Inside the Big issue: The real legacy of Amy Winehouse

As a new biopic of Amy Winehouse is released, we shine a light on the real legacy of the iconic singer who died tragically at the age of 27.

Read about our visit to Amy’s Place, a supported housing facility in London for young women who have left treatment for drug addiction. It is the UK’s only housing project set up especially to help young women recover from drug addiction and is operated by The Amy Winehouse Foundation, which was launched by the family in September 2011, on what would have been Amy’s 28th birthday.

The foundation began by donating to children’s hospices and charities and working with rehabs. It was through this they realised there were gaps in the services for young people facing addiction.

So they opened Amy’s Place, which marks its eighth birthday this year. Usually 16 women live there, and they stay for up to two years. Each has their own flat, or shares with another resident, which they decorate and make their own. Jane Winehouse, Amy’s stepmum and managing trustee of the Amy Winehouse Foundation, tells the Big Issue: “There’s nothing better than seeing the young women that have come through Amy’s Place doing well. Some of them have gone on to have children or be reunited with children.

“Some of these young women didn’t think they’d be alive, let alone have children of their own. Some have really excelled in their work. It doesn’t matter what their dream is or what they’re doing, if they’re fulfilling their dream, it’s nothing other than fantastic.”

Amy’s Place is truly a fitting and lasting tribute. Read more in this week’s Big Issue.

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Take a walk through London’s East End with actor Eddie Marsan

Film and TV star Eddie Marsan and charity founder Darren Way walk us around Tower Hamlets to counter the idea that this is a no-go area, and talk us through Streets of Growth’s work tackling gang and knife crime.

“I look at those kids and see myself when I was young,” Marsan says. “So that’s why I want to champion their cause the best way I can.”

We celebrate the genius and humanity of photojournalist Tim Hetherington

In the late 1990s, a young photographer joined the ranks at the Big Issue. Tim Hetherington had read Classics and English at Oxford then, after graduating, he used £5,000 left to him from his grandmother’s will to travel the world. Journeying through south-east Asia opened his eyes and changed his life. He returned home determined to tell stories through photography. His first job was as a trainee at the Big Issue. He became one of the UK’s most famous photojournalists.

Labi Siffre has endured racism and homophobia but he tells us in a Letter to My Younger Self that his joy for making music is still so strong

He stayed true to the manifesto he wrote when he was 14, but the singer also found the real substance in his life must be love.

“I decided that I would be an artist-philosopher or a philosopher-artist. Somewhat to my surprise, it seems I stuck to my guns,” he said.