I’ve been a fan of The Big Issue from the outset 30 years ago. What started for me as a personal act of giving to support people who were homeless quickly turned into loving its mix of social commentary, the arts, interesting jobs and overall quirkiness.
When magazines are bought casually on a street you don’t know who is buying, but you do know the quantity of sales and in the week prior to lockdown, The Big Issue sold around 80,000 copies across the UK and supported the livelihoods of 1,500 vendors, by any definition among the most vulnerable in our society. Then came March 23 – day zero – when the UK went into lockdown and life as we knew it ended. The speed with which The Big Issue, a small but incredibly effectively organisation, has turned its model around is breathtaking.