Sex and art, we're told, are sacred. Two spheres that ought to be kept separate from the ravages of the marketplace. Yet both are built on the commodification of creativity and desire argues Sophia Giovannitti in this excerpt from her astounding new book. The first sex worker I ever (knowingly) met wouldn’t, I don’t think, have called herself that. In colloquial terms, she was an art girl, and if she was a worker at all, she was the kind who liked to fall in love with her clients. Ever pretentious, she would joke that the guy responsible for paying her rent was trying to turn her “into a capi ..read more

The Museum of Homelessness is using the stories of those often forgotten to reclaim their humanity and campaign for an end to homelessness. At the tail end of October 2021, dozens of people gathered outside the BFI IMAX cinema in Waterloo. Each person waiting was wearing rainbow-coloured wristbands, though none had travelled to see Daniel Craig’s final turn as James Bond in No Time to Die. The wide, glass cylinder of the UK’s largest cinema screen rises up out of London's old Bullring roundabout. In the mid-1980s and 1990s, long before the giant cinema was built, the roundabout was known as ..read more

As the international climate summit continues in Dubai, Friends of the Earth’s international climate campaigner Rachel Kennerley writes on the government’s need to act. This year’s crucial international climate summit, which kicked off in Dubai last week, takes place against a backdrop of an accelerating climate crisis and record levels of global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.  The world has increasingly been battered by extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts, storms and floods, which are growing in intensity and frequency as the planet rapidly warms. All of this is h ..read more

Instead of a divided country, photographer Florence Montmare’s coast to coast odyssey saw her discover community, love and connection. In 2020, the pandemic was near its peak and much of the world was stuck indoors. Greek-Swedish photographer Florence Montmare was thinking about the world beyond. While she was working in New York as a cultural attaché for Sweden and engaging in diplomatic work, she gained an acute awareness of the climate crisis’s severity and began to think of ways she could explore while minimising her carbon emitting impact. “We were all isolated and staying small,” M ..read more

Deptford’s Matchstick Piehouse has quickly become the beating heart of south east London scenes, but lockdown era rent arrears could see it shut down this week Established in 2018, Matchstick Piehouse is a community-oriented venue and arts space located in southeast London. It has quickly become a home away from home for many, playing an important role as a hub for genuine underground culture. It is one of the rare places in the capital which is not profit-driven, accommodates its staff with respect, and the feeling of community infiltrates every aspect of its running. Hosting a range of ..read more

Three Black Trail Runners members meet to train in Wales’ Eryri National Park, before taking on the team challenge of adidas TERREX Infinite Trails 2023 in Austria. Rugged terrain and steep ascents are the domain of the most determined, tenacious and skilled athletes in the world of trail running. In this unforgiving environment, three remarkable women from the Black Trail Runners (BTR) community group are gearing up for an extraordinary challenge. Becky Devereux, Rachel Dench and Juliette Denny have set their sights on the adidas TERREX Infinite Trails 2023, a gruelling team event held in th ..read more

Photographer Ksenia Kuleshova’s new monograph ‘Ordinary People’ captures the everyday lives of queer people in Armenia, Georgia and Russia as homophobic attacks increase. In 2015, Russian photographer Ksenia Kuleshova was standing on the escalator in Copenhagen Airport having just arrived for a short holiday, when two men struck up a conversation with her. The pair were heading home to St Petersburg after their own mini-break, and enjoying the photographer’s engaged demeanour, they opened up and explained that they were a couple. As the pair left to catch their flight, they exchanged so ..read more

New exhibition Meeting at the Volta celebrates the revolutionary energy of youth across generations. As the African Independence Movement swept across the continent, the people of Upper Volta threw off the yoke of colonialism in 1960, expelling the French and forging a new nation now known as Burkina Faso. That same year, 17-year-old Sanlé Sory opened the Volta Photo Studio in Bobo-Dioulasso. Adopting the popular 6 x 6 format camera, Sory could readily move between the studio and the street, crafting a captivating portrait of a new generation revelling in the possibilities of freedom on thei ..read more

Skateistan’s The World On Board campaign unites the global skate community to transform even more young people’s lives through skateboarding. Skaters have had many faces: from California-drought delinquents to Olympic Gold medalists, fashion icons to academics. Over the past 60-odd years this subculture has broken the mould again and again. But today, with the help of global non-profits like Skateistan (and ambassadors like Tony Hawk), a new story is being told. Skateboarding is becoming a movement for change. It all started with a fountain The world of skateboarding looked very different ba ..read more

London Calling! celebrates the overlooked early years of British skateboarding, which laid the groundwork for the scene we know today. It’s late evening on London Bridge, with a hint of sunset glow hovering between the thick blanket of grey cloud and the horizon’s edge. A man dressed in a bright orange bomber jacket and blue jeans rides his skateboard over the River Thames. Weaving left and right across the width of the pavement, with his mop of hair ducking and popping, he moves between the suited, briefcase-carrying pedestrians with a balletic grace. That skater’s name is Kadir Guirey, a pr ..read more