This week’s magazine is a Different Class

Pulp founder and frontman Jarvis Cocker guest edits this week. At a time when we all need a little razzmatazz in our lives, he brings fresh thinking, big ideas, and some serious creativity to our pages.

“This special edition of The Big Issue gives me the chance to present to you some of the humans who have excited or inspired me during The Time of Covid,” he writes in his introduction. “I would call them War Heroes – (without all those unpleasant “military” connotations, of course). Or maybe Heroes of Our Times would be better.”

In the wake of Covid-19, Jarvis has recruited 12 influential changemakers and thinkers to produce short, sharp, exciting essays on “how to rewrite the Operator’s Manual for planet Earth.”

• Architect Amanda Avante, poet Caleb Femi, anthropologist David Graeber and broadcaster Emma Dabiri are among those offering provocative, profound and important ideas to plan a better future
• Lias Saoudi, singer with Fat White Family, reveals how he responded to having his year’s plans of touring torn up by making some big changes
• Jarvis chats with his friend and collaborator, artist Jeremy Deller, who has produced an exclusive artwork for the magazine’s centrefold
• Our guest editor also gives his younger self a good talking to, revealing an old school notebook where he’d written his ‘Pulp Masterplan’ as a teenager: “The group shall work its way into the public eye by producing fairly conventional, yet slightly offbeat, pop songs. After gaining a well-known and commercially successful status, the group can then begin to subvert and restructure both the music business and music itself.”

There’s also a crossword compiled by Baxter Dury and a Jarvis-themed quiz!

Inside too are our regular features Big List, Vendor Expert (hiking), arts pages and My Pitch interview. And much more!

Head out and buy a magazine from your local vendor – they need your support more than ever. 

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