Liberating Histories - Feminist Print Revival!

00:00:00.000 We're telling the stories that people aren't given the space to tell.

00:00:11.880 Got to a point where I'd almost lost my identity as a person.

00:00:15.360 I had become a magazine. 0.95

00:00:16.820 I'm like, oh, you're bad for Mamie.

00:00:18.080 And I'm like, I guess I am bad for Mamie.

00:00:19.760 That's who I am now.

00:00:23.360 It's kind of amazing to sort of help be a spot for someone

00:00:26.200 in the same way that people like Sharon and Gal Dan were for me.

00:00:29.080 it's it's very strange it must be strange like having something like you inspired me

00:00:33.180 hi i'm victoria badin i'm alana gallus and i'm mel waters and this is the liberating histories

00:00:44.280 podcast the podcast that explores the last 50 years of the women's movement through the campaigns

00:00:50.020 communities conflicts and controversies sparked by some of its most cherished magazines

00:00:59.080 Hi, I'm Victoria Bazin, and we've now moved fully into the 21st century,

00:01:06.520 into the so-called post-internet era,

00:01:09.440 where the print magazine has become a prestige object,

00:01:13.040 as collectible as vinyl records.

00:01:15.900 For this, our final episode,

00:01:17.960 we're bringing together two powerhouse media influencers,

00:01:21.660 Sharon Daliwal, who founded the South Asian lifestyle magazine Burnt Roti in 2015,

00:01:26.900 and Amy May Baxter, founder of Bad Form,

00:01:30.420 a literary magazine established in 2019 to platform writers of colour.

00:01:35.700 I remember when I met both of them.

00:01:38.280 It was last year we had organised a Feminist Roundtable event

00:01:41.500 that we had in Newcastle at the University of Northumbria.

00:01:45.480 The event was similar in shape to the podcast.

00:01:47.980 We brought together magazine makers from different generations

00:01:51.120 to examine the past, present and future of feminist print culture. 0.99

00:01:55.620 It was here that creators like Sharon and Amy were able to flip through pre-internet magazines such as Mukti, 0.91

00:02:03.120 a magazine by and for South Asian women that we talk about later in this episode.

00:02:08.680 When we recorded this episode, Sharon was planning the next issue of Burnt Roti, an issue focusing on South Asian Tories.

00:02:16.240 And I'm waiting with bated breath for that one.

00:02:19.260 And Amy's decided to back off from producing online content,

00:02:22.100 and instead she's focusing on print issues and organising events.

00:02:26.200 I think this is a really interesting decision and one that we'll reflect on later.

00:02:30.740 So let's just head straight into exploring feminist periodicals today with Sharon and Amy. 0.98

00:02:42.220 So I want to kick off by giving you each a magazine 1.00

00:02:46.060 and I shall give Amy May burnt roti 1.00

00:02:50.200 and I shall give Sharon bad form.

00:02:55.280 And what I wanted us to think about is how do you read a magazine?

00:03:00.760 What's the first thing that you do?

00:03:03.180 Oh, gosh, you can see me doing it already.

00:03:04.780 Those people who are just listening,

00:03:06.320 my instinct always is to start flicking for the visuals,

00:03:08.780 which is probably terrible for me as someone who publishes a books magazine

00:03:12.300 where it's mostly writing.

00:03:14.420 But I think my inclination is to always look at the spreads inside

00:03:17.300 and look at the photos.

00:03:18.980 And Burnt Rottie is just like such a beautiful visual magazine

00:03:22.200 and great pull quotes as well.

00:03:23.820 It makes it so easy to flick through.

00:03:25.140 So yes, I'm such a, I'm a picture person myself.

00:03:27.560 You know what?

00:03:28.160 Like I was just about to do the same thing.

00:03:30.320 It's very much like, yeah, you pick up a magazine.

00:03:32.240 The first thing you want to get is the vibe.

00:03:33.800 So you kind of flick through to see if it's your kind of thing.

00:03:36.000 Yeah.

00:03:36.460 So I can get an idea, like, is it mostly text-based?

00:03:39.120 Is it like, is it full of visuals?

00:03:40.620 What kind of reading experience will it be?

00:03:42.380 So I want to know before I then like sit down with it,

00:03:45.280 like how much time do I need with it?

00:03:46.460 If it's, like, text heavy, then I'll need to, like, carve out some time for this magazine.

00:03:50.720 If it's visual heavy, then I can take less time.

00:03:53.560 But Sharon, you talked about vibes, the vibe of the magazine.

00:03:57.040 So what do you mean by vibe?

00:03:58.700 So kind of the kind of energy I get from it, like if it's really busy, if it's, like, very sparse, minimal, I know what kind of curation it is, if it's very colourful.

00:04:08.440 And so, yeah, I do a lot of flicking to see what energy I get.

00:04:11.120 And it's good practice as well, because when you're creating something, you think about that.

00:04:14.900 But I don't think you think about it enough, really, the flick through, because so many people and I think you doing it being like, oh, that's so bad.

00:04:21.140 I think pretty much everyone does that. Like so many people flick through and I need to create something that people flick through and go, yes, like this is something that I want to read.

00:04:31.300 So what kind of vibe do you think is it bad form?

00:04:34.460 I think because Bad Form is a books magazine by and about writers of colour, it was sort of intended as an, maybe not an antidote, but an opposite to those that sort of existed already, the TLS, Granter, London Review of Books, which are very black and white, very two-toned, very simple looking.

00:04:49.660 So I think the vibe was to look as opposite to that as possible, which was making it full of colour, quite aggressively so, quite bold.

00:04:55.940 so hopefully the vibe is quite joyful and exciting

00:04:58.460 and not too sedate

00:04:59.960 and really it's a magazine for people who like books

00:05:03.100 but may not read books on a regular basis is the idea

00:05:05.740 so yeah I guess that's the vibe

00:05:07.680 so I've never had to define the vibe before

00:05:09.540 so I hope that is an okay vibe

00:05:11.740 That's a great vibe definition

00:05:12.740 I would give you I would say 9.5 out of 10

00:05:15.480 because then you questioned yourself

00:05:16.600 so I took a .5 off for that

00:05:19.000 Thanks Sharon, I appreciate that

00:05:20.580 But Sharon you're implying that each issue has a different vibe

00:05:25.700 Or would you say that Burnt Roti has one vibe, overarching vibe, as it were?

00:05:31.860 I think it differs per magazine, per idea, per person.

00:05:36.220 I create Burnt Roti to have a different experience per issue.

00:05:39.600 Burnt Roti as a whole has a kind of, it has a vibe.

00:05:43.520 It does.

00:05:44.060 I don't know what the definition of that vibe is, but I know it has one.

00:05:47.560 Every issue, every individual issue has something that I want the reader to take away from it,

00:05:51.940 from the way it's designed, from the colour used, the font used, the way it's put together.

00:05:55.700 But it's also my individual learning process as well.

00:05:59.400 So every issue as it went on, you can see how things changed for me with how I understood how to design and how I understood people read like a magazine as well.

00:06:08.680 So it's an evolution of that on top of me trying to create a different environment per issue.

00:06:13.560 Yeah, that's really interesting.

00:06:14.860 I mean, thinking about the visuals, I'd really love to find out how you put a magazine together and what you're thinking about when you put that magazine together.

00:06:24.700 what kinds of images do you use why do you use those images how are you separating the images

00:06:30.100 with the text etc etc what kinds of design decisions are you having to make i think that's

00:06:35.640 an interesting question though about like physicality because i have quite small scenes

00:06:39.840 they're always a5 or have been for the past 10 issues so it sort of does limit you in terms of

00:06:44.420 how much text you can put on a page even and looking at more archival zines often if they

00:06:49.120 were bigger sort of a4 a3 even there's a lot more you can do with with layouts so we're very dependent

00:06:54.600 on colour and image and I think sort of like Sharon was saying as you go along you understand

00:06:59.680 more the people don't read scenes or magazines like a book they will dip into the bits that

00:07:03.640 interest them so you really have to pay a lot of attention to making each article each piece look

00:07:09.460 visually interesting. It's so true I mean with a book you're reading most of the time one story

00:07:14.860 and you're being led through this journey through a particular a handful of characters

00:07:19.560 whereas a magazine you're transported into so many different lives and so many different moments

00:07:25.160 that you have to like I guess sometimes prepare for you have to take yourself out and go back in

00:07:29.740 again and I think it's yeah it's a different process definitely I can sit down and read a

00:07:34.080 book for hours and hours and hours until like it's finished but with a magazine I have to dip

00:07:38.220 in and out I can't go through a magazine in one go I haven't been able to apply I haven't been

00:07:42.680 able to not even my own that is fascinating I think also because you're someone who has written

00:07:47.480 a book also yeah so you have that comparative that was chaotic though to be honest it's a great book

00:07:52.720 though I enjoyed that very much but also I guess very visual again so maybe absolutely process

00:07:57.100 absolutely and I think that's kind of like a nice thing that I feel like could be happening a bit

00:08:01.460 more we're seeing I guess books become more visual and more like magazines and so my book had

00:08:07.860 chapters that you can come in and out of and it had sectioned off interviews it had like

00:08:12.520 illustrations it had a little like comic book in the middle it was very kind of like designed

00:08:16.740 in a particular way and I feel like books are edging towards that kind of style more as well

00:08:22.720 which is nice to see I see quite a few publishers discussing it now having more illustrative or like

00:08:27.680 immersive books yeah I think that's because sorry with my book publishing editor hat on

00:08:33.220 which is my day job a lot of it does come back to this question of the internet and our understanding

00:08:37.860 and of attention spans and the younger people want to read books but often don't feel like

00:08:41.980 they have the capacity to do so i definitely feel i'm not sure about you two the author i get the

00:08:46.620 more time i spend on social media the shorter my attention span yet so books are getting shorter

00:08:51.140 overall we're seeing a lot more success with novels and things but also in the same way that

00:08:54.940 we reflect sort of the internet in our magazine making i think it reflects back at us yeah most

00:08:59.480 definitely um i feel like i when i commission an article for my magazine i i try to say let's not

00:09:06.800 do long form and i find that's because people can't stay for that long in one in one space

00:09:13.420 because i remember i think it was like eight years ago 10 years ago people's attention span was three

00:09:17.860 seconds and so i think now it's probably 0.3 maybe i don't know well it's fascinating i think also

00:09:24.180 when you have a magazine that is online even though so i my print issues are separate to our

00:09:28.340 online content um you can actually see the bounce rate which is how long someone stays on a single

00:09:33.200 page and you'll see people stay like an average of like 10 seconds a minute sometimes read that

00:09:39.600 one article and then go that's all the intelligence man they have you can put as many links as you

00:09:43.640 want to all around the page but it's so hard to get people to stay absolutely on the site

00:09:48.020 i don't know it worries me and i worry about like the kind of focus i can kind of create with a

00:09:53.200 magazine like what kind of focus can i make someone have and it starts to worry me that

00:09:57.980 does everything have to be like 100 words i don't know well you're already getting us into that

00:10:02.660 territory where we're exploring print and digital that's exactly what you've been talking about so

00:10:06.920 that's absolutely brilliant thank you for that i just want to go backwards a little bit and i'm

00:10:11.380 thinking about the sorts of magazines that we're studying in our project so red rag spare rib

00:10:17.320 mukti scarlet women and the titles are all really kind of punchy and you know exactly what you're

00:10:24.780 getting so i wanted you to talk a little bit about your titles your respective titles so 0.99

00:10:30.340 burnt rutti. Rutti is the flatbread you make, like a chapati that you make with a lot of Asian

00:10:36.380 and African meals come with rutti. And so when I was young, my mum would try and get me to make

00:10:43.500 the perfect rutti. She was just like, okay, Sharon, you're 12 years old, you'll be getting

00:10:47.060 married soon. I was like, excuse me, you have to learn how to cook for your husband. I was like,

00:10:51.320 who? And so she would bring me to the kitchen, she'd put all the flour out, she'd put the otta,

00:10:57.100 the ktava was on and she'd be like all right roll it out roll it out Sharon and I was just like

00:11:00.660 miserable just trying to roll out and just you know when you do something like half-arsed and

00:11:04.920 you're just kind of like like a proper teenager where you're just like limp wrists kind of thing

00:11:08.760 and I would burn my ruttis on purpose because I didn't want a husband or this future husband to

00:11:15.460 cook for I just wanted my mum to cook for me I just thought it was so unreasonable and so I would

00:11:21.020 burn them and I think it was my first form of activism as a child and then eventually mum was

00:11:26.220 like oh my god this girl will never be able to cook go sit down she sat me down with my brother

00:11:31.020 who would used to just sit there and read comics while mum cooked so now I was able to sit there

00:11:34.680 and read comics and she continued to make ritties so yeah I called it Ben Rittie because I thought

00:11:39.380 it was just like a it was important to note that period of time where I first kind of went hold on

00:11:44.220 I don't like this I want to do something different and that essentially was what happened when I

00:11:48.980 created my magazine as well so it was just a meeting of those two moments brilliant brilliant

00:11:54.200 So can you tell us, Amy, about Bad Form?

00:11:56.720 Why did you choose that title?

00:11:58.720 Yes, well, ultimately, I thought it was funny.

00:12:01.280 No one else seems to really get the joke,

00:12:03.260 but the idea was that it would be slightly embarrassing

00:12:06.440 or perhaps humbling for an author to have to be published with bad form

00:12:09.760 as sort of a self-critique on their own work.

00:12:12.080 But also the idea that what we were doing was considered bad form,

00:12:14.940 pointing out the racism in publishing and the true review magazines.

00:12:18.580 So, yeah, so intended to be funny,

00:12:20.160 and now it's just kind of stuck and it's got a ring to it.

00:12:22.860 So here we are. Here we are a few years later with the same name.

00:12:26.520 You told us a little bit there about why you started the magazine.

00:12:30.820 Can you tell us a bit more about that?

00:12:33.500 Yeah, absolutely. I was graduating in 2019 and I was looking for a job

00:12:37.820 and I found out about this diversity scheme that Penguin Random House ran called The Scheme

00:12:42.140 and I started having to write an application and I thought I'd do something cool

00:12:45.460 and write about a South Asian writer because I'm South Asian

00:12:48.200 and I was looking for somewhere to get those recommendations for books

00:12:52.660 because I didn't really know anyone apart from Nick S. Shukla, who was a Brown writer.

00:12:56.480 And I figured someone must be doing that already, and nobody was.

00:12:59.440 But what I did find was some slightly horrifying statistics

00:13:02.320 of who gets published in the British publishing industry.

00:13:06.300 And so the bookseller found in 2016 that less than 100 books by BAME,

00:13:11.460 I'm using quote marks on that, BAME British authors were published in 2016.

00:13:16.060 There were sort of a quarter of a million books published in the UK that year.

00:13:19.420 so if you think about it in number of books per day it's an average of 70 books per day

00:13:23.420 give or take and so that's about a day and a bit's worth of publishing in a year

00:13:26.640 which was really heavy and horrible and obviously yes things are a bit better now I myself now

00:13:31.640 commission books or I try to commission authors of colour but it's a difficult landscape and one

00:13:37.100 that the magazine is hopefully trying to address because even when those books were published they

00:13:41.060 weren't getting reviews in the papers or the fancy review magazines and it's hard to publish a book

00:13:45.880 if you've got nothing to quote on it or no one knows about it.

00:13:49.180 So that's what Bad Form aim to do in that regard

00:13:51.400 and what we're still trying to do.

00:13:53.240 Brilliant.

00:13:53.760 What about Burnt Road to you?

00:13:54.980 Why did you start that?

00:13:56.400 What's the mission statement?

00:13:57.840 The mission statement?

00:13:58.620 The mission statement.

00:13:59.460 I am unfortunately not that official,

00:14:01.600 so I don't have a mission statement.

00:14:03.280 It was actually because there were a couple of reasons,

00:14:05.400 I guess, because there weren't that many South Asian magazines

00:14:07.960 that were for us, about us.

00:14:11.480 It was mostly Bollywood and weddings.

00:14:14.580 And even though I love Bollywood and I love weddings, I don't need a magazine for it.

00:14:19.600 So there wasn't really that much out there.

00:14:21.340 And so I had just quit.

00:14:23.720 I realized I could quit.

00:14:24.760 And so I quit my job one day.

00:14:25.880 It was fantastic.

00:14:27.240 And I was doing a bunch of freelance things until I just went, you know what?

00:14:30.800 Try a magazine.

00:14:31.460 See what happens.

00:14:31.920 I was at the time having conversations about my South Asian heritage and identity because I had a nose job about 15 years ago. 0.94

00:14:39.160 So we were talking about ethnic cleansing through plastic surgery and body hair. 0.66

00:14:43.040 and then I was like I'm having so many of these conversations let's just stick it all in this one

00:14:47.320 place and so I came up with the idea of just putting together a print issue realized very

00:14:53.080 quickly I needed an online footprint as well I was like oh website social media oh god just like

00:14:57.140 cobbled everything together and then I yeah I didn't realize what would happen and it's because

00:15:02.880 essentially because I wanted it it meant that everyone else kind of wanted something similar

00:15:07.020 as well and so Ben Ruddy filled a big hole for South Asians and it kind of yeah it was that gap

00:15:12.440 that was missing and so people kind of flocked to it and i was really lucky and now there's so much

00:15:17.300 more out there which is beautiful amazing stuff being done by younger people thank god because

00:15:21.440 i'm getting too old for this creating beautiful things now where south asian culture is now being

00:15:25.900 told in so many different a variety of ways that are just so beautiful and so artistic and it's so

00:15:31.840 nice to see now but yeah that's i was that your question yeah that's my answer so there we go

00:15:37.640 that was my question i mean you mentioned other magazines so there are other magazines sort of

00:15:44.940 are you part of a larger network do you think i think possibly i think there's quite a few networks

00:15:50.320 i think there is like people of color network and then a south asian network and then like

00:15:54.660 a queer network and then within that there's then magazines within those little sections and

00:16:00.760 publishing within those little sections so we're connected quite a few networks i feel

00:16:04.540 but the overall kind of like magazine independent magazine network in London at the moment is just

00:16:11.380 getting larger and larger and I can't keep track of it anymore and I'm very happily backing away

00:16:16.660 from it all just be like you take the reins but it's yeah definitely getting bigger the

00:16:20.520 independent sector is getting bigger because I can see that like bigger magazines like Galdem

00:16:24.960 shut down because it's harder to create something that makes money when we're independent and not

00:16:31.480 for profit or like you know we're not really working within the system we survive longer

00:16:35.740 there's so many more magazines like bernardy being created around london which is so beautiful to see

00:16:42.280 so many of these people are creating so many beautiful things and so the network and the

00:16:46.100 community is growing growing but in a different way i feel in a very kind of like independent way

00:16:51.660 so you describe it being outside the system non-commercial would that yeah like definitely

00:16:57.960 outside the system in many ways yeah i think it's very you're outside the system if you're

00:17:03.520 telling the stories that aren't being told in the system so you're already outside the system

00:17:06.580 you know and then there's the other layer of like you know being financially stable like you know

00:17:12.420 when you're working within this capitalist kind of like realm are you making money are you then

00:17:17.200 in the industry because you're making money does that make you capitalist like you know yeah

00:17:22.040 Ben Ruti makes no money ever so I'm out of all of it but even if it did I would still be outside

00:17:31.060 of the structure because we're telling the stories that people aren't given the space to tell and

00:17:36.400 that's why people came to Ben Ruti they would say stuff like I want to tell the story and no one's

00:17:39.540 publishing it and I'm like give it here don't worry yeah publish it yeah so this is a question

00:17:43.580 about funding isn't it it's about how you get your magazine off the ground and how you sustain it

00:17:48.760 I mean, Amy, how do you do that?

00:17:50.940 Well, it is an interesting one because Sharon is, I don't want to say generation before me,

00:17:54.480 because it sounds like very traumatic, but it was a couple of years before me.

00:17:58.020 It was like it was Sharon, it was Galdon, it was Polyester.

00:18:00.380 That was sort of like the big three who came up and were sort of very much the inspiration,

00:18:04.420 I think, for me and a lot of others who followed in that sort of 2019, 2020 space.

00:18:09.820 But yes, the question of money is interesting.

00:18:11.600 Technically, bad form is for profit.

00:18:13.480 Have we ever made a profit?

00:18:14.640 it no but the hope is there that one day it will be big enough to sustain someone full-time as a

00:18:19.680 full-time salary and the question comes up because a lot of our money comes not from selling print

00:18:24.380 issues because they're very expensive to print and we try not to make them so horribly expensive

00:18:28.660 for people to afford and especially as the cost of paper has just been going up hugely this year

00:18:33.680 it's absolutely astronomical the cost of printing in color oh it makes you feel sick cost living

00:18:37.800 crisis it's even the weirdest of areas but then the question of do you take advertising and and

00:18:42.440 how you do that advertising is very different but at the same time without those ads we'd be dead

00:18:47.480 in the water ultimately they did kind of time about a year and a half two years ago where we

00:18:51.980 had to pay corporation tax because we're for profit and it was something like 250 pounds and

00:18:56.220 that was it but we had no money left and we almost had to shut because there was nothing and

00:18:59.980 thankfully someone paid us for a instagram advert which because we had a decent following not

00:19:04.840 massive but put 300 quid back in the coffers and then i could afford to do the next issue

00:19:09.220 so we're not talking like huge amounts of money here at all but it's people do when they see the

00:19:15.060 word ad because legally in the uk you have to declare when something on the internet is an

00:19:18.980 advert on social media and you have to imprint as well it does raise questions where you're

00:19:24.140 getting those ads from who's doing those ads and who's seeing the money as a result yeah funding

00:19:29.480 adverts like i i i don't have any i have no funding and we don't have adverts on our website

00:19:39.000 everything is mostly from my wages in a lot of the times like you know things if i do a big talk

00:19:48.160 and i get a big chunk then that will go towards an issue of ben ruddy and i budget very very

00:19:53.320 tightly i used to work in video production i know how to budget so i type i do really tight budgets

00:19:58.140 to be able to create something so like the next issue the budget is oh god 1800 no yeah printing

00:20:04.500 included yeah yeah and paying everyone yeah yeah because i do everything else yeah for those who

00:20:11.760 can't see me i was looking astounded but i won't be able to get funding for for that because of

00:20:17.540 the theme of the issue yeah exactly i would have to definitely raise that myself but i can like i

00:20:22.480 fundraising for ben rudy as a individual essentially is how i would do it but yeah we don't really get

00:20:28.100 funding we do get paid every now and then for some things but yeah it's mostly through me so

00:20:32.580 Like I get paid for doing something off the back of Bernard D

00:20:34.900 and then that becomes my income that goes to Bernard D.

00:20:37.440 That's how it works.

00:20:38.340 It's like a circle.

00:20:39.380 That itself is an interesting question.

00:20:41.060 The importance of a sort of, it sounds gross to say,

00:20:43.620 but a brand or a person behind this is so important.

00:20:46.600 You see it in all the big ones.

00:20:48.220 You see Sharon, you see Ione Gamble,

00:20:49.800 you see Live Little back in the day.

00:20:51.860 So much of bad forms of monetary income

00:20:54.920 does come from me doing podcasts and talks and shows and things.

00:20:58.760 That's so interesting that you talk about a brand.

00:21:01.540 You know, you have to.

00:21:02.580 as you say that's the position that you're in but it's a very different economic climate to the one

00:21:07.800 we were talking about at that conference you know with the women's movement magazines where

00:21:11.480 there was some public funding available you know which is so extraordinary isn't it for magazines

00:21:17.280 like mukti spare rib and you kind of wonder what impact that might have on creatives and how it

00:21:26.440 might open up this world for other people if there was some funding available well that's the thing

00:21:32.920 that the only real place you could get funding i think for people like us is the national arts

00:21:37.000 council but there are people whose full-time job is is to help people write bids for that

00:21:41.480 that's how complicated getting those bids i i remember i read a line and i thought i didn't

00:21:45.780 understand english suddenly i was like what what is this sentence have i forgotten english i had

00:21:50.340 to throw my laptop away i mean so there's an interesting thing going on there you're talking

00:21:55.040 about a brand and you yourselves are kind of the brand you know you're kind of selling the magazine

00:22:00.500 through things like this and and presumably you have to be on social media quite a lot because

00:22:06.580 you have to maintain a presence on it so people don't forget about you but so that idea that your

00:22:11.880 identity is branded in some way it's not the same identity that you have necessarily in real life

00:22:17.020 but you've got a brand and I'm thinking about the ways in which you brand your identity and the kind

00:22:23.600 of pressure that might put on you as individuals there was a point where people were saying to me

00:22:28.520 Sharon Bernd-Ruddy as if Bernd-Ruddy was my surname and I got to a point where I had almost lost my

00:22:35.320 identity as a person I had become a magazine and I was so much more because I was a writer beyond

00:22:40.880 air I have a pride event I have these queer events I run I do so much Bernd-Ruddy is just one of the

00:22:45.880 things actually Bernd-Ruddy is what kicks out in my career so that's probably why but I guess it

00:22:50.160 just it it was so overwhelming i realized i didn't have an identity and this whole idea of branding

00:22:54.960 yourself around something you create is actually quite damaging yeah because you lose your identity

00:23:00.200 as an individual person that has so much value because it created something as impactful as

00:23:05.860 these magazines so you need to have that distinction so that you can pull away from it

00:23:09.800 otherwise you lose your own individual power as well it's so weird when people come up to you like

00:23:15.560 on the street it's happened on the bus it's happened and it happens obviously i've got a lot

00:23:19.020 like parties and events and they go oh you're bad for Mamie and I'm like I guess I am bad for

00:23:22.620 Mamie that's that's who I am now but you know it's it's catch-22 because I do put myself out 0.93

00:23:27.460 there I do brand it and frankly speaking having a white face on the algorithm does help it does

00:23:31.860 push them if I just post pictures of magazines the engagement is lower than if I put the team

00:23:37.180 on it or myself on it you know there's there's all sorts of those bits that come into this as well

00:23:42.000 I had to like sit down and remind myself I had to like go away and hang out with my cousin and

00:23:46.500 my granddad like my family and then just get really high and really drunk I don't know if

00:23:53.520 you have to edit that out but but that was what grounded me again and reminded me who I am

00:23:58.740 to then return to Ben Ruti and come in with new energy and be like no I'm not Sharon Ben Ruti

00:24:02.800 I'm Sharon Daliwell founder of Ben Ruti who then does also this that that that that we can have

00:24:08.400 this whole conversation about who I am but I think it's interesting as well because I've always felt

00:24:13.500 a bit odd with the bad form credit because as a magazine editor you're not really a creator in the

00:24:19.220 same way you're a curator in a lot of ways it's really I'm saying I like this and I think this is

00:24:25.120 worth being seen so I'm going to put it in a format and sell it because I think it's worth something

00:24:29.460 and it's very odd because you become associated with the pieces that you publish whether or not

00:24:34.300 you necessarily agree with them but you do get this sort of strange association which has always

00:24:38.400 made me feel very guilty because not guilty but uncomfortable because we published some incredible

00:24:43.200 writers but it's because they trusted us not because I've really influenced or done more than

00:24:48.960 like a structural line edit on their work and maybe a spell check you know it's a very strange

00:24:53.940 thing being a magazine creator in that way absolutely all of these issues all I did was

00:24:59.120 just like throw it together on InDesign and Photoshop and just edited it to make it like

00:25:04.420 readable on a magazine in columns like you know I this work is so stunning and amazing and creative

00:25:11.460 I didn't do it.

00:25:12.420 I just put it in a magazine.

00:25:14.660 Stop saying Bernard D.

00:25:15.820 Name all these people.

00:25:16.980 Exactly.

00:25:17.220 And then you say Bernard D., you know.

00:25:18.500 Yeah.

00:25:19.000 There is a community there that you're representing.

00:25:21.320 There's lots of different perspectives in your magazines.

00:25:24.720 You are not the same as your magazine.

00:25:26.660 Exactly.

00:25:27.060 Yeah.

00:25:27.460 I mean, one of the things that we found really interesting about the women's movement magazines

00:25:31.380 is that a lot of them were made by collectives.

00:25:34.360 Yeah.

00:25:34.700 And we've read a lot about the tensions within those collectives because obviously you're

00:25:39.360 constantly negotiating and quarrelling and fighting about the content and obviously lots

00:25:44.800 of times magazines just implode because you can't agree on a particular topic or issue

00:25:49.900 you've got a slightly different thing going on here don't you I mean because you are you are

00:25:55.300 the editors you have the final word I assume you know so you have editorial control but at the same

00:26:01.420 time you're expressing I suppose an ambivalence about having too much control over the content

00:26:06.720 of your magazines that you want to make sure you're properly showcasing the work of other

00:26:10.540 people have you ever thought of becoming a collective no i've run zines before and i think

00:26:17.060 ultimately editing is so fun curating is so fun commissioning artists like bringing it together

00:26:24.220 throwing parties turning up that's fun you know what's not fun accounts running a website doing

00:26:31.400 blog posts making sure everyone gets paid on time checking the bank account ultimately the the bulk

00:26:37.700 of what i do is admin and collectives don't like admin because everyone wants to do the fun stuff

00:26:43.140 what being the editor ultimately enables me to do is to do all the boring stuff know that it's done

00:26:48.680 know that it's done in a timely-ish fashion and bring in volunteers who are paid an honorarium

00:26:55.200 because we can't pay people regularly yet to do the editing to have ideas and come and yes and

00:27:01.620 help out and help out on events and stuff but really you do need someone there constantly who's

00:27:06.540 doing the boring stuff I mean one of the things that you find with these collectives is that 0.97

00:27:10.620 the women who are part of the collective have this idea of working in non-hierarchical ways 0.85

00:27:16.220 but actually in fact there are always hierarchies absolutely you know someone's always ending up

00:27:22.280 doing the typing and someone's always the creative person or the political person so actually you

00:27:27.600 can't really get around that hierarchy if you want to meet deadlines and things like that in my mind

00:27:32.320 yes i think it works in art slightly differently than magazines because you are ultimately creating

00:27:36.700 a capitalist product that needs to make or at least you know break even yeah um you're selling

00:27:41.680 something so you're sticking to some sort of capitalist hierarchy in that sense yeah yeah

00:27:46.660 you touched on algorithms and i thought that was really really interesting the discussion that we

00:27:52.220 had at the round table was absolutely fascinating a real eye opener for us yeah and I was just

00:27:58.980 wondering whether we might think about the advantages and disadvantages of print versus

00:28:04.540 digital what do you get with a print magazine that you can't get or you don't get with a digital

00:28:10.760 magazine you get to rip up a magazine that's always fun yeah we're talking about that exactly

00:28:17.220 So, yeah, when I when I was younger, let's say, I used to collect crank magazine and I used to rip out the posters that I had thousands of posters and it depended on who I had a crush on at the time.

00:28:28.820 And, you know, those ones would go up and I used to like do little cutouts and like stick things in random places.

00:28:35.760 And I miss that. I miss just like having a product that you now own that is so easy to destroy.

00:28:44.020 Yeah, but it's still art even when it's destroyed.

00:28:47.220 I think for me, I'm such a collector of stuff.

00:28:50.120 Like I love owning multiples and like collecting.

00:28:53.860 And I think there's something really beautiful about holding a physical item in your hand.

00:28:58.060 And you can remember things when you read an article again, but you'll never get that experience of reading it, say, on that first laptop that you had back in the day.

00:29:05.500 For example, it's never quite the same experience.

00:29:08.500 And the internet quotes, you know, I mean, we brought up Galdem a few times as an example, but now it's just an archive where six months ago it was a live magazine.

00:29:16.380 and I don't know how long they're going to pay for that domain for.

00:29:19.240 But at least they have those print issues

00:29:20.600 and I have my copies of Galdem forever.

00:29:22.440 Absolutely.

00:29:22.860 And I'll remember how I felt buying those issues of Galdem

00:29:25.860 and reading them for the first time and feeling seen with them.

00:29:28.360 It's so true.

00:29:29.200 Like, you know, the fact that the internet could just go, you know?

00:29:32.860 Like our archive, our digital archive could just go.

00:29:35.940 Yeah.

00:29:36.360 Whereas our physical archive we could store and take care of and keep

00:29:41.840 and then have that as something to go back to.

00:29:43.680 But, yeah, I think the internet is something that we have so much trust in.

00:29:48.600 What you said about Galdem, I just, given that Galdem is no longer with us,

00:29:52.360 and I wondered if we could think about the impact that that had, Sharon, on your magazine.

00:29:57.620 Yeah, well, it was heartbreaking, actually, for me.

00:30:01.340 I don't know how much of an impact it made on the magazine, but on my personal self,

00:30:05.660 I was heartbroken because when I first started, Galdem were there for me.

00:30:10.140 I remember that we started in very similar times.

00:30:13.680 Galdon first and then we came later I think a year or two later and the support I had from them was

00:30:19.520 phenomenal they taught me how to collaborate by just simply collaborating with me without asking

00:30:24.860 anything of me and so yeah they were a big part of Ben Ruddy just reaching the audiences it reached

00:30:30.340 like they would promote Ben Ruddy as well and it was just so cute and then yeah and I saw them go

00:30:35.600 from strength to strength and I saw the amazing things they were doing with their online publications

00:30:40.340 print publications all the events the collaborations they were doing so much and so

00:30:45.500 many amazing things that it was heartbreaking to not just see Galdem go but to see a queer woman 0.78

00:30:52.580 led a queer black woman led magazine ending was upsetting for me and then yeah I guess 0.90

00:31:00.520 I guess I don't know it just kind of it just made me go oh my god is that gonna happen to me 1.00

00:31:05.560 yeah it gives you an end date and you never think of an end date when it comes to your magazines or

00:31:10.860 your creative work and then suddenly when you see a magazine that was there alongside you have an

00:31:14.860 end date you just start thinking about your own one not like my life okay my magazines end date

00:31:21.620 you know well that's interesting because bad form was always set up sorry to talk but no but bad

00:31:26.480 form was always set up with the idea that we would become defunct at a certain point because our

00:31:31.580 purpose was to provide more representation and more reviews of authors of colour the idea would

00:31:36.580 be that they'd become so ubiquitous and the actual big papers and stuff that you wouldn't need a bad

00:31:41.100 form anymore it would just be a kind of boring thing that no one would want to pick up so i

00:31:45.740 always sort of hoped there would be an end date for us but it seems less and less likely as the

00:31:49.560 time goes on how sweet is that yeah thanks no but like it's it's that's the ideal isn't it but we're

00:31:55.640 also very aware so like that's kind of like you know in the ideal world we wouldn't have to talk

00:32:00.800 about these issues yeah but in in our realities and especially the publishing world what a mess

00:32:06.880 yeah so we have to talk about these issues but like the end date on bernardy not just as a

00:32:11.580 magazine but as like a statement a conversation like you know a piece of art like whatever

00:32:18.760 bernardy becomes it just made me start to go oh my god it's gonna like disappear and like it just

00:32:24.300 made me so aware of how things that i think are going to be here forever aren't going to be here

00:32:29.120 forever i thought galden was going to be here forever and i think every sort of young writer

00:32:32.980 of colors sort of right passage is to have your article published in galden is like such a big

00:32:38.360 thing like everyone remembers their first you know it was such a big thing yeah um yeah special

00:32:44.280 right so let's think about front covers i mean we i mean i love front covers they're so kind of

00:32:52.540 they're so interesting to deconstruct you know to think about what's going on in the magazine

00:32:58.000 maker's mind you know what kind of message you want to send how are you setting the scene for

00:33:02.620 your readers yeah but i thought we might start with mukti magazine because mukti was published

00:33:08.640 between 1983 and 1987 it was a magazine by and for south asian women and it was translated into

00:33:17.840 six languages if you can believe that i couldn't believe this when i first saw this at the round

00:33:22.940 table when we were going through it i could not believe that they managed to do that regularly

00:33:27.280 into six languages, the amount of time it takes to translate

00:33:30.120 and also quite complicated political pieces.

00:33:32.600 Exactly, that's commitment.

00:33:33.680 Commitment, and it's just so cool, you know,

00:33:36.500 and it was also kind of heartbreaking that I'd never heard of it before

00:33:39.340 because this is so up our street, you know,

00:33:41.280 it's the kind of thing that we'd love to read.

00:33:43.160 It is the most amazing magazine and, in fact,

00:33:46.140 the people who made the magazine, their first language was English,

00:33:50.080 so they were getting their mums to do it, it sounds like, you know,

00:33:53.700 to translate into all those different languages

00:33:56.380 and they couldn't pay people so you know but it's it's also kind of interesting i think this

00:34:01.780 idea of translation and i i kind of wonder about what this front cover says to both of you whether

00:34:09.760 i mean obviously you've not probably seen it before maybe sharon you've seen it can you describe the

00:34:14.840 front cover of mukti for us yeah sure so mukti at the front you have a woman in a sari with her

00:34:21.100 arm up in the air and she's yelling something and so that's a drawn illustration it's really

00:34:26.100 beautiful and then behind it and taking up most of the front cover is a close-up of a woman's face

00:34:32.460 there's a lot of shadow and you see a bindi as well and she looks very kind of like i guess stern

00:34:37.300 and very kind of i don't know determined and it says mukti above it june august 1983 40p issue

00:34:43.860 number one and then it says asian women's magazine at the bottom and it's this beautiful goldy orangey

00:34:49.320 color stunning it's a very striking i i love the way she looks directly at the ring oh my god yeah 0.82

00:34:54.360 You know, she's making eye contact. 0.98

00:34:55.820 This is full eye contact.

00:34:56.340 She means business, doesn't she?

00:34:57.780 She does.

00:34:58.820 She does. 0.84

00:34:59.540 And the Black Power salute at the bottom, 0.94

00:35:01.640 so referencing Black Power,

00:35:03.140 which I think is really powerful as well.

00:35:04.780 Absolutely.

00:35:05.440 Yeah.

00:35:06.320 But we were talking about the relationship

00:35:08.220 between Mukti and Burnt Roti,

00:35:11.680 and even though obviously you weren't familiar

00:35:13.420 with the magazine, there are some similarities,

00:35:15.600 certainly in the way you talk about Burnt Roti

00:35:17.740 and what you're trying to do with it.

00:35:19.460 Can you see any similarities?

00:35:20.900 I mean, no matter what, even though this was created,

00:35:24.360 around the time I was born so I would definitely not have seen it um it still carries the same

00:35:31.800 cultural values you know we still are talking about the same things in many ways and different

00:35:37.480 things as well because different doors have opened and different conversations are happening 0.85

00:35:40.620 but off the back of it it comes from the same radical statements that women are making 0.74

00:35:46.460 culturally and religiously like if it's culture-based or faith-based the kind of radical

00:35:52.540 statements that are being made don't differ because they are based around the patriarchy

00:35:56.980 and so that unfortunately hasn't been toppled i don't know why that's still that's still up there

00:36:01.880 and so because of that the conversations will stay relevant and they will stay similar in many ways

00:36:07.620 with branching off different areas into different things over the years so yeah definitely i think

00:36:13.020 we would have so much similarity the creators of mukti and myself about what we would talk about

00:36:19.000 and what would matter to us, I guess.

00:36:21.100 I think that, and also, you know, with the front cover.

00:36:23.700 So the first issue of Burton Ruti, issue number zero,

00:36:26.280 because I thought I was being clever,

00:36:27.620 is a similar colour background

00:36:29.180 and has a woman in a sari that was then a mirrored image

00:36:33.220 looking at a phone in a modern way.

00:36:36.020 I hadn't thought of that.

00:36:36.960 You're right, it is.

00:36:38.300 How funny is that?

00:36:39.320 Yeah, and so there's that kind of similarity

00:36:40.840 about having that culture.

00:36:43.060 And then I see on Mukti as well, on the next page,

00:36:45.260 there's like drawings of texture as well.

00:36:47.760 and so like in the front cover we used a lot of texture of like saris to create the sari image

00:36:54.780 and texture is so heavy in our culture so these kind of things will carry on you know these kind

00:36:59.260 of statements about the patriarchy the idea of texture talking about faith these kind of things

00:37:04.100 will continue in these I guess radical ways and so we would definitely we would get on like a

00:37:10.480 house on fire I feel like I feel like we should go have a cup of tea do some gossiping there'll

00:37:14.920 be so much i would listen to that podcast yes you're coming yeah yes and i've got in front of

00:37:22.320 me and i'm giving this to amy it's the front cover of the special edition on sex which i think is an

00:37:28.820 amazing cover thank you and i wondered amy whether you could tell us a little bit about how you put

00:37:34.400 this together and what your thoughts were about this image yeah so this is a cover of our 10th

00:37:39.500 issue of bad form which was on sex and it felt like a real achievement to get to 10 issues for

00:37:44.860 us because some had been a struggle um we finally had a bit of a bigger budget on this one because

00:37:50.860 it was distributed by a feminist subscription box which is called books that matter which is a really

00:37:55.720 cool company they sell subscription boxes of feminist books so it was going out to our biggest

00:38:00.660 readership ever of two and a half thousand people all getting print issues which was amazing crazy

00:38:06.100 for us we'd only ever really sold 500 at a time in terms of print run before that so also an

00:38:11.900 interesting contrast to the zines that have gone before us because the numbers we were talking

00:38:15.060 about at the round table were infinitely larger than our circulation though our followings are

00:38:19.680 often much bigger sorry that's a completely separate conversation i got sidetracked um but

00:38:23.800 yeah sorry the front cover is a collage designed by this wonderful illustrator asthma and it's

00:38:29.160 actually a physical collage she made on paper which is why there are these lovely shadows on

00:38:33.520 the cover itself and it depicts sex in a neutral way we because bad form is buying about writers

00:38:40.780 of colour we felt we had to be very sensitive with creating an image that showed sex and sexiness

00:38:47.400 and the joy of sex without over sexualizing or exoticizing so what you have is a combination of

00:38:53.940 different body parts of different tones so two arms two legs and a hand touching a tangerine

00:39:00.000 slightly suggestively with lots of sheets and flowers of all sorts and it really I think it is 0.93

00:39:06.780 a very joyful image which does I think to some extent show someone femme experiencing real sexual 0.58

00:39:14.960 joy without really depicting anyone at all so yeah and then we chose pink which again doesn't

00:39:21.080 feel radical but also did in a lot of ways I think people probably would have expected us to do

00:39:25.400 something neutral and gender neutral but it's you know it was a very femme mag this issue and you

00:39:30.960 know it was very important to us that we showed that I mean it's beautiful it's such a striking

00:39:35.480 image, but in such a beautiful way. Fabulous, fabulous. Well, I think we're probably getting

00:39:42.120 to the end, but I've got a few more questions for you. And the first thing is, you know,

00:39:47.060 the women's movement magazines that we've looked at, one of the things that we've discovered is

00:39:51.320 that sometimes these magazines use the word or the phrase women's liberation rather than feminist,

00:39:58.380 because feminist was, it had all kinds of connotations at the time that women wanted

00:40:04.160 to disassociate themselves from.

00:40:06.420 So I was just wondering about whether you describe

00:40:09.380 your publications as feminist publications

00:40:11.760 or what is your relationship to feminism?

00:40:15.540 I guess, I mean, yeah,

00:40:18.260 Ben Ruti is a feminist publication.

00:40:19.700 I don't think I've really said it much.

00:40:22.340 I think what we create kind of outlines it

00:40:24.340 very easily and simply.

00:40:25.900 And I think politically as well, where we stand,

00:40:28.860 I think that's kind of outlined.

00:40:30.380 I don't know, I haven't really made too many statements

00:40:33.140 about what Bernruti is exactly.

00:40:35.000 And I think that's because I was trying to understand it myself

00:40:37.040 as I went on. 0.99

00:40:38.500 I knew I was a feminist.

00:40:39.760 I knew I was radical.

00:40:41.260 I knew I hated politics.

00:40:43.320 But in the same way, I was obsessed.

00:40:45.500 I knew all those things.

00:40:46.680 And I think through me, it came into the magazine quite clearly.

00:40:51.340 I don't know how many times I've said it, though.

00:40:53.380 But it's 100%.

00:40:54.200 A feminist, radical, we hate Tories magazine.

00:40:59.420 I think when I started, I was quite young.

00:41:03.140 I think quite reticent in a lot of ways to try and I thought you know reviews have to be neutral

00:41:07.820 in some way and now I just fundamentally don't agree with that at all there's no way to write

00:41:11.400 a neutral review that is not innately political or to write about literature that's not and yeah

00:41:16.580 so I consider myself an intersectional feminist and so the zine has to be reflected in the direction

00:41:22.200 of me and my if you're curating it then obviously the zine reflects that in a lot of ways so yeah

00:41:27.400 like Sharon I've never really made much statement of the fact that it's intersectionally feminist

00:41:31.020 but it's a fundamental part of what we do

00:41:33.200 and the work we produce.

00:41:35.020 I think the statements that we make

00:41:36.420 outside of it individually as well,

00:41:37.700 because we were talking about us

00:41:38.720 being the brand of the magazine.

00:41:40.280 I think our individual selves

00:41:41.840 probably already curates that side of it for us

00:41:44.960 without us having to make that statement.

00:41:47.100 So I think people who see me

00:41:49.280 or are aware of me

00:41:50.740 would know what kind of magazine I'd create.

00:41:52.780 I mean, yeah, you're talking to two 1.00

00:41:53.860 like South Asian queer women. 0.54

00:41:55.240 So I think it just sort of comes 0.93

00:41:56.380 with the territory, doesn't it? 1.00

00:41:58.340 Just the feminism, yeah. 1.00

00:41:59.580 Yeah, absolutely. 1.00

00:42:01.020 There was no choice, essentially.

00:42:03.060 It's just who we are now.

00:42:05.040 So do you see yourselves as activists?

00:42:08.720 I have been called an activist a few times and I've used it a few times.

00:42:11.960 But at the same time, I am unsure about what that word means anymore.

00:42:16.620 I think it's gone to a very grey area.

00:42:19.120 I think activists meant something before.

00:42:22.160 And I think it's used quite a different way now.

00:42:25.140 And I think that's probably because of social media.

00:42:27.180 So yes, I do. But also I question what that means now and what that means about the work I do and how I project myself at all my work. Am I in this new form of activism or am I in an older form of activism? Like I don't know where I stand in the word activism.

00:42:42.820 I think I feel uncomfortable with the concept of applying activism to myself into bad form because we're advocating for capitalism in a lot of ways like we're advocating for people not that I myself advocating for capitalism what I mean is we're trying to persuade people to buy things yeah and that I think doesn't sit super comfortably with the concept of activism I think there's I mean we sit like we all sit in in the world of there's no way outside of it you can't sit outside of capitalism you wouldn't exist

00:43:13.560 But that's the thing.

00:43:14.740 At some point, I do consider myself a political person

00:43:17.360 and bad form is inherently radical in what it does.

00:43:20.560 Yeah, absolutely.

00:43:21.000 So if that is the definition of...

00:43:22.540 I agree with you.

00:43:23.240 There's a lot of conversations we have about that concept.

00:43:24.580 Yeah, about what it means.

00:43:25.900 Absolutely.

00:43:26.580 Then yes, maybe.

00:43:28.300 It is an activist magazine, but I wouldn't...

00:43:30.580 I don't know, there's something a bit grandiose

00:43:31.760 about describing yourself as an activist in a lot of ways.

00:43:34.300 It's like, yes, I'm an activist.

00:43:35.780 And it's like, okay, what have you done then?

00:43:36.980 Yeah, I talk about books.

00:43:38.440 Yeah.

00:43:39.100 What am I doing?

00:43:39.960 But in many ways, you have.

00:43:41.380 like you have like carved away for people you have made certain statements about what the

00:43:45.180 publishing industry is like you know you've gone up against so much in that sense as well so like

00:43:49.480 that's the root of an of an activist that's how so interesting yeah you are i think i think that's

00:43:57.280 that's a really good way of putting it sharon because one of the things we're interested in

00:44:01.340 is these magazines women's movement magazines not just as reflecting women's activism but actually

00:44:07.700 creating activist communities and identities and i i think both your magazines do that yeah you know

00:44:13.900 and you talk well you both talk about communities you know about creating communities of readers

00:44:18.820 bringing people together so i think that can be a very powerful thing i think yeah i think because

00:44:24.100 so much of our growth came in the first few lockdowns that i didn't really even realize

00:44:28.740 what a community had grown around bad form until we had our first party which was in a basement in

00:44:33.780 central london and it sold out and there were 120 people there who often came had come alone but

00:44:40.800 were there literally just to talk about or get drunk but also to talk about writers of color

00:44:45.240 and engage with bad form and i was like this is so special there's been so many people who have

00:44:49.920 come to me who said i want to start a magazine like this i want to focus on south asian writers

00:44:54.540 or whatever and i've gone on to do that so successfully it's it's kind of amazing to sort

00:44:58.880 of help be a spark for someone in the same way that like people like sharon and galden were for

00:45:03.180 me it's it's very strange it must be strange like having someone like me be like you inspired me

00:45:07.460 but it's cool also and it's cool to get to talk to you about it thinking about communities of

00:45:12.780 readers you know thinking about your readers and the ways in which women's movement magazines

00:45:18.760 use correspondence pages and how interesting those correspondence pages are I mean they're

00:45:24.140 sometimes the best bits oh yeah and you get people writing and saying all kinds of things and there's

00:45:29.760 all kinds of conflicts all kinds of perspectives but i was wondering whether you have any interaction

00:45:35.320 with your readers and if so how social media loads yeah all the time yeah and it can really

00:45:42.320 differ in the the level of publicness sorry there's a word for that and it's uh completely

00:45:47.240 gone from my mind i like publicness let's use it let's go with publicness it varies in how

00:45:51.420 private or not private the the correspondence is because you have the very private which is direct

00:45:56.740 emails which are often the most nasty ones um you get all sorts of people calling out the woodwork

00:46:02.540 people really hate anti-racist work they really do and they really hate us creating our own spaces

00:46:08.540 they really do someone signed up for our newsletter recently and it was like xenophobe 0.98

00:46:13.100 xenophobe.com and i sent a message like you know you suck i was like great thanks so much well you 0.95

00:46:18.800 sound great yeah but you know a lot of you know watching on twitter as much as i've sort of 0.96

00:46:23.860 bad mouth twitter today it's also been amazing to see people not even tagging us and stuff but

00:46:28.740 say hey i read this article you should read this article this is what i learned from it and people

00:46:32.520 commenting that they agreed or disagreed or wanted to engage it's really wonderful to be able to see

00:46:36.980 that because i think in a lot of ways that's less scary for people to do than to write a whole letter

00:46:40.780 into a magazine i think takes quite a lot of puts but you know you've got to you've got to form it

00:46:45.780 whereas if you just send a tweet you write an instagram comment it can be quite off the cuff

00:46:49.140 so i think that's kind of the beauty of these social media sites as well as it's meant that

00:46:52.580 more people are engaging who may not have otherwise engaged if the only outlet was to

00:46:56.740 write a formal letter so yeah i love interacting with people like that you must get loads it

00:47:01.580 because a lot of the time like ben would be done by just me it's very isolating and then you have

00:47:06.020 these conversations and you're like yes this is why i'm doing it sometimes you forget you know

00:47:10.380 and it's just beautiful i love it so much i love the emails the dms i i love the hate i'm like

00:47:14.980 give me attention i wasn't doing anything today and now i am so thank you i do like sharing the

00:47:20.900 hate messages it's fun i have so many screenshots on my phone it's amazing so funny well that's

00:47:25.500 lovely to hear that you've got a community out there and sometimes you get to talk to your

00:47:28.980 readers yeah to that community and interact with them yeah

00:47:32.060 it's hard to end i love talking about magazines it's so much fun and they're that the magazines

00:47:40.060 that you've produced are so beautiful thank you and they are full of so many interesting articles

00:47:45.940 debates. I've learned so much

00:47:48.440 from reading these magazines I really have

00:47:50.320 to tell you. So well done

00:47:52.260 Ewan, thank you so much for coming

00:47:53.880 and sharing your thoughts about

00:47:56.040 Burnt Roti

00:47:57.660 and Bad Form. Thank you

00:48:00.200 Thanks for having us

00:48:01.020 Oh Victoria, don't they have

00:48:10.340 such a fantastic rapport

00:48:12.200 They've got this real kind of

00:48:14.180 lovely banter between them don't they and an understanding and a kind of connection. Yeah

00:48:19.100 they've obviously got a lot of shared concerns and a lot of shared experience as well when it

00:48:24.560 comes to making periodicals and being the periodical. Yeah that came across so strongly

00:48:31.420 didn't it? The ways in which their identities were kind of collapsed into the publication and

00:48:37.280 I hadn't really thought about that because obviously the magazines we're looking at

00:48:41.100 they're often collectively produced so there's a certain amount of anonymity there and also a

00:48:47.900 certain kind of protection you know your name is not necessarily on the magazine itself and that's

00:48:53.880 useful yeah there's no anonymity here is there you know you are Sharon burnt roti or you are

00:49:02.880 bad form Amy bad form Amy yeah they really um sort of transmitted that sense of being

00:49:08.440 consumed by their magazines in almost a Frankenstein like way. But I also thought it spoke to the

00:49:14.800 aliveness of these magazines, because, you know, they do feel like they're alive.

00:49:19.640 Yeah, and they've got a really clear sense of who their readers are, sometimes in a very direct way

00:49:26.140 that they're communicating with the people who are reading the publications.

00:49:30.140 Yeah, and Sharon opposed the sort of isolation of putting the magazine together with the community

00:49:35.540 that it then reached out to and allowed her to reach as well, didn't she?

00:49:39.380 I thought that was a lovely way of putting it.

00:49:42.340 And a very different kind of community to the communities we've been talking about

00:49:46.060 that are based in various parts of the UK.

00:49:48.780 So that was interesting.

00:49:50.960 You know, there's a real sense there, I think,

00:49:53.080 particularly hearing Sharon and Amy talk about the ways in which they interact with their readers.

00:50:00.580 there's a sense of the possibilities or the opportunities of social media in terms of

00:50:05.960 creating those activist communities that we've been talking about a real potential there if you

00:50:11.700 can sustain that community and if you can mobilize that community yeah so some things

00:50:18.340 has ever changed and some things stay the same because again we hear about the problem of finance

00:50:25.780 How do these magazines run?

00:50:28.340 Can they make a profit?

00:50:29.920 If so, where's that profit coming from?

00:50:32.680 Are you carrying advertising?

00:50:34.780 What are the pros and cons of that?

00:50:36.820 Yeah, that was really, really stark.

00:50:38.260 It really came out very starkly in this conversation.

00:50:41.460 But how powerful was that moment when you put Mukti in front of Sharon

00:50:44.680 and Sharon was, you know, looking at the front cover

00:50:47.620 and you could, you know, really tell how deeply Sharon was relating to Mukti

00:50:52.760 And, you know, there's that wonderful sense of this long legacy of this sort of publication that can be tracked back to the 80s, but continues today.

00:51:02.300 Yeah, yeah. Mukti, you know, was made in the early 1980s.

00:51:06.020 It's a magazine for South Asian women.

00:51:08.160 And as you're saying, Eleanor, it was absolutely groundbreaking.

00:51:11.180 It's so wonderful, though, to see that legacy come through into the present moment.

00:51:16.280 But again, so many of those issues are the same.

00:51:18.620 They really are.

00:51:19.400 that's why we need this podcast

00:51:21.720 so we can think about those issues

00:51:24.040 more. Oh gosh, what a

00:51:25.940 wonderful note on which to finish

00:51:27.880 this has been the final episode

00:51:29.920 of the series and in our

00:51:31.840 project in general we're really

00:51:34.040 foregrounding the physical object of the

00:51:35.920 magazine but what we've

00:51:37.840 also got from the podcast, I think this is

00:51:39.940 really crucial, which we

00:51:41.880 don't get from the archive

00:51:43.700 is the live reactions from people

00:51:45.760 responding to the magazines, you know the

00:51:47.800 feelings the reflections and the stories that come out of feminist magazines yes what's really

00:51:54.040 stayed with me has been the stories from shila in episode one talking about the lambrisco and

00:52:00.100 coffee fueled nights of getting the mag out to leslie from the fourth episode talking about the

00:52:05.600 harpies and quines lawsuit all publicity is good publicity yeah i really liked it when stella was

00:52:12.360 talking in episode two about being visited by Special Branch. We've got loads of really good

00:52:18.720 nuggets here and it's been a lot of fun to record. I think we all hope in our own small way that

00:52:26.540 we're helping to preserve the legacies of these magazines and there is an urgency to remembering

00:52:32.440 these histories at the moment. As we've said in many of the episodes we've been talking about a

00:52:38.620 lot of the same issues for 50 years and if we don't do the work of capturing these stories

00:52:43.980 these histories these magazines then they can so easily be forgotten

00:52:49.240 this has been liberating histories with mel waters eleanor careless and me victoria bazin

00:52:57.520 we have a fourth member of the team caitlin mendes who you've not heard on the podcast

00:53:01.760 she is based at the university of western ontario this series is part of a larger

00:53:06.840 AHRC-funded project

00:53:08.760 based at Northumbria University

00:53:10.480 and partnered with

00:53:11.620 the Women's Library LSE.

00:53:13.360 This podcast was produced

00:53:14.760 by Sophie McNulty

00:53:15.880 and Alex Watson

00:53:17.140 at PICSU Productions.

00:53:19.200 You can find more

00:53:20.140 about our project

00:53:21.060 at liberatinghistories.org

00:53:23.000 or follow us on

00:53:24.280 x at libhistories

00:53:25.820 or on Instagram

00:53:27.000 at liberatinghistories.

00:53:29.340 You can also find links

00:53:30.600 to magazine covers

00:53:31.500 that we mentioned

00:53:32.120 in our show notes

00:53:32.960 as well as additional resources.

00:53:35.220 Thank you so much for listening.

Liberating Histories - March 22, 2024

Feminist Print Revival!

Episode Stats

Transcript