is a difficult choice. If I could go tomorrow, I would head back to Cambodia. Easy to travel through, largely unspoilt, with friendly people to help when you need it.

It definitely has to be V for Vendetta, featuring the charismatic masked freedom fighter known as V. He encourages the people to rise up against tyranny and oppression and bring freedom and justice back to society.

Where is he now?

Song

Notts Spot

I’ll always back the underdog.

I Believe in Miracles, written by Daniel Taylor, is a must for sports fans – exploring the unique talent of Brian Clough and the incredible rise of Nottingham Forest in the late seventies.

Some music just has to be played very loud! An upbeat song from many years ago, Lido Shuffle from Boz Scaggs. You have to sing along (although I’m always being told not to).

Stonebridge City Farm is open to the general public now

8

leftlion.co.uk/issue135

Travelling as much as possible has been a big part of my life. I won’t forget the chaotic buzz of the Khaosan Road in Bangkok, with the best Thai green curries you’ll find, and a bucket of rum and coke!

I have to choose Stonebridge City Farm in St. Ann’s. Seeing the delight it brings to so many local families, together with its support for volunteers, schools and colleges makes it a wonderful place to work for. A true community charity.

stonebridgecityfarm.com @stonebridgecit1

Nadia on...

Nadia on...

Homelessness Mental Health in Nottingham

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

Even before the pandemic, a mental health crisis was sweeping the UK. Since the seventies, the increase in mental illness among adults and children has been staggering.

Today, in four UK adults Since 2010, the number of one rough sleepers in thehave a mental illness and people four million UKreceived increased by 165%, withdiagnosis, around 4,677 people are on antidepressants. sleeping in the streets on any given night before the start of the pandemic. However, rough sleeping The last year has only made things worse. 69% of is only the most visible form of homelessness. For adults in the UK reported feeling worried about the every person who ends up in the streets, there effect COVID-19 was having on their life. Of particular areconcern many more a stable on home: in is thepeople impactwithout of the pandemic people temporary accommodation, hostels or night with mental illness. In a survey by the charity Mind, shelters; squatting or crashing friends’ sofas. more than two thirds of adultson with mental health Homeless charity Shelter estimates that around problems reported that their mental health got worse 280,000 in the UK were homeless at the end during people lockdown. of last year.

Among the hardest hit by the pandemic have been To young better people understand problem in and our in city, I of – boththe economically terms recently withNearly Framework, a specialist charity mentalmet health. three quarters of university based in Nottingham people students, who have supporting consistentlyhomeless been treated as an afterthought the government’sacross plans, the reported and those at riskinof homelessness East that theirInmental health column, declined I’d during lockdown.

Midlands. this month’s like to talk about what I found out.

I asked the government back in November what assessment they had made of the adequacy Despite the evictions ban being in place until of mental health support services of in areas withrough high September this year, an average two new studentwere populations, Nottingham.every The answer sleepers reportedlike in Nottingham week. I recognised the potential increase in demand, Thegot Everyone In policy, which saw thousands of but homeless set out no concrete steps toinimprove mental street people housed temporary health provision. accommodation at the start of the pandemic, didn’t

help those who lost the roof over their heads since Waiting times for mental health services, which the first lockdown started. Rising unemployment, were already long before the pandemic, have shot especially among low-paid young people, domestic up. My inbox is full of emails from constituents who violence and family breakdown, and renters being are struggling to access the support they need. I’m unaware of their rights that havethis all will contributed to increasingly worried result in more thistragedies situation.

– suicide rates in Nottingham are already

above the national average, it is believed.

On a national level, 90,063 people have been threatened with homelessness since April – and 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 them people who found themselves on the streets for the first time.

Some work is underway locally. Nottingham City Council has received over £600,000 to create a suicide prevention programme. Framework, Harmless, Mind and Turning have joined Framework, which will soon Point be celebrating itsforces 20th to create Crisis Sanctuaries – safe places people anniversary, helps around 18,000 peoplefor every year, experiencing a mental health crisis. including street homeless people and vulnerable people at risk of losing their homes. While primarily But these initiatives are sticking plasters for a sector based in Nottingham, the charity also covers which is chronically underfunded. Since 2012 the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, North government has promised to value mental health as Lincolnshire and Sheff Homeless much as physical healthield.

– the so-calledpeople “parity rarely stay in one place, explains its CEO Andrew of esteem” – but the reality, and the funding,Redfern. doesn’t match up. It needs to honour this commitment urgently.

Charities like Framework are aLess lifeline for the hundreds stigma around of people in Nottingham, and mental health may mean that thousands ofrecognise people around more people and the country, who don’t declare that they suffer have from secure accommodation mental illness, but this is only Homelessness can’t be addressed separately a small part ofseen theor story from its underlying causes. It always has a context to it: whether that’s addiction and mental ill health, While better mentalorhealth services are a must, we domestic violence, poverty and unemployment. also have ask why ournot mental healthpeople is so bad in a That’s whytoFramework only helps find the first place. Biological or genetic factors play a home but also supports them in other areas of life. role, but they do little to explain a crisis which has On top of providing accommodation for nearly 3000 continued to grow. Less stigma around mental health people each year, the charity also offers specialist may mean that more people recognise and declare physical and mental health services and a care home that they suffer from mental illness, but this is only a for people with small part of thecomplex story. needs; it helps people gain skills and find work, and prevents homelessness for byhealth supporting prison leavers or by As example the mental crisis has grown over the past mediating between tenants and landlords. forty years, so has inequality. Disparities in wealth 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 Funds – migrants who have a condition attached to their visas preventing them from accessing benefits or housing support. Some arrived in the UK as

rose sharply after 1979, and today the top fifth have 60% of the country’s wealth while the bottom fifth own just 1%. Wages have failed to keep up with the cost of living.

The proportion of people privately asylum seekers, others moved here for work but then renting has jobs increased.

One in five peopledestitute, are in lost their and found themselves with poverty, and a growing proportion of them live in nowhere to go. Because local authorities can’t fund households where at least one person is working. programmes to help them off the streets, Framework It seems hardly surprising that so many suffer from has had to rely on fundraising to support this anxiety and depression when people live in insecure vulnerable group. and stressful conditions.

Charities like Framework areisaalifeline for the Studies have shown that there significant hundreds between of peoplepeople’s in Nottingham, and thousands connection social and economic of people around the country, who don’t have secure circumstances and the pervasiveness of mental accommodation.

“Unlike companies, we illness.

A report by the Royalmany College of Psychiatrists, couldn’t just suspend our workfrom during for example, found that children the lockdown,” poorest explains Redfern.

The people they risk work need households have a three-fold greater ofwith mental every day. from the richest households. illsupport health than children It concluded that “inequality is a key determinant of However, tothen end leads homelessness, individual solutions illness, which to even further inequality.

Government policy and actions should effectively will never be enough.

We need to address its root address to promote population causes:inequalities such as spiralling rents and the lack of social mental health, preventunderfunding mental ill health and housing, the severe of mental health promote recovery.” and other support services, and a benefits system that lets people fall through the cracks. Austerity Someasures to tackle have the mental health to epidemic wenumbers must contributed growing goofbeyond individualover wellness anddecade, mindfulness rough sleepers the past and a strategies, helpful though they might for some fresh round of cuts would risk evenbe more people people. must go beyond betterenvironment mental health losing We their homes.

The hostile also services, though homeless, these are also desperately needed. makes people which is why I have been campaigning to abolish No Recourse to Public Funds.

Truly addressing this crisis requires that we recognise that the way our society is run and organised is I want a future where homeless charities become making people sick, and that we transform it to obsolete and no one has to fear spending Christmas prioritise our needs and wellbeing above runaway in theand streets. then, I’msaid thankful for the people greed profit.Until This is easier than done, but the in our city who dedicate their lives to helping those situation is so serious it is nothing less than essential. who find themselves without a place to call home.

People like Framework, but alsonadiawhittome.org Emmanuel House 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/issue135 9 lives. Thank you for all you do. nadiawhittome.org

Notts Shots

Unexpected item in the packing area Kingdom Hudson - @75hudsonn

Slippery when wet Tom Quigley - tomquigley.co.uk

10

leftlion.co.uk/issue135

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

I see you Joe Bradley - @jbphoto_official

“Don’t Google it, dear” Tom Hetherington - @shotbytomh

This is our bench now. Daffodeal with it.

Sandra Bartley - @sandrabphotography

Nottingham Walk of Fame Tom Quigley - tomquigley.co.uk

“They’ve started leaving their houses again” Lisa Cooper - facebook.com/CapturedbyCoops

Neither here nor air Joe Walchester - @joewalchester

Easy come, easy grow Alice Ashley - aliceashley.co.uk

I hope these aren’t the goodyears Chris Spencer - @cspencer.photography leftlion.co.uk/issue135 11

A Yoga Instructor in Notts I’ll be completely honest with you, I never thought my life would revolve around yoga. But I bet most of the people you talk to aren’t doing the jobs they thought they would, right? Maybe I’m being pessimistic, but I think people rarely end up doing the things they wanted to when they were young. I know I didn’t – I don’t think I even knew what yoga was then!

As far back as I can remember I wanted to be an actor. Part of it was due to the glamour, part of it was the attention, but the main reason was that I just really, really loved acting. My younger sister and I both trained to be actors and at the beginning were both getting some interesting work. We actually appeared together in something that was on TV, that I imagine quite a lot of people saw, but our careers took different directions after that. She’s still acting, and is quite successful, but life kind of got in the way for me. I got pregnant – and I don’t want to use the word ‘mistake’, because that has too many negative connotations – but let’s just say it was unplanned.

I know mums are meant to say this, but it was honestly the best thing that ever happened to me. I realised that whatever I was trying to achieve with acting, you know, trying to find that purpose in life, I found with being a mum.

The first time I ever tried yoga was at a place called Ubud in Bali. I remember being quite hungover, more than a little sunburnt, and absolutely knackered from hardly sleeping the night before.

It doesn’t sound like the greatest introduction to something that’s meant to be tranquil, but it was just an incredible experience. I was always the sort of person that would do anything to avoid being left alone with my thoughts – I’d chatter away

illustration: Kasia Kozakiewicz

constantly, watch TV, listen to audiobooks, or just surround myself with people. I guess I was quite anxious as a person, but that one yoga session felt like the first time I’d been able to block everything out and just think.

Living the kind of life I was doing led to a general disconnect between my body and my mind. I was never out of shape, but I certainly didn’t take care of my body. I guess I was blessed with good genes, so I’ve never been massively conscious about the way I look – my body was just the vessel that carried me around through life. But I think that’s part of the reason I had such a cluttered, unfocussed mind – that disconnect. Yoga helped me put that right – it taught me a level of discipline and focus that felt like it connected my mind and body together as one. I know that sounds really wanky, but for anyone that has practiced yoga extensively, I think they’ll know what I mean.

She said that the peace she found during that last year of her life brought her more peace and happiness than anything else she had tried Physically, yoga can do incredible things for people.

From relieving stress to improving flexibility, it can help in so many ways. I’ve taught people who were cancer sufferers, people who were amputees, and others who were just generally in pretty awful health. Honestly, I’ve had people tell me that yoga

saved their lives. It might look easy, and I recently had the husband of a woman I work with complain that he was just paying for her “to do stretches for an hour”, but it can be really punishing. A large part of the process is learning what your body can and cannot do, and people are often surprised to find that they’re capable of much more than they thought. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say the word ‘prick’, but that husband was a real prick, and there are still a lot of people that think like him! But if you go back seventy years you’ll find doctors that advertised certain brands of cigarettes as being healthy, you know? Medicine and forms of healing change and adapt all the time, but you always have naysayers. But people have been practicing yoga for thousands of years, so I think that says it all, really.

A couple of years ago I worked with a lady who was terminally ill. She said that she’d always wanted to try yoga and, basically, thought that it was now or never. She said that the peace she found during that last year of her life brought her more peace and happiness than anything else she had tried, but also made her regret the fact that she’d waited so long.

It was difficult, obviously more so for her than for me, but I was glad that I could play a small part in bringing her some peace.

As for the future, I wouldn’t say that I have ambitions as such. I have my studio, two children, a husband, a dog and two mice. I practice yoga every day, and every session is an opportunity to meet new people, hear new stories and I always try to learn as much from the people attending as I hope they learn from me. I guess that’s what life is all about, right? Sharing experiences, and striving to find some semblance of peace.

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Skate for Life In early 2020, skateboarding in Nottingham was riding high. Our Light Night installation with artists Instar and the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, Skate of Nature, engaged 1,000 people with top-notch skateboarding and trippy UV artwork over two chilly February nights. This followed the country’s first city-based festival of skateboarding in summer 2019, Skateboarding in the City (SITC).

Taking place over nine days across multiple Nottingham venues, the 640 skaters rolling around Nottingham included two very large and two average-sized Finns from the city of Tampere, cementing a close relationship between Skate Nottingham and Tampere’s skater-led organisation Kaarikoirat (‘the ramp dogs’). Tampere’s skaters have done much to address challenges that also haunt Nottingham: low graduate retention and brain drain of local talent, low-paid local jobs and cycles of precarity and exclusion, and a disinterest from mainstream sports and culture platforms in anywhere that isn’t the capital city.

Just before COVID-19 swept across Britain, we finished the Skate & Create project with Backlit Gallery. 59 young people and adults, aged between 6-46, designed, built, skated and then exhibited concrete, metal and wooden forms, developing construction and creative skills and raising aspirations to work in a wide range of trades and professions. Nowhere else in the UK was doing anything of this scale, ambition and purposive targeting at social, economic and ethical challenges.

In Spring 2021 Nottingham skateboarding is riding high again. Alex Hallford’s win at the national championships cements his status as the UK’s highest-ranked male skateboarder, moving him significantly closer to this summer’s Olympics, alongside third place for Nottingham’s Miriam Nelson in the women’s park discipline (and Miriam isn’t even in her teens yet). But, as for many people and places, the interim between these two points has been relentlessly tough.

Skateboarding’s superpower is its ability to motivate people of all ages, often in pursuit of individualistic aims (fun, self-expression, skill

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words: Chris Lawton photos: Alice Ashley, Simon Bernacki, Vantte Lindevall, Tom Quigley & Aurore Roussel

Skate Nottingham’s Chris Lawton reflects on the events of the past year, exploring how skateboarding continues to help people in Nottingham...

progression, the conquering of fears), to come together and cooperatively delay gratification for the greater good. Working on a skate video for months or even years before anyone sees it. Selffunding photography exhibitions just to see your mates’ smiling, possibly-drunk, faces. Grafting dustily day-after-day to create DIY skate spaces that get torn down immediately, having briefly transformed a neglected part of the city into a vibrant space for togetherness.

With a little bit of inspiration, a very imperfect skatepark became a space for togetherness and wellbeing for a couple of precious months COVID meant that, to keep individuals and communities safe, moments of togetherness have been postponed or transferred exhaustingly into the digital world. The places that are reliably accessible to children, beginners and many women and girls – designated outdoor skateparks or managed indoor safe spaces like Flo – have had to close for large stretches of time. The streets may be skateboarding’s lifeblood, but when there is only the streets, the diversity that constitutes ‘skateboarders’ quickly rolls back to the bad old days of primarily young, white guys in cool clobber and very few people who are older, younger, of different genders or skin colour.

That’s why healthy city life needs a wide variety of spaces that nurture wellbeing. It’s so rad that young children are getting into both skateboarding and its wider culture, but they need to be somewhere their parents know they’re safe.

It’s beyond rad that so many more women and girls and people from the LGBTQ+ community now feel welcome and fully part of skateboarding, but if nineteen-year-old cis males still get hounded out of public spaces by “do a kickflip!” shouting

morons, I can’t imagine what it must be like for people without the protections and privileges of heteronormative maleness. So ‘building back better’ for us in Nottingham means nurturing and developing spaces that are created for, and by, the community in all our diverse, amazing weirdness.

This takes us to what went down in a small but well-loved green space in Sneinton last August.

Even with all the aforementioned patter about Skate Nottingham’s achievements, by this point I was at a low ebb. Small community projects are like fidgety, fragile sharks: if we don’t keep moving forwards at pace, we sink. And once you’ve seen all the twinkling connections, like Professor X in camo pants, between skaters’ interests and our city’s problems, you can’t unsee all the things you need and want to do. Suddenly not being able to do very much ripped the sticking plaster off past bouts of mental ill health.

Then a couple of films came out, connecting skate communities across space, as they often do. A friend from That London, Long Live Southbank activist and legendary skate film maker, Henry Edwards-Wood, put together a short piece about how, initially, two dudes, Nick and Greg, took it upon themselves to hand-polish the rough, crumbling riding surface of eighties relic Hackney Bumps skatepark, a few painstaking square inches a day. Others joined and the project grew. A space that was previously a graveyard for shopping trolleys became a vibrant community asset, with regular beginners’ lessons and ambitious plans to build more and better. Within a few days of the Hackney Bumps film, came the Bournbrook DIY film, telling a similar but different tale of young skater Sean Boyle and mates deciding to clear rubble and rubbish from Bournbrook Rec, Selly Oak, a venerable but neglected legal graffiti spot (that had counted Goldie, amongst others, as a contributor). Initially a ledge was built. And now there’s a DIY skatepark and community allotment, built to a high standard at no cost to the cashstrapped municipality.

Our ‘problem’, a partially finished but well used small skatepark in King Edward Park suddenly

looked like something that could be solved – with new purpose borrowed from Hackney Bumps and Bournbrook. So we dreamed up the simple idea of Skate & Give Back. Local resident Pete Wright and the Sneinton Tenants and Residents Outreach Programme (STOP-TRA) had campaigned for the skatepark, patiently supported our shenanigans, and organised weekly litter picking and other larger scale public works, including the renovation of the old Cherry Lodge nursery building.

At precisely the time this lovely story was playing out, councillors and journalists chose instead to lose their minds over a soon-to-be-sold-off Banksy popping up on the other side of the city We couldn’t very well moan about the skatepark’s limitations without thinking about how we could work in solidarity with the residents of one of Nottingham’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. So, in return for free weekly skateboard lessons, children, parents and friends were encouraged to litter pick and start renovating the dilapidated pavilion building.

Soon parents were turning up on a Sunday morning even if their children weren’t able to join the lessons, just to help scrape peeling paintwork off an old pavilion for a couple of hours. Skaters in their twenties worked alongside children and local pensioners. Residents who’d been prescribed volunteering by their GPs to help with anxiety spent their Sundays painting metal shutters in fresh green Hammerite and chatting to dudes with tattoos, beanies and five-panel caps, alongside mums from other parts of the city, while boxers sparred in the green square left in the middle of the skatepark and whole families on inline skates

pushed around the surrounding pathways. With a little bit of inspiration, a very imperfect skatepark became a space for togetherness and wellbeing for a couple of precious months.

The project was finished, in collaboration with fellow Sneinton occupants Montana UK, by covering the now gleaming green pavilion shutters with original spray can artwork from local graff heads Scarce, Fry Face, F.F.W.I.H. and the legendary Dilk – with Scarce’s bright red heart poignantly marking the heart of the city’s skate scene. It says a lot about UK political and media interests that, at precisely the time this lovely story was playing out, councillors and journalists chose instead to lose their minds over a soon-tobe-sold-off Banksy popping up on the other side of the city – with celebrity trumping celebration of homegrown talent.

But even though it failed to light local politicians’ fires and kick-start discussion around the future of the skatepark, Skate & Give Back gave us our mojo back. With educational charity Ignite! Futures, we worked with more than 100 young people, online and (when we could) in person, to generate ideas for three new spaces for skateboarding, connecting their work to professional bodies like the Landscape Institute and the Forum for the Built Environment. And one of those spaces is actually being freakin’ well built, at Rushcliffe Country Park, Ruddington, ably photo-documented by homegirl Alice Ashley, who also had a big role in ensuring it accounts for the needs of women and girls.

This summer we’ll be working with Nottingham Castle early in their opening programme to take over the grounds with an evening of skating, film, music, food and fun. We’ll then use some resources from our one-year ‘Goodpush’ partnership with Oscar-winning international NGO Skateistan to get a crew over to Bournbrook DIY to collaborate on skate lessons and also hope to work with pals and inspirations Skate Southampton, Skate Manchester and Shred the North, as well as the homies over in Tampere, who in September open Europe’s second ‘skate high

school’ (the first being in Malmö, Sweden), starting with twenty college-age students studying a curriculum spanning communications, filmmaking, event production, marketing and international development. Back in Nottingham, we’re proud to announce that the Leverhulme Trust will be funding a twenty-month research project with Nottingham Trent to investigate the experiences of women skaters: what it feels like to ‘be a girl who skateboards’ and how this affects their relationship with the city, how safe they feel and the sense of ownership and agency they feel they have in urban spaces.

This will all be punctuated by the second iteration of Skateboarding in the City, SITC II. Kindly supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, it will take place towards the end of September, coinciding with the completion of a small skate-friendly public space at the foot of Sussex Street, in between the new Nottingham College Hub and the Nottingham Contemporary.

The twelve months since last March may have been the worst time of many of our lives, hopefully the next few months will be significantly better.

But if Alex does get to Tokyo, it’ll feel even more like we’re missing a trick in Nottingham if we don’t bring all this potentially transformative radness together. Should a city that’s home to some of the best skateboarders on earth continue to lack a large, world-class outdoor skatepark?

Isn’t it time those ‘no skateboarding’ signs at Sneinton Market finally disappeared? Is there not a common purpose in Nottingham’s aspiration to attain UNICEF Child Friendly City status and the contribution to so many childhoods that our city’s incredible skate scene makes? Prior to COVID, ‘we’ (by which I mean our ramshackle community as well as the municipality and partners like the Creative Quarter) had built a lot of momentum. As we tentatively look towards a future that can live with the coronavirus, it’s not certain if, or how, that momentum will be regained or potential met. ‘We’ (again, collectively) need to think bigger. skatenottingham.co.uk @skatenottingham leftlion.co.uk/issue134 17

words: Emily Thursfield

s m a e r t S t s e d Wil While your morning trip to Colwick Park might usually be reserved for a brisk dog walk, fitness group Whole Health are encouraging nature lovers to experience the beauty spot in an entirely new way. Is wild swimming the cure to all physical and mental ailments, or just a quick way to lose your toes to frostbite? Our Assistant Editor, Emily Thursfield, finds out…

I’m standing waist-deep in a lake at Colwick Park, my feet blue and searing with an icy pain. The water temperature is a crisp six degrees, my bare arms are fighting the breeze and a duck just floated past. I’m wondering why on earth I decided to come here.

I’m sure nobody needs a reminder of how, in the midst of a national lockdown, we all turned to nature as a means of comfort. Fifteen minutes on a park bench became as restorative as a weekend spa trip, and we’d happily risk getting caught in the rain if it meant breaking free from our WFH desks. But as of late, there is another reason that Nottingham locals have been flocking to Colwick Park to brace an hour in the British elements.

Wild swimming – also known as open water or cold water swimming – is a ritual that’s been practiced for centuries. Some historians go as far as to say it’s a part of our DNA – that as our species was busy evolving into humans, we became semi-aquatic coastal waders of the Indian Ocean. Though recently popularised by clubs such as Kentwood Ladies Pond in Hampstead, or glamorised by publications such as Vogue and Women’s Health, wild swimming is not simply a fad designed to make you look cultured on Instagram. Studies have proven that exposure to cold water not only betters your physical health – benefits include improved circulation, reduction in chronic pains, potential weight loss and even preventing dementia – but your mental health too.

It’s for these reasons that I’m standing waist-deep in a lake at Colwick Park, wondering if I’m ever going to regain feeling in my toes. Since the age of sixteen, I’ve suffered from chronic leg pains and fatigue thanks to a bad spell of glandular fever, coupled with an unabating tendency to overthink. For the past decade, my antidote of choice had been a soothing bubble bath at the end of a long day, but my curiosity, paired with a long-lasting love of the sea, got the better of me. So here I was, cowering near the pontoon, hanging on to my tow float for dear life.

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adding these outdoor swims to the rosta in March 2020 when they were offered the location by a contact at the City Council. As summer 2020 hit, things really took off. “I think it was a bit of a perfect storm for us that the pools were closed,” says Cat, “because on top of people not being able to get out and swim, wild swimming was becoming more popular in the public consciousness, so we had loads of interest.”

And this interest doesn’t seem to have wavered as the country opens back up. On the same day I took my plunge, there were around thirty others doing the same. Albeit, much more prepared than I was. I watched as numerous swimmers arrived at the lake, donned neoprene gloves and booties and glided gracefully into the water without pause. They emerge up to twenty minutes later, safe in the warmth of their changing robes and acting as though they hadn’t put themself through a gruelling physical challenge.

You don’t have to think about the past or the future; you’re fully in the moment, focusing on relaxing your breathing and staying calm.

“Our biggest demographic is women between the ages of forty and fifty,” says Cat, “although I think our oldest swimmer is around eighty. But we really believe that the water is for absolutely everybody.

We have people who come to train for long-distance events, but also young club swimmers too. A lot of these people have always been pool swimmers but they’ve been converted during lockdown. It makes a change from just following a black line along the bottom of the pool – there might be a goose flying over your head, or sometimes the water is choppy and waves splash in your face.”

“We've had loads of anecdotal evidence from people telling us their cold water swims have helped with depression, and people who suffer from severe arthritis who say it’s helped with the pain,” says Cat Wynne, one half of the Whole Health team who run the Colwick dips. “We’ve also had people going through bereavement that have found it really comforting to be in the water. It’s helped people in lots of different and unexpected ways, which has been cool to see.”

And Cat was right – this is a world away from my usual lane in Victoria Leisure Centre, yet it’s only fifteen minutes down the road. Though the prickling in my toes persisted, so do I – and I find myself sinking lower into the depths as I take a moment to admire the setting. Surrounded by hundreds of trees, including a lovely willow that forms a secret nook in the water, the spot feels secluded and peaceful. After some cheerleading from Wales, who is patrolling the pool in a kayak, I finally lift my feet off the floor and set off from shore.

Whole Health run swim, bike and run sessions designed to provide nature lovers with both the physical and mental benefits of exercise. Launched by former triathlete and coach Cat and coach and channel swimmer Justine Wales (aka Wales), the pair began to offer triathlon training and various coaching,

The physical benefits alone are enough to get me going. NASA studies have proved that, over a twelve-week period, repeated cold-water swimming leads to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, a slimmed chance of blood clotting, and an increase in testosterone/oestrogen – collectively known as ‘cold

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adaptation’. Whole Health’s members even include long-COVID sufferers, who take part in the hopes it will shake up their immune systems.

But their most popular session by far is the one I’m attending: the Mindfulness Dip. Everything I’d read about the effects of wild swimming on poor mental health was echoed by the swimmers around me, each raving about its ability to turn down the noise of your thoughts and centre your attention on your breathing and your body. The shock of the cold really gives you no choice. Cat agrees: “It’s just really exhilarating, and the resilience it leaves you with just lifts your mood up,” she says. “You don’t have to think about the past or the future; you’re fully in the moment, focusing on relaxing your breathing and staying calm. You feel everything so intensely in the water, and that’s what makes it such a mindful activity.”

There aren’t many activities that can successfully take my mind off upcoming deadlines or jam-packed to-do lists, but I think these cold-water fiends are onto something. Having to use so much brain power to control my rapid breaths almost mimicked a meditative state, and soon enough I was swirling around in small circles, basking in the silence the soak had provided me. While Wales had predicted I’d only last five minutes, I swam back to shore after a solid fifteen feeling a little more zen.

So, was risking hypothermia in a city park worth it? I won’t pretend it was all plain sailing – following my exit, my limbs were so numb it felt as though my brain had been placed in an entirely different body – but by the time I was on my way home I was on the sort of endorphin high I’d not felt for years. While I can’t yet speak for its ability to soothe my aching muscles indefinitely, I’ll soon find out… as I think I’ve caught the bug. “People have really genuinely become addicted to it,” laughs Cat. “I think partly because of the adrenaline rush, but also because of the community that we’ve built up here. People have got to know each other through attending, and it’s formed lots of new friendships.”

And community is what the Whole Health team are keen to keep building. With a permanent office now on sight, permission from the council to deck out the surrounding area, and fresh coffee in the form of Wired on Wheels, Nottingham’s journey with wild swimming is only just getting started. Whether you’re interested in pushing yourself physically or simply want ten minutes of uninterrupted ‘me’ time, Cat, Wales and I will be waiting for you, tow float in hand.

You can enjoy daytime, early morning or mindful swims by becoming a Whole Health Member for just £25 a year. Sessions are then booked by redeeming credits. whollyhealthy.co.uk

SUMMER IN THE CITY It’s been a long time coming, but it feels like life is finally being breathed back into Nottingham. The city centre no longer resembles the ghost town it has done for the majority of the past year; in its place, pavements are covered with Parisianstyle seating, filled with friends laughing and catching up over long-overdue drinks. And with the next deadline of May 17, in which dozens more venues like cinemas, arcades and bowling alleys will open, just around the corner, it’s a time to be cautiously optimistic that the city is finally returning to normal.

To celebrate the city’s next steps to opening up, we spoke to some of the Nottingham Business Improvement District locations to find out how the process of reopening has gone, and to find out which places they’re most excited to visit...

Alice Carr, The Lost City Adventure Golf We can’t wait to get back open and the team are working hard behind the scenes to bring back some adventure to the fine people of Nottingham. We’ve been working on a new website and online booking system which will make it easier for customers to book tickets in advance. A lot of people have found the latest lockdown really difficult so we’re just looking forward to being able to open and provide everyone with some much-needed fun!

I don’t live in the city centre so have really missed popping in for a browse around the amazing charity shops and Sneinton Market. There’s definitely more of a buzz about the city now that retail has opened up and it’s really lovely to see more life back in Nottingham.

There are so many places we want to visit again! Definitely looking forward to all our neighbours around The Cornerhouse opening and going to see a show (anything!) at the Concert Hall again. As nice as the pavement hospitality is, it will be lovely to enjoy a cocktail at Copper or a coffee inside Fox Café. In the meantime, I’ll be heading to the amazing Watered Garden to stock up and try to recreate The Lost City’s jungle at home! lostcityadventuregolf.com

Olly Hunter, Oscar and Rosie's Each time you close then re-open a restaurant it feels like opening up for the first time. On one hand it's time-consuming and expensive, but on the other you get a sense of renewal and a chance to revisit and improve things all over the place. When you're open day-in day-out you don't get the chance to reflect so much, so despite the hard work we're really trying to see the process as an opportunity.

I've spent a lot of time in the restaurant despite being closed so have been seeing Hockley empty and bereft throughout the whole lockdown. I'm looking forward to the streets round here teeming with big crowds of people again, and I mean BIG crowds of people, like on Hockley Hustle or Gay Pride.

I've been able to get out to some of the early openers with their outdoor areas so have already visited some of my favourite places, but of those still shut I'd have to say that a great big dim sum Sunday lunch at The Mandarin is top of my list. I've been making dim sum at home over the pandemic, but there's no substitute for the real thing. oscarandrosies.com

Laura-Jade Vaughan, Nottingham Contemporary We’re really looking forward to reopening on May 22 with three new solo shows – Allison Katz’s paintings are filled with humour, puns and language games; Erika Verzutti’s sculptures in bronze, cement and papier mâché reference many unusual objects; and Mélanie Matranga’s exhibition uses film, sculpture and installation art to explore our everyday lives and themes of intimacy.

Our shop is already open, stocking many unusual gift ideas and products by independent designers and makers. It’s been great to welcome back visitors. We offer a click and collect service and we still have an online shop and for anyone who’s not yet ready to pop in.

We’re so lucky to have so many great cultural venues in the city – we’ve missed seeing a film at Broadway or relaxing on their terrace, visiting Theatre Royal and Nottingham Playhouse for performances, or seeing shows at other galleries in and around the city.

We can’t wait to see Bonington’s exhibition, The Gold Ones Meet, an exhibition by local art collective Reactor. Using video, performance, games and installation, it describes a fictional Cosmic Care Home – it sounds so unusual, we’re not sure what to expect! nottinghamcontemporary.org

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Address Your Stress

George White explains how he overcame his initial scepticism to harness the true benefits of meditation...

For years I was sceptical about the principles of mindfulness, self-help and, more than anything, meditation. The idea of sitting cross-legged and in absolute silence felt nightmarishly awkward, and I didn’t believe it could help me in any way.

I imagined that if I ever tried it, I’d end up like Ron Swanson does in that episode of Parks and Recreation – bored out of my mind.

Yet, after finally giving it a go late last year, I found it not only helped me, but it properly changed my life. I’ve been converted – from sceptic to fanatic. And, according to Shaun Glossop, an experienced instructor at Nottingham Mindfulness Group, I’m far from the only one. “I’d say around thirty to 35 percent of people that come to us are quite reserved about the whole process,” he explains. “They often think it's not for them or they simply think it's nonsense that probably doesn't really work anyway. But many will eventually come to meditation in a bit of desperation after trying other avenues, and find that it’s the best way to help themselves.”

For me, the pandemic was the cause of this desperation. As lockdown restrictions were put in place, there was no longer any separation between work and rest. I did everything in the same place, with my living room becoming my office and my home becoming a constant reminder of all the stuff I had to do. If I wasn’t busy and productive I was constantly thinking about being busy and productive, and it became impossible to rest and unwind.

As my anxiety and stress levels worsened, I decided I needed to take action. I ended up downloading the Calm app to do exactly that – try and calm myself down. To my shock, meditating helped immensely, enabling me to become far less anxious and much more relaxed.

Rachel Jackson, who runs Nottingham-based wellbeing organisation Mind Alive, says my situation is not uncommon. As many people have been forced into the world of remote working,

relying on digital devices more than ever, it has become more difficult for us to ‘switch off’ and establish boundaries between our professional and personal lives.

This has led to a greater demand than ever for meditation, as those struggling with their mental health have been left with little choice but to tackle their issues head-on. “It's a prime time at the moment to really look inside ourselves,” Rachel says. “We tend to look forward to better things rather than thinking about how we can enhance what we've got now. But with a lot of things shutting down we no longer had that escape, and had no choice but to take steps to make the present a better place.”

Many will eventually come to meditation in a bit of desperation after trying other avenues, and find that it’s the best way to help themselves The steps I’ve learned for improving the present have been far more effective than I expected.

Guided mindfulness has taught me to embrace challenges and take control of my emotions; rather than trying to block out negative thoughts, I have learned to accept them, put them into perspective and clear them out. Taking time out of my day to focus on nothing but myself has been incredibly useful, and highlighted how little I did that before.

However, I’ve found meditation is about more than just sitting peacefully with a faint “hommmm” reverberating from your lungs – it also provides practical techniques that can be used throughout the day. Simply taking a deep breath and embracing a moment of quiet at regular intervals can help

with not only staying calm but increasing focus, improving your ability to do things like your job to a surprising degree.

For Rachel, it is often these simple steps that can prove most beneficial. “Quick, mindful breaths are really important,” she claims. “I say whenever the mind gets too full with stuff, that's the time to close your eyes and take a focused breath. The way I teach mindfulness is that if you have a busy mind and can go maybe three breaths with full focus and a clear mind that’s brilliant, but even if you can only manage one second, that's one extra second your mind has to rest.”

If my story has yet to convince you of the power of meditation and self-care, the practice has been promoted by people far more intelligent than myself. Now embraced by the scientific community, mindfulness is often prescribed by medical experts as a tangible, viable method for tackling an array of mental health issues.

This is how Charlotte Lynch, one of Shaun’s students, came to meditation. She explains, “I have had periods of depression on and off for the last twenty years and tried all sorts of things.

At the end of last year my doctor recommended I join a self-help programme and I came across Nottingham Mindfulness Group. It’s definitely helped. I’ve noticed a change in the way I am and how I live my life. This is just the beginning and I’ll keep working to improve with the support of the group.”

Like Charlotte, my experience with mindfulness is an evolving one. Even after months of regular practice, I am far from a master. But at such a difficult time, taking even small steps in the name of self-care has proven important. So if you still think meditation is a waste of time, this former sceptic can say with confidence that it isn’t. Give it a go – it might just change your life. nottinghammindfulnessgroup.co.uk

words: George White illustration: Eloise Idoine

words: Bridildo Squirts photos: Fabrice Gagos

Tentickle Your Fancy

Self-care and wellbeing goes beyond meditating and a bit of yoga, you know. In a year when human-to-human interaction has been strictly forbidden, the sex toy industry has boomed, with more and more people finding pleasure without a partner. With a long and successful career in film prosthetics under her belt, Jayne Hyman took the opportunity to create her own brand of customisable, manga-inspired sex toys, Tentickle…

Dildos. Never as good as the real thing, are they? I’ve had my fair share of Netflix and Chill sessions with the umpteen sex toys of my drawers and, yes, I’m ever-grateful for their vibrational qualities, but I’ve always thought they’ve fallen short in the penetration game. The main issue being that they’re too damn hard. Nobody wants to feel like they’re shagging a broomstick.

They’re pretty uninspiring, too. There’s not much new or out-there going on with the big, pleasure-focussed brands.

Wand? Too easy. Cock ring? Neither use nor ornament.

French Maid outfit? Give me a break.

Imagine the intrigue when I came across Tentickle – the sex-toy brand that provides customisable silicone dildos for the budding frigger. Not only do they cater to the hungry-for-dick laymans among us, but they specialise in fantastical, monster-inspired pieces – their signature being an octopus tentacle named Tenton.

I had to know for why, so I dialled in the brains behind the business – Jayne Hyman – for a recently-out-of-lockdown pint in a Carrington pub garden. Jayne said she would pack me up a couple of samples. Buzzing.

Jayne’s background is in making props and special effects – mainly gory prosthetics – for film and theatre, she tells me over a cider. Following a drunken conversation with a friend, making sex toys was always on the agenda for the silicone specialist, but it wasn’t until lockdown that she found the time and space to start her own small business.

Plus, the world got freaky in quarantine. The Guardian reported a spike in sex-toy sales during 2020, with several companies claiming increases of up to 40% following the moment the world decided to shit its pants.

“I thought it was as good a time as any to take the leap,” says Jayne. “As a freelancer, I was working 16-20 hours a day and starting to burn out. Lockdown really put things into perspective for me. In the creative industries, everyone’s a bit of a martyr, but life is too short. I thought that if I design this small business, I can control my working week and have a comfortable life. I’ve never slept so well as I have this past year.”

Jayne already had a 3D printer, so she set it up in the spare room of her new apartment and decided to take the plunge into learning how to use it.

“It’s amazing technology,” says Jayne. “I remember feeling a little threatened by it at first, as someone who makes something with their hands, but there’s still a lot of creativity in the process. You can’t just plug and play. You need a certain level of skill with it. Using my background, I’m relating a lot of the software and technology to sculpting tools I’ve used in the past, so it feels much more creative than I imagined it would be. It can be quicker, but it’s not holding your hand and doing it for you. It still needs someone to guide it.”

Peering into the box and squidging the tentacle suction pads of my “candy red and interference gold” Tenton, I ask Jayne about her early prototypes, and she raises a moral question I had never considered: “A lot of sex toy companies out there have got dildos which are quite anatomically correct as an animal penis. It borders on the line of bestiality. Some people are into that, some people think it’s representative of something too close to the bone. It’s a grey area – on the one hand you’re satisfying your kink in a safe way, on the other hand you might be escalating it. It depends on the individual: some people will be able to disconnect, some might treat it as level one and ask ‘Where do I go from here?’. I experimented [with canine] but I realised I didn’t want to go down that route – I wanted it to be fantastical and monstrous. Something that doesn’t exist and comes in bright colours, is appealing and cartoonish. Fun-looking.”

Tentickle toys are made from medical-grade, body-safe silicone, all completely customisable in terms of their colour and texture. Jayne made my cock-shaped mini Woodsman with a medium firmness, and my mini Tenton with soft silicone “because it’s a bit girthier”.

I must admit, when I first unearthed the whole concept of banging an octopus’s arm, there was a vag-jerk reaction of WTF going on, but apparently tentacle erotica has appeared in Japanese artwork since the early 1800s, and has found its way into contemporary hentai, anime and manga. Jayne tells me that obscenity-prohibition laws in Japan make exposed genitalia illegal, and further reading shows tentacle-porn industry leaders like Toshio Maeda say much of their work is a way of getting around the policy.

“It doesn’t have to be part of your kink, or something you’re interested in sexually,” says Jayne. “It’s just a different form,

a different shape. Because there are the extra suckers on the front, that adds something extra to it. Plus, there are lots of different juicy colours. It’s catching on more with people who don’t necessarily have the kink but are up for experimenting with different forms. The number-oneselling fantasy toy is the tentacle.”

Jayne tells me most of her sales are coming from America, where tentacle sex toys are much more popular, and she can see it’s starting to catch on in the UK. As well as fetishists, there’s a whole online community of dildo collectors out there forming her customer base.

One unexpected plus she’s found from the toys is the benefits to the queer community: “I think a lot of the reason these fantasy sex toy companies are becoming popular is that penetration has always been assumed to be heterosexual – penis in vagina. When you introduce an object that could be anything, it takes away that ownership. I’m finding it quite validating to make toys that appeal to people when penises aren’t their kink, people who’ve always wanted to grind on an octopus dildo. I first designed them because I was interested in monsters. Now it’s become something else. Monsters are asexual. They’re a blank slate. I’ve not gendered any of the toys apart from the Woodsman. Apart from that, I don’t want to gender them. I don’t want to force a fantasy onto the toy.”

When I got the toys home, I didn’t wait around. I won’t go into too much detail, but the Woodsman blew me away. It’s so realistic. I still have some work to do with the Tenton – it is a beautiful, fantastical object with an interesting texture.

One that I strongly feel has a place in my arsehole moreso than anywhere else.

But out of fear of getting a bit hot under the collar on my next trip to Birmingham Aquarium, for now I am admiring it intermittently. Pulling out the drawer like Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan peering over Kenneth, pushing it back in.

One day, you tease.

It’s opened a door, for sure, and Jayne is keen to further get the word out to the city and beyond: “I’ll be interested to see Nottingham’s reaction to this. However, I think my mum is still coming to terms with it all.” tentickle-toys.com

I must admit, when I first unearthed the whole concept of banging an octopus’s arm, there was a vag-jerk reaction of WTF going on

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My Photo Moment

Max Pearce - @thegospelmaker

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interview: Addie Kenogbon photo: Fabrice Gagos Illustration: Karla Novak

On the House It was only when the world came to a crashing halt and gig venues, clubs and record shops were forced to shut their doors, that people realised just how important music is in bringing us all together. But out of that dark period came the resurrection of Myhouse Yourhouse. Part-online gig, part community and part virtual venue, it entertained over 80,000 listeners during the last twelve months, raising huge amounts for charity in the process. Addie Kenogbon talked to creator and Notts DJ Alex Traska and DJ and events organiser Jaaki Denton to find out just how this Nottingham subculture became a beacon for mental health awareness, hope and togetherness...

The emotional and mental health benefits of music is something that has sparked debate for centuries.

But, if you’re still sceptical of its all-encompassing powers, you need only look to the current pandemic to really see how music has been a driving force for togetherness and lifting spirits across the globe. Whether that’s the now iconic images of Italians playing instruments and singing from their balconies at the start of the pandemic last year, or the many bands and musicians that live streamed DJ sets, live performances and festivals to millions across social media.

You’d be hard pushed to find someone whose

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mental health hasn’t been affected by the pandemic over the past year, but according to recent research by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Industry organisation for recorded music in the UK, 94% of Brits stated that music had helped to lift their mood during lockdown, while 91% of those surveyed said they felt music had helped them to escape and forget their problems.

Here in Nottingham, one particular subculture has been especially instrumental in helping to lift the spirits of music lovers across the city, providing a haven for them to come together, in the name of music from the comfort of their homes.

Nottingham’s underground house scene is one that has roots as far reaching as the early nineties, with the city often regarded as one of the global epicentres of deep house. But, as the pandemic ravaged the nation, a series of lockdowns over the past year forced many venues across the city to close their doors, and a void was left within the city and the hearts of Nottingham’s underground house community. Once boasting an electric calendar of regular events, the city’s nightlife came to a halt, and with it many were left feeling lost without the comforts of the community they had called home for so many years.

To combat this and help keep the spirit of house alive, Nottingham DJ Alex Traska took it upon himself to help rebuild that community during the pandemic. Through his online global streaming radio platform Myhouse Yourhouse, which relaunched last year during the first lockdown after a two-year hiatus, music lovers across the city and beyond were given the chance to come together once again. Over the past twelve months, the platform has welcomed over 80,000 listeners through the doors which is the equivalent of filling Rock City to capacity forty times over.

We recently caught up with Alex and East Midlands DJ and events organiser, Jakki Denton, to find out how the online streaming platform and a series of live streamed house nights have helped so many across the city make it through one of the nation’s most difficult years, and to discuss their upcoming event, the Mentally Sound Weekender, which is set to take place from 29-31 May. Tell us a little bit about Myhouse Yourhouse...

Alex: The easiest way to think of Myhouse Yourhouse is that it’s a venue that exists online.

When we launched it back in 2005 we decided it was important that everyone entered into it as a collective, and we all had the understanding that we will never charge people to play, we’ll never charge people to listen and we’re not interested in selling ad space. It’s not a money-making exercise, it was more about being passionate about what we’re doing. And, because of that, it meant we built this community that just started attracting like-minded souls that are passionate about great music.

We have a great roster of DJs that are predominantly from Nottingham but we also have DJs from London, Liverpool, Birmingham and as far reaching as Seattle and Austin, Texas. You’ve got the likes of The Big Faces (DJs Coxie & Jodie P), Beane (Soul Buggin)'s Noodle Hot Pot, which celebrates fifteen years of shows on the station this month, and The Antics Roadshow Boys to name a few. As long as they fit into our musical remit, which is underground house and electric, but also jazz, soul, hip-hop, disco, and all the things that informed where house music came from, that’s what we’re about.

We were helping people who were struggling through lockdown and through keeping things going and providing great music, we were helping their mental health without even being aware that we were doing it What sparked the decision to bring Myhouse Yourhouse back after its break?

Alex: When the first lockdown was announced, it meant a lot of people that were DJ-ing suddenly couldn’t do it. On the first night the lockdown was announced, I put a message in our Facebook group saying Myhouse Yourhouse could come out of retirement. The following morning, I woke up to so many messages from old DJs and loads of messages from people saying, ‘You’ve got to do this’. So, I built a new website and within a matter

of hours, myself and Rob who I DJ with as Loose Joints, did our first opening show which about 100 people tuned in to.

How has the platform evolved over the course of lockdown since that first night?

Alex: Like everyone, we thought that COVID would blow over, but when it became apparent that it wasn’t going anywhere we decided to set up a regular roster. Now, the idea of pulling the plug once COVID is over is a distant memory and we hope to continue Myhouse Yourhouse postpandemic because of all the amazing things that have come out of it.

really struggled with his mental health, but he’d kept it well hidden in the same way I think a lot of people that are battling mental health issues unfortunately tend to do. But it was him that had decided that he wanted to plan an event to raise awareness of mental health and wellbeing.

So, six weeks ago we all made the decision to put the plans in motion for the Mentally Sound Weekender. Then Sean suddenly passed, and even though his passing wasn’t through taking his own life like Erick, it made the event even more important, and the story just became so much bigger.

Jakki: There really have been so many amazing things that have come out of this. I built up Ultrasound with my partner Sean MoRpH who sadly passed away not too long ago. We’re from Lincoln and have been running for almost two years, and we had loads of events planned. When lockdown hit, we had to cancel them but when we found out Myhouse Yourhouse was back on, we knew we had to get involved.

We built this community that then just started attracting like-minded souls that are passionate about great music

We now have a regular slot at Myhouse Yourhouse and from that, we’ve helped build a community and made some great online friends.

Alex: Because of what had happened to Erick, I’d always really wanted to put on an event like this but with Sean’s passing, it really galvanised our resolve to make a stand about mental health awareness, especially given the current pandemic.

Alex: The great thing is, Myhouse Yourhouse has also meant that we can do some really special things such as a few weeks back, we hosted an online event where we raised £2,000 for Nottinghamshire Hospice via our Breast Cancer Awareness special appeal day.

Jaaki: There was such a buzz during that event and even though there were only three of us in my house, it didn’t feel like that because of the chat box and the enthusiasm from everyone joining in.

Can you tell us more about how Myhouse Yourhouse has helped listeners from a mental health perspective?

Alex: In 2008, Erick Anderson, who I founded Myhouse Yourhouse with, took his own life suddenly at the age of 25. There were no warning signs, so it was a massive shock for the whole community. As a result, mental health and wellbeing has always been an issue we’ve been aware of, and something that’s always been close to our hearts.

The pandemic has affected so many people’s mental health too. You’ve got the extreme level of people that are really struggling with feeling isolated and then you’ve got the less extreme level, people like myself, where my work-life balance hadn’t been great before lockdown. On the spectrum of mental health, they’re all really important issues that communities like ours help people with. Of course, we’re not alone in that, and it’s not like we’re doing something unique, we’re just another important social focal point for people. But, in the Myhouse Yourhouse chat rooms, there are always people saying, ‘Thanks so much for being here’ and it’s just really humbling.

Jakki: Through Myhouse Yourhouse, we were helping people who were struggling through lockdown and through keeping things going and providing great music, we were helping their mental health without even being aware that we were doing it.

Tell us about the upcoming mental health awareness weekend, the Mentally Sound Weekender?

Jakki: Sean who I set up Ultrasound with had

Holding the event during the Bank Holiday weekend means we’ve got a nice three-day’s worth of broadcasting on Saturday, Sunday and Monday and it’s set to be a great weekend with a minimum of eighteen DJs performing across the weekend. We’ll be featuring lots of deep house but on the Sunday especially, people will also get the chance to listen to hip hop, disco, soul and funk – all the genres that inform house music.

As part of the weekend, we’ll also be playing recordings from both of Sean and Erick’s old sets to honour them.

Will you be raising money for any charities during the event too?

Alex: Yes. Listeners won’t have to pay to listen, but we’ll be encouraging people to donate through the donation link, and there’ll be a totaliser on the site detailing how much money we’ve clocked up.

Although there are of course so many fantastic national mental health awareness charities, we wanted to do something to support smaller causes such as Soundcheck. They are a chaplaincy service specifically focused on helping out people in the music industry that have been affected by the pandemic and have lost their livelihoods.

There are many DJs out there who can’t pay their rent and are being evicted from their homes due to the pandemic.

This then has an impact on their family lives and their relationships and can in some cases contribute to some people doing the unthinkable.

But, Soundcheck are there as a support line for those people so it was a no-brainer for us to support them. We’re also in talks with a number of other small local mental health charities which we’ll reveal soon.

The Myhouse Yourhouse Mentally Sound Weekender will take place online from 29 – 31 May. To find out more visit their website myhouseyourhouse.net

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words: Laura-Jade Vaughan

Art in the Right Place Art Co-Editor Laura-Jade Vaughan explores the impact of Loudspeaker, Nottingham Contemporary’s artist-led creative project for women looking to explore contemporary art, express themselves and develop their self-confidence in a safe and fun environment For many of us, the past year might have left us feeling stuck in a bit of rut – craving new experiences, chances to meet new people, and opportunities to be creative. In contrast, Nottingham Contemporary’s Loudspeaker programme has offered some women the chance to take part in a ten-week creative project inspired by the gallery’s exhibitions.

Over the course of the pandemic, Nottingham Contemporary ran two Loudspeaker projects with eighteen women from the East Midlands. “Loudspeaker is a unique project that uses our exhibitions and creativity to make a crucial difference in women’s lives,” Katy Culbard, Loudspeaker Programme Manager explains. “We support women in difficult circumstances, drawing on an extensive network of referral partners to ensure we reach and support women. As a cultural partner, we use our unique position to demonstrate how galleries, visual arts and creativity can help bring life-changing benefits.”

Loudspeaker is a unique project that uses our exhibitions and creativity to make a crucial difference in women’s lives It has increased my confidence and has given me the space to be myself again. It has helped me control my anxiety and to begin to see a way forward and I have always felt safe and heard Loudspeaker has been running at Nottingham Contemporary since 2016, but in the past year, due to the pandemic, the sessions have been delivered to participants through screens and letterboxes.

Rather than in-person workshops, the sessions took place on video calls facilitated by artist Gillian Brent. The women creatively responded to the Contemporary’s exhibitions Grace Before Jones and Jimmy Robert: Akimbo, which they experienced through virtual reality scans (these are publicly available on Nottingham Contemporary’s website). After sharing their responses to the artworks through conversation, the women then created their own artistic interpretations using a range of art materials provided by post.

The exhibitions stimulated conversations around issues of feminism, race and identity, often resonating with the women in varied ways.

For some of the participants, Grace Jones – both her artistry and

values – was a source of inspiration. “She is an icon for being different and accepting yourself for who you are and showing that proudly no matter how much others will judge. She has strength that I really appreciate and should present in myself.” Another participant echoes, “I was inspired by the confidence of Grace Jones and her ability to take risks. The artwork helped me to reflect upon different ways to be heard and also encouraged me to reflect upon how I have lost my own confidence and voice and the need to recover these.”

The sessions were varied in terms of both concept and medium, and involved: questioning the significance of public monuments, especially since the Black Lives Matter protests; using collage to depict extreme poses inspired by Grace Jones’ iconic Island Life album cover; creating viewfinders to photograph places in homes which are awkwardly designed; abstract collages inspired by fashion and assembling found objects to tell a story. Through the project, one of the participants reflected, “it made me realise that art can be very versatile and it does not only consist of painting and drawing. Art can mean different things to different people and it’s enjoyable to listen to what people think about certain art.”

At the heart of Loudspeaker is the idea of creating a safe and supportive environment, where women are encouraged to see things differently, feel positive about the future and move away from challenging circumstances. It is a space to be inspired, build confidence, connect with other women and form new friendships.

Reflecting the project’s aims, one of the women describes her personal experience or participating. “It has increased my confidence and has given me the space to be myself again. It has helped me control my anxiety and to begin to see a way forward and I have always felt safe and heard. Receiving the parcel each week reminded me to keep moving forward. This project was a lot of fun.”

For many participants, creating artwork was a new experience, and a chance to step out of their comfort zone. As one woman explained, “I didn't think I would be any good, with it being art, but I’m so glad I did do it because now, in future, I have the attitude of ‘it doesn't matter if I’m not the best at it, as long as I try’, because just trying gave me some sort of satisfaction and proudness of my work.”

Rather than an in-person exhibition, photographs of their artworks have been turned into books, Not Just Black and White and Exploring Creative Ambitions available to view on Nottingham Contemporary’s website.

The Loudspeaker programme is delivered by Nottingham Contemporary as part of the Opportunity and Change project, which is funded by the European Social Fund and the National Lottery, through the Big Lottery Fund nottinghamcontemporary.org/record/our-loudspeaker-programme/

Par ti feel cipating m i crea ore con n Loudsp tive, n and ec ted, l eaker ha more es s confi s isolate helped m dent d, m ore e It’s a new experi en realise I am not ce, as it makes me the only one to ex pe certain things. Le arning about othe rience people’s experien r ces has had a re ally positive impact in my life

but me, r o f s rt r t wa w see a what I a t h o g n n thou eaker I ting tha y l l a p s tere er re ouds I nev doing L more in r af te rent and uld be dif fe ght it wo thou

It made me look at artwork in ways I had never before

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EYES ON THE PIES They say the best ideas come after a couple of pints with your mates. And this is certainly true for Sophie Neill of Vork Pie, a Stanton by Dale-based handmade vegan pie outlet. Established in 2014, Sophie has spent the best part of a decade perfecting the plant-based alternative to Britain’s best loved pub snack, which is now stocked in outlets up and down the country…

Tell us how Vork Pie came to be…

My friends and I were on a crazy bus holiday chatting about the usual things, like wanting to get out of the nine-to-five life, and came up with the idea of running a pie and mash shop… and it all sort of snowballed from there! I got sick of going out for a couple of beers and having to have peanuts and crisps while everyone else was tucking into pork pies. I took a pastry-making course at the School of Artisan Food to learn all about pastry and spent loads of time developing a vegan version, and then began to sell them at a pub run by some friends.

I can imagine it was stressful starting things off in your own kitchen... unless it's quite big?

Oh no, it's tiny. I live in a little, two-bed mid-terrace house, so it didn't take too long for me to realise that it wasn't going to be sustainable. Plus, trying to get people to help you out is not ideal when you’re in your own house either. I used to joke that it was a bit like Del Boy’s flat when the flour arrived – there would be 25kg bags of it that I would try to hide around the house, under coffee tables and what have you.

Do you have a background in food?

I actually have a degree in furniture design – completely different, but still creative. I’ve been a veggie since I was sixteen and there weren't many options for veggie food even then. Creating Vork Pie came out of necessity – I like nice food, so I just thought I should make it.

food for thought

What is the perfect pie side?

The original is meant to be a vegan take on a pork pie, so that one is good cold with different chutneys.

I actually teamed up with Newark-based ChilliBobs to create chutneys to go with each of my pies, as I wanted to showcase what you can do with a cold pie, as a lot of people don’t understand the point of them.

Teaming up with another local business and being able to support each other has been really nice. With the other pies, such as the The Stoutly or Smoked Beetroot, if you warm them up they’re great for a roast dinner – team it with a few vegan Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes.

How has the pandemic affected your business?

A lot of my income came from the big indoor vegan events, so things were a bit stressful to start with as we didn’t know where the money was going to come from. But I soon realised that we had the website, we had all logistics in place with the courier to post out to people, and then I began to do local deliveries as well.

It’s also given me the time to take stock of where we wanted to take the business. I started doing little hampers with the pies, chutneys and vegan scotch eggs that I make, which have been doing well with people sending them as gifts. It also gave me the time to be a bit more creative with flavours – we obviously saw a big boom of people baking and treating themselves to sweet things, which is why the Apple and Special Cranberries pie was born. I was panicking when there was a shortage of flour, though. Luckily I don’t need toilet rolls to make pies!

You are palm oil free and use compostable packaging.

How did sustainability become such a selling point of your business?

It's what I care about as a person, so I want to be as environmentally-friendly as I can as a business too.

I was a member of Greenpeace when I was younger and used to go on marches, so I know what we do has a huge impact on the planet. Being palm oil free took a while, as the vegan spread margarine I was using suddenly changed their recipe to include it again.

Being a vegan, you send yourself crazy looking at ingredients on everything you buy, and palm oil is in all sorts. In the end I teamed up with The University of Nottingham to develop a pastry recipe using coconut oil. A big part of being vegan is about caring for animals, people and the planet, not destroying rainforests just so somebody can eat a pie. That just makes no sense, does it?

Your Tamarind Sweet Potato pie has won multiple accolades at the British Pie Awards. Would you say this is your greatest achievement?

I'm just proud of where I've come and how I've grown from one flavour of pie to all this. The Pie Awards is a nice achievement to have, because then it's someone else who thinks they're worthy of an award, so yeah it's a seal of approval which is always nice isn't it. But the seal of approval is also when you get customers coming back time and time again buying your pies.

Any other future plans?

We’ve got another sweet pie in the pipeline, which is a Belgian Waffle Apple Pie, and a few ideas for some savoury ones which I’m keeping under wraps for now.

A lot of people seem to like the faux-meat side of things, so I'm going to try that out too. I’m just going to have a play about! vorkpie.co.uk

To Nosh – Holy Smoke (Prickly Pear)

To Sup – Montego Bay (31k)

To Follow – Black Iris Brewery

The vegan fast-food legends have kept us going throughout lockdown, and this fried seitan patty burger is amongst their tastiest creations. @pricklypearnottm

A blend of Koko Kanu and William George rum shaken with a drop of lime, coconut water and blue curacao. Just delicious.

31knotts.com

Possibly the coolest looking cans around, thanks to recent LL cover artist and designer Kev Grey.

Get on their ‘gram and see for yourselves. @blackirisbrewery

photos: Curtis Powell

MUSIC Reviews Dog Explosion Livin’ Life (Album) Electro-industrial sounds underpin this album by Dog Explosion and intense lyrics are delivered with calm vocals. I immediately thought it was the kinda sound Sleaford Mods would make if they were middle class executives living in 1984 and singing about ulcers caused by their stressful jobs in the city. Livin’ Life gives us thirteen tracks and anyone interested in experimental synth beats along with a slightly quieter revolution should listen to this musical eccentric... I'm now a fan! Bassey

Champyun Clouds Champyun Clouds (Album)

TULIP88 In These Dreams (Album)

Champyun Cloud’s self-titled debut album sees the duo experiment with a dreamy collection of guitar riffs and synths. This avant-garde LP is an eclectic journey through time, sprinkled with both melancholy and lively tunes, drawing from an array of genres.

Often traversing between psychedelia, synthpop and new wave, the band’s first album falls nothing short of being an absolute gem.

Serena Haththotuwa

TULIP88’s teen years listening to hip-hop explain the soulquarian-esque sound he’s got going on. The featured artists season the beats with a fresh narrative, mixing soulful interludes with intricate rhymes, telling a similar tale to the producer’s: draw on the past, to shape the now. The 22-minute album feels like a gentle reminder to keep it real, or a thought-out push in the right direction.

Elliot Farnsworth

Spotlight Kid Darkwaters (EP)

Jonny Olley Change (Single)

Hot on the heels of the Roller Skate Disco EP, Nottingham-based band Spotlight Kids have now released their three-track EP Darkwaters, and it is bloody lovely. Multi layered harmonies and a shoegaze pop vibe give this five-piece band a huge hypnotic sound and a constantly forward-flowing feel that drags you along for the ride. They have developed a cocktail of influences from Cocteau Twins to Velvet Underground, and did I mention that it's bloody lovely? Bassey

Channeling his rip-roaringly powerful vocal performance into this tour de force of unprecedented power and fury is a joy to the ears and a feast for the soul! If you don’t get goosebumps from blaring this out on your headphones then you need to make some changes in your life. An eruptive ode to man's perennial fear of the future and longing for past comforts. Liam MacGregor-Hastie

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.

Bee-Sides One of the magical parts of working in new music is when you come across an artist that makes you pause, listen, and begin to feel all happy inside. Not even ‘cus of the genre. Just ‘cus it’s so freakin’ good. That’s how we felt when we first heard Bee-Sides. Soulful. Slick.

Satisfying sounds. Get ‘em in your ear drums. @bee_sides_music

Diana Drill Already showing the UK (and the world via Charlie Sloth) that NG knows Drill, Diana is a face (well, mask) you need to get familiar with. Wise aggression. Slick flows.

Disgusting (in the best way) productions. It feels like only a matter of time before Drill could have its next leading lady. @dianadrill leftlion.co.uk/issue135 29

Art

words: Kelly Palfrey illustration: Isobelle Farrar

Art writer Kelly Palfrey catches up with Gina Mollett of Notts Creatives, the art collective made up of former finalists of the Young Creative Awards, to find out more about their Social Action Project, which aims to keep the city’s young people engaged in the arts...

UNDER COVER ARTIST

This month’s cover artist, Phil Moss, gives us the lowdown on his process...

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I’m an artist living and working out of Basford, Notts, at the moment. I work as an illustrator for Games Workshop and do my own art outside of that as much as time allows.

What was the inspiration behind the cover?

I go down little arty/study rabbit holes all the time, and when the cover brief came through several loose ideas I’d been working with just seemed to naturally fit. I’d just potted up this year’s sunflower crop and brought in last year’s dead heads, I started a local course in ceramics and... I’m not sure about the doll heads! I find the split in people who find old decayed things either unpleasant or beautiful quite interesting, and I’m poking that particular jellyfish a lot at the moment. I haven’t got an actual jellyfish, though I would like one.

Notts Creatives is a young people’s art collective in Nottingham made up of former finalists and winners of the Young Creatives Awards. The collective not only provides a space for its members to meet and collaborate, but crucially it was formed with the intention of completing a social action project, which aims to make the arts more accessible to the city’s young people. I caught up with the members of Notts Creatives to find out more about their current project, how they’ve adapted to the pandemic and what they gain from the collective…

What do you gain from participating in Notts Creatives?

We gain the chance to be part of a bigger funded project; to have the experience of working with others; managing a budget; networking with others in the creative industries; meeting like-minded people and making new friends.

How have Notts Creatives adapted to the challenging circumstances of the last year?

Our meetings have continued on a fortnightly basis, but now take place online; we communicate through social media and other means rather than face-to-face. The direction of our social action project has had to adapt to the restrictions of social distancing. It has also inspired our project, which focuses on supporting young people’s mental health and wellbeing through creative activities.

Tell me a little bit about the social action project that you are currently working on...

We are producing 300 activity boxes that will be distributed to teenagers and young people across Nottingham through three local food banks. Each box will include a range of activities such as paint by numbers, an inspirational zine and animation and textiles projects. The activities within our boxes reflect the creative practices of our group such as graphic design, painting, illustration, photography, writing, animation and textiles.

You’ve said that the events of the last year inspired your project, how so?

We started with discussing our own challenges over the last year and then reached out to young people in Nottingham. We found that loneliness was a big issue and that COVID has had a negative impact on young people’s mental health and wellbeing. We wanted to create

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something that would support young people through this time.

What do you hope will be the result of your Social Action Project?

We hope that a lot of young people in Nottingham will be inspired by the creative activities, and realise the potential and variety of creative practices. We hope that young people will get the opportunity to try a creative activity that they have never tried before and that it will support their mental health and wellbeing, giving them a distraction from the lockdown. We also hope that it will create an online community and tackle issues of loneliness.

Why do you think it’s important for Notts Creatives to engage with the wider community and disadvantaged young people like this?

It’s good for spreading the awareness for young people’s creativity in Nottingham. It encourages openness to the creative industries as young people can be shut off to it; we want young people of different ages and backgrounds to have the chance to be creative. We want to showcase that there are a lot of creative opportunities and experiences that could lead to creative careers; it could open doors for young people and give them a chance to try new things.

It’s clear that Notts Creatives is more than simply a space for young people interested in the arts to get together, it’s a socially aware and conscious group of young people seeking to make a difference to the city’s communities through the arts. While the pandemic may have prevented the group from meeting in person, it has inspired them to deliver a project that helps to tackle both loneliness and the lack of opportunities in the arts for Nottingham’s young people. Diversifying the arts begins with offering young people opportunities and Notts Creatives are doing just that.

You can look out for the activity boxes by Notts Creatives which will be distributed to three local food banks in May. To keep up to date with their project and future work follow them on Instagram: @notts.creatives

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

My day job is largely figurative and narrative work, illustrating an idea or a story. To have something to work on that would be more just of itself is a change.

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

Finding the time to do it! Most of my illustration work is digital as well, this piece is probably the biggest traditionally painted image I’ve made in a long while. It’s led to me creating much more traditional art though which is great.

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

I guess, unless you know anything about Warhammer, my claim to fame is that one of my illustrations trundles around Nottingham on the side of a tram, and I’ve drawn on a few toilet walls in your favourite bars. But getting to make art alongside my colleagues at work is the thing I’m most proud of, the artists there are fantastic people and it means a lot to put my work out there alongside people I really admire.

What have you got planned for the future?

I’m pursuing more of my own art these days. I’d like to do more things locally, and I’ve taken up ceramics again because no one can make me do that on a computer. Like every artist in their midthirties I’ve gone back to drawing what I drew as a kid, things I find in my garden mostly.

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

Yeah, while I’ve got a platform I guess I’d like everyone to stop giving wasps such a hard time, I think they’re quite fun.

Where can people check out your work?

I’m on the Instagrams at @phil__moss (that’s two underscores, dunno who the one underscore guy is, but I hope he’s good). @phil__moss

Film

interview: Roshan Chandy illustration: Nat Bantoft Design

Something to Look Forward to...

After what has been – and excuse my coarse language here – a pretty crummy lockdown, cinemas are once again promising to provide much-needed escapism for the broken-souled among us.

Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure Way back in 2008, Rich Fisher headed to Mongolia with his friend Ed on a road trip. In the back of his mind, he always had the intention of making the journey into a film, but life got in the way. That was until the world came to a grinding halt, allowing Rich the time to finally create Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure – the story of two Forest fans on a oncein-a-lifetime adventure to the other side of the world. Roshan Chandy catches up with the Notts-based filmmaker to find out more…

Rich Fisher always intended for his 2008 road trip to Mongolia to be a film. He and his friend Ed set out on the Mongol Rally in 2008 – a competition that has been going since 2004 with the basic aim that “you have to attempt to drive all the way to Mongolia in an unsuitable vehicle from London”.

They both booked a month of work, “got a car and off we went”.

The years went by and Rich and Ed got back to work and the “humdrums of life”. The film wasn’t getting made. Then came the pandemic and lockdown, which gave Rich a new drive to make his longrunning filmmaking dreams a reality. “The footage was still on a SATA drive in a drawer at my house.

We always had a running joke that we had this grand plan to make a film. It had never happened, but one of the benefits of the pandemic was that I spent a lot of time stuck at home. I felt like I needed projects to keep myself occupied,” Rich tells me.

“After six months chipping away, the film was finally finished in the early part of 2021.”

I met Rich Fisher at the Gamston Lock pub on Saturday 24 April. He’s a lovely chap – tall with scruffy lockdown hair. He’s also a die-hard Nottingham Forest fan which I realised from his published book The Church of Stuart Pearce. “I guess any sort of die-hard fan would probably say the same, that they have no choice,” he tells me, in answer to my question of what keeps him coming back to the team. “They’ve generally been pretty disappointing for the last twenty years, but I only hope they do get back into the Premier League at some point in my lifetime, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon.”

The title Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure takes obvious inspiration from the Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter 1989 cult-classic Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but Rich surprised me by saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever

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seen Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” He does tell me he’s heard about it and the film was “huge in the early nineties. I think it was definitely a big film at the time.”

When I asked Rich what his favourite place to visit on the Mongol Rally was, he told me about Kazakhstan. “If you look at it on a map, it’s a huge country. I’m talking ten times the size of Britain.

But a lot of it was so sparse, it just felt like you were in the absolute wilderness and it was really idiosyncratic. All the people were incredibly welcoming and helpful.”

I’ve got no ambitions, to be honest.. I certainly don’t see myself as a filmmaker Rich insists Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure isn’t the beginning of a long filmmaking career, despite my best efforts in pressing him to tell me otherwise. “I’ve got no ambitions, to be honest.

And I’d always say, we’d always had this idea to make films. But I certainly don’t see myself as a filmmaker,” he explains.

In terms of when we can expect to see Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure, he says they are doing a private screening at Broadway Cinema in July followed by a Q&A. “It’s going to be available to download and also to buy on a USB stick.”

We can all look forward to sharing Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure then…

Rich and Ed’s Excellent Adventure is out in July mongolrallyfilm.wordpress.com

I was lucky enough to visit my local movie theatre on a number of occasions when it reopened in July and it was an essential source of self-care at a difficult time. Getting the chance to enter an entirely different world – one untouched by a global pandemic – was truly invaluable and supplied some of my favourite memories in an otherwise forgettable year, and the incredible line-up of films over the coming months could once again provide the uplifting entertainment we all need.

With COVID delaying the release of almost every blockbuster last year, the 2021 schedule now looks an absolute treat. Black Widow and The Suicide Squad are just a couple of the action flicks coming out this summer, meaning film fans will finally get the chance to see giant explosions and fun fight scenes on the big screen once again. The Marvel shows on Disney+ have been great and Warner Bros. has released a host of its DC titles online, but there’s simply nothing more satisfying than watching a bad guy getting punched in I MAX quality.

The likes of Free Guy and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard also look set to numb our brains with ridiculous, over-the-top humour, hopefully resurrecting the joy of the bigbudget comedy after a dodgy couple of years for the genre.

Following a torrid time with very little to smile about, seeing Samuel L Jackson call Ryan Reynolds a “motherfucker” is exactly the type of catharsis everyone could do with right now.

So whether you’re wanting explosions, laughs or a bit of both, cinemas will be able to help you kick back and escape reality when they open up this month.

There’s certainly nothing crummy about that.

words: George White

Poetry

What Work Is When Mum talks about her dad she drives her legs apart into the arms of her chair.

She punctuates her sentences with firm drags on an imaginary Silk Cut. She talks gruff and low. I swear I’ve seen her brush ash from the front of her jumper with his hand.

When Mum talks about my Grandad, she calls out with his voice to a wife who is also not here. Says d’ya want a cuppa, Ruby?

Says well get me one while you’re up.

When Mum talks about the man who wouldn’t let her pursue acting, she becomes him. She re-enacts the scene where he sends her to catering college in Buxton.

Her face creases, softens. He says you’ve got to have a trade.

Whatever floats your boat Joshua Judson has released a sick poetry collection with Bad Betty Press. It’s called Gongoozler, i.e. someone who stares at canal traffic. Bridie Squires had a read-through and was blown away, so she slung the fellow Mouthy Poets alumnus a few questions about his crafts and techniques, writing about family memories with a bit of wonk, and why he’s so obsessed with the city’s nauticals.

How’s lockdown been?

It’s been awful, hasn’t it? I won’t be alone in this, but I’ve been thinking a lot about all those events I didn’t go to because I wasn’t quite feeling it that day or because ‘Ah, I’ll go to the next one’. Never again. Once we’re fully back again, I’m going to everything.

Every drag night, every protest, every poetry event. Especially poetry events. I’ve felt quite disconnected from poetry over lockdown because online events just don’t do it for me, I want to be in a room again – to feel the poems happen in a space. The ups and downs of them, the silences, the little intakes of breath around the room. That’s the best way of encountering poetry, for me.

Why poetry?

Initially, at least, it was because poetry felt like the thing I was best at. I’d always felt that thing I’d be good at was music, but after a lot of teenage years in bands it was around the time I was in Bilborough College that I felt a shift. I felt I wasn’t anywhere near as good at music as I thought I was or was gonna be, and I was a pretty good writer. Which sounds very cynical and speaks to this sense of exceptionalism we’re all taught to aspire to one way or another. Now that I’ve gotten over myself a bit, and have spent eight or so years in and around poetry, treating it as my main deal, it's the love of poetry itself that stops me from stopping. I don’t really know what else I’d do anymore.

You were part of Mouthy Poets. What was that experience like for you?

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

In every writing interaction I have, whether I’m editing my own or someone else's work, if I’m reading a poem I haven’t read before, if I’m talking about poetry in the smoking area of a pub, I’m more often than not drawing on knowledge I first learned or encountered in the Ustinov Room, upstairs at Nottingham Playhouse where Mouthy Poets used to meet on Fridays five ‘til eight. It was such a huge loss, and there’s been such a gap for a space where young and early-career poets can develop in the city, it’s great to see things like GOBS Collective and other projects crop up around Nottingham in recent times.

You left Nottingham for Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study Performance and Creative Enterprise, and worked with the legendary Jacob Sam La Rose...

I’d encountered Jacob a couple of times in oneoff workshop situations through Mouthy Poets, so I was very excited to get to work with him more closely. He was my mentor throughout all three of my years at Guildhall. I think Jacob is one of the best askers of questions I’ve encountered. A classic question he would ask would be to look at a word choice, an image, a whole line, and ask “what is the function of this?” Rather than hacking through your

poem going “this doesn’t work”, “change that”, he’ll ask you to investigate your reasoning for choices you’ve made instinctively. So often, in answering these questions, I’d realise that I only did something because I was trying to be clever, not because it was the right thing to do.

Your recent pamphlet Gongoozler was released with Bad Betty Press. How did that come about and what did the production process entail? How did you approach the ordering and editing of the pieces? How has it been working with them?

The pamphlet came about when I submitted a sample to Bad Betty during one of their open calls for submissions. I was, and am still, delighted to be a part of the Bad Betty roster of poets. They’re a very exciting independent press – not only in the poets they publish, the anthologies they put together and the editors they enlist for those anthologies, but I also massively appreciate that, for a London-based indie, they are very invested in making sure the work they do reaches beyond the M25. Even before I was due to be published by them, I worked with Jake Wild-Hall at Bad Betty on running a showcase event here in Nottingham.

The poem What Work Is is about your grandad.

Throughout Gongoozler, we meet him and others who have passed. Tell us about them and their influence on your life…

You ever have that thing of retelling a story and someone goes “No it didn’t happen like that at all, it was like this.” I’m fascinated by that. My grandad, my mum’s dad, died when I was two so I never knew him really. But through oftrepeated family stories and growing up with pictures of him around the house – including one where he’s holding me when I was just born – I have a sort of sense of him. And that doesn’t feel too far off having a memory of him, you know? So this particular poem was sort of a trigger for like the core of this pamphlet – which for me is mulling over and working through these notions of memory. Shared memory, cultural memory, the unreliability of memory. Then there’s the fact that both my Grandma (mum’s mum) and Grandpa (dad’s dad) both suffered with dementia towards the end of their lives, and the ramifications that disease has in the context of meditating on memory.

There’s a wonky morose throughout the collection. The detail is stunning and cinematic, pushing through feelings around grief and the aging of our loved ones. Can you walk us through your process; how do you tackle these heavy ideas in such a dreamlike way?

I think that’s a very cool reading of the pamphlet. In The Will To Change, bell hooks sort of lays bare the psychic damage that the patriarchy inflicts on men (among other things – it’s a great book). There’s a bit where she

says the only emotion the patriarchy allows men to have is anger. This was certainly true of me, and I’ve been working on it, but it’s strange because although through therapy I’m much, much better, and way more emotionally healthy, I still have periods where it feels like the fog has descended and I can’t see my own emotional truth, and I’m just walking around with this blind anger that in previous years was just the norm for me. I guess what I’m saying is that that dreaminess you’ve picked up on wasn’t intentional. I think it's maybe a product of this stage I’m at in therapy where I am much better at acknowledging, naming and dealing with my emotions, but I don’t always have access to that. So there’s this weird liminal thing of sometimes being able to see the thing to describe it, and sometimes not being able to.

Tell us about the word ‘Gongoozler’ and its echo in the collection…

I have always been into canals. There’s a family story of me as a toddler walking along a canal somewhere, just fascinated with the barges, knocking on windows and waving at the bewildered people inside. So there’s always been canals in my work, but I barely wrote about anything else for a hot minute there when I was at Guildhall and one time, when we were coming back after a break one of my tutors came rushing up to me saying ‘I’ve found a word for you! Gongoozler! It means someone who watches the traffic on canals!’ in her American accent. It springs up throughout the pamphlet as the title to three different poems, a little nod to Rachel Long’s collection My Darling From the Lions which does a similar thing with Open as a title.

What does the future hold for Joshua Judson?

Catch me in your local beer garden chatting people's ears off about poems and why I hate neoliberalism. It’d be lovely to be able to get to do some real-life in person readings with the pamphlet, but only when it’s safe of course.

I have another pamphlet manuscript in the works that I’m adding to all the time.

More generally, I’m trying to spend less energy shitposting and retweeting memes about Keir Starmer being awful, and more energy doing things that actually constitute politics.

I’ve joined the Nottingham branch of the community union ACORN, who do a lot of work around tenants rights – taking landlords to task through direct action. What little I’ve done with them so far has felt a million times better than just scrolling and getting angry.

Gongoozler is available from Bad Betty Press badbettypress.com

interview: Bridie Squires Illustration: Toby Anderton

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BEST OF MAY BikesLoveYou Bike Sale When: Saturday 1 May Where: Sneinton Market How much? Prices start from £50 The good folks at BikesLoveYou are having another bike sale at Sneinton Market, where you can pick up a fully refurbished bike from as little as £50.

Whether you’ve picked up cycling during lockdown, or are an old pro looking for some new kit, Notts’ biggest pedal-heads have you covered. And you can feel all good inside knowing that your purchase has saved a pre-used bike being scrapped or left unused.

Online Interview with Lucy Worsley When: Saturday 15 May, 11am Where: Online How much? £5 After growing up in West Bridgford and studying history (including a PhD thesis on Nottingham Castle), Lucy Worsley has gone on to an impressive career working in heritage and history television.

For this online event, historian, author, presenter and curator Lucy will be interviewed by former BBC political editor about her life and career. Live subtitles will be provided by Stagetext.

This is the BBC Holmes Service Book Launch When: Thursday 6 May, 7pm Where: Online (via Five Leaves Bookshop) How much? Free (booking required) During his career at the BBC, legendary presenter John Holmes interviewed the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Spike Milligan and Brian Clough. Now, he’s transformed his remarkable life story into an autobiography, the launch of which will take place at this exclusive online event through Five Leaves Bookshop.

Expect name-dropping, celebrity gossip, and plenty of bands you haven’t thought of in years...

The Jerwood Collection When: From 18 May Where: The Harley Gallery How much? Free entry This month will see The Harley Gallery welcome their first-ever residency, encompassing four exhibitions from an eclectic range of British artists. Having never been shown in the Midlands before, The Jerwood Collection will be the first chance for many people in the region to see the privately-owned art collection which includes work from the likes of LS Lowry, Elisabeth Frink and David Hockney.

Sneinton Vegan Market When: Saturday 1 & 15 May, from 10.30am Where: Sneinton Market How much? Free entry

Five Bodies Workshop: Maureen McLane When: Wednesday 12 May, 5.30pm Where: Online (via Nottingham Contemporary) How much? Free

Although it kept a skeleton presence throughout most of lockdown, Sneinton’s Vegan Market is back to its full glory, packed full of cruelty-free gifts, produce and sweet and savoury treats. Setting up on the first and third Saturdays of every month, you’ll need to get down there early to make sure you’re not queueing for the most popular stalls (looking at you, Clemie’s Vegan Cakes and No Homers…)

Join Nottingham Contemporary for the last in their series of free monthly workshops exploring creative-critical practice, hybrid methodologies and experimental thinking. Led by Maureen McLane, and organised in collaboration with the Critical Poetics research group based at Nottingham Trent University, this workshop takes wing from Roland Barthes’s meditation on 'the minimal act of writing that is Notation'.

Yoga and Art Online When: Saturday 22 May, 10am Where: Online (via New Art Exchange) How much? Free (booking required)

Outdoor Cinema: The Dark Knight When: Friday 28 May, 6pm Where: Wollaton Hall How much? From £14.50

Combining mindfulness with Phoebe Boswell’s Here exhibition, New Art Exchange are offering you the chance to experience visual art in a peaceful way through the medium of yoga. Exploring Boswell’s work from the comfort and safety of your own home, through a short film and calming soundscape that has been specifically created for the session, you’re sure to be left feeling relaxed, tranquil and inspired.

Ever fancied watching Batman in the grounds of Wayne Manor?

Well, Adventure Cinema are offering you the opportunity with a screening of The Dark Knight at Wollaton Hall - the location used for Bruce Wayne’s stately home in the film series. Widely considered the best of Christopher Nolan’s superb Batman trilogy, the combination of a beautiful, iconic setting and a cracking film guarantees a good night.

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words: Ashley Carter ilustration: Natalie Owen

We take a look back at the life of pioneering aeronaut James Sadler, the man who launched the first manned balloon flight from Nottingham in 1813...

If you went back two centuries, you’d be hard pressed to find a person in Britain who didn’t know the name James Sadler. The balloonist was the first British person to slip the surly bonds of Earth, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, and touch the face of God when he made a successful balloon ascent in 1784. From humble working class beginnings as a pastry chef, he achieved immortality for his achievement as, for all of Britain’s aeronautical history, from the Spitfire and the Battle of Britain to the Red Arrows and Tim Peake spending 186 days in space, James Sadler was the first.

Europe had been gripped by a combination of fear, delight and confusion at the prospect of manned flight ever since brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier completed the first successful manned balloon ascent in Annonay, France, in 1783. Not to be left behind, Germany launched their first flight later that same year and Italian aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi piloted the first successful attempt on British soil soon after. Crowds of up to 400,000 watched in stunned amazement as man achieved the seemingly impossible, breaking the invisible shackles that had kept us bound to the Earth since the beginning of time.

It wasn’t long after that Nottingham almost had its first flight. Aspiring balloonist Mr. Cracknell – whose first name is lost to history – widely advertised his intentions, and enormous crowds gathered on Forest Racecourse on 13 July 1785. Shops were shut, schools were closed and thousands waited with baited breath as Cracknell began to inflate his balloon. Unfortunately for him, the crowd grew restless and, by 7pm, mutterings of discontent turned to violence. The once-excited crowd had become a dissatisfied mob that cut his balloon cords, sending it skyward, half-inflated, as a helpless Cracknell watched on. The rest of his expensive apparatus was fuel for an ensuing bonfire, while his balloon eventually landed near Horncastle, where it was found by labourers and dissected for souvenirs.

Nottingham would have to wait almost three decades for its next chance to witness a manned flight.

James Sadler was neither highborn nor well-educated, meaning that much of his early life is lost to the haze of history. We know that his formative years were spent working in the kitchen of his family’s small pastry shop in Oxford and that he had an interest in chemistry, but precious little else. That is until his name pops in relation to building an airworthy balloon in February 1784. He tested his creations with a string of unmanned flights.

By May, Sadler was confident enough to send a dog skyward – 180 years before the Soviets launched Laika, and 40 years before the founding of the RSPCA – but, rather bizarrely, the dog was nowhere to be found upon landing. But the tests clearly had the desired effect on

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Sadler, as he was ready for the next step: piloting his own balloon flight.

On a cold, early Oxford morning in October 1784, James Sadler began to fill his balloon with his specially manufactured “rarified air”. It was 3am, and it would take a full two-and-a-half hours before he was ready to fly. To say that Britain wasn’t fully prepared for air flight would be an understatement: an earlier unmanned balloon, which had landed in Devon, had been attacked by pitchfork-wielding farmers, presumed to be a foreign alien intent on stealing their cows. Sadler had also been warned against colliding with Heaven itself, and asked if he had planned to take any weapons, lest sky dragons attack him. The intricate nature of rudimentary air flight wasn’t fully understood to the extent that it was thought that man could simply row through the skies, which is why Sadler counted two large oars among his flight apparatus. The ascent was a success, with Sadler’s unmanned balloon drifting four miles during a thirtyminute flight at a height of around 3,600ft.

The once-excited crowd had become a dissatisfied mob that cut his balloon cords, sending it skyward, half-inflated, as a helpless Cracknell watched on Overnight, Sadler was a national hero. Oxford shut down to celebrate his miraculous success, as townspeople took the horses from his carriage in order to personally pull him around town for hours in celebration. The London Chronicle declared Sadler “the mightiest of Lords”, whereas a Mr. Smith wrote that the flight “represented mankind’s greatest achievement.”

Subsequent flights, merchandise, public events and even an invitation to meet the Queen followed, as the name Sadler became synonymous with British endeavour, bravery and ingenuity. Thirty years later, Sadler still drew crowds that numbered in the tens of thousands to see him fly his grand balloon as part of the centenary celebrations of the Hanoverians ascending the throne. He drew praise from some of the biggest names of the time, including Lord Nelson, who Sadler had helped win the Battle of Trafalgar. Noticing that over a third of the rifles and cannons aboard the HMS Victory were missing their target by over five feet, Sadler suggested some amendments, which drastically improved their efficiency.

The following year, Nottingham was finally given the honour of seeing its first manned air flight. And what’s better, it was at the expense of Derby. A special committee had been formed to raise 500 guineas to pay Sadler to perform the first manned balloon flight in the East Midlands, but when Sadler arrived in Derby he found that the town’s authorities no longer intended to honour the deal. A sharp exchange of words followed over the subsequent months, before Sadler eventually decided to extract the ultimate revenge and relocate the flight to Nottingham.

On 8 November 1831, 30,000 people gathered on Canal Street to prove that the popularity of Sadler, and manned flight in general, was far from waning.

They waited for seven hours in the cold, their patience rewarded when Sadler’s enormous red and white silk balloon ascended to the skies. Eyes that had gathered from Newark, Mansfield, Leicester and, yes, Derby, filled every possible vantage point to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. One lady even threw her handkerchief into Sadler’s basket as it took off, which he noted was frozen solid upon landing. In 2013 the Nottingham Civic Society unveiled a plaque on the front door of Mellows, Morton and Clayton pub on Canal Street – the location thought to be the site used for his ascent – to commemorate the 200 th anniversary of Nottingham’s first flight.

After his historic Nottingham flight, Sadler started to limit his aeronautical activities. Like a middle-England Icarus, his flying activities were starting to become more trouble than they were worth. Never one to exploit his passion for financial gain, Sadler only ever raised enough funds to complete his flights, and his nationwide celebrity never transferred into financial stability. Then in 1824, Sadler’s son Windham (who had also flown from Nottingham, launching from the Castle grounds just a year earlier) died in a tragic ballooning incident. The event broke Sadler, and haunted him until his death four years later. He died penniless, and with exciting new technological advances taking the limelight, coupled with his frustrating lack of first-person written accounts of his exploits and a class prejudice against his lowborn beginnings, his reputation was largely lost to history.

His name might not be widely remembered today; save for the odd book, plaque and discussion amongst aeronaut enthusiasts, but James Sadler is a name that should be celebrated.

He was the first Englishman to cut the umbilical cord from Mother Earth, scaling heights that none other had before him and blazing a trail that would eventually lead to the Moon and, given enough time, further afield still.

NOTTINGHAM CRAFT BEER WEEK 2021

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