Inside the Big Issue: Delivering hope. Merry Christmas

It’s the Big Issue’s legendary Christmas special – our biggest and best issue of the year.

We’ve got features on Wallace & Gromit, Keir Starmer, Chris McCausland, Nichola Coughlin, the best of Letter to My Younger Self. We go inside a Bethlehem maternity ward and hear from doctors on the front line in Gaza. Plus, the books and moments of the year – and much, much more.

Here’s a taste of what’s inside.

What’s inside this week’s Big Issue?

The modern slavery survivors rebuilding their lives through music

Seven women, each survivors of modern slavery, stand in front of a huge glistening Christmas tree and sing, smiles wide on their faces. Dreams is a choir for modern slavery survivors run by The Salvation Army and they are performing for Labour MP Jess Phillips, minister in the Home Office responsible for safeguarding and tackling violence against women and girls. Our senior reporter Isabella McRae went along.

Keir Starmer’s Christmas message

“When I was growing up, our home was my family’s security,” the prime minister writes for the Big Issue. “It wasn’t much, maybe – just a semi-detached house in Surrey – but for me, it was the base camp from which I could learn and grow.”

“We can’t build a strong future for our country unless people have a safe home today.”

Will you guide my clay tonight? Wallace & Gromit is back.

If you had to put your finger on why Wallace & Gromit is so popular it’s because lots of fingers have been put on them. Look carefully at the characters and you can see flitting fingerprints that have shaped faces and meticulously moulded movements in 24 separate frames per second. Animators at Aardman have a target of five seconds of film per week. It’s been 35 years since A Grand Day Out launched hapless inventor Wallace and his dependable dog Gromit – and this year’s Christmas Day centrepiece on the BBC is their new adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl.

Some children will open toys at Christmas. Others are forced to work in the factories that make them

Millions of us enjoy shopping for the perfect gifts over the festive season – gleaming Barbie dolls in shiny pink boxes or cosy jumpers wrapped under the tree. Twinkling highstreet shops blast out Christmas tunes, but beneath the holiday cheer lies a dark truth.

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