Emilia Clarke has spoken exclusively to the Big Issue about the incredible strength it took to survive and recover after two brain injuries.

Clarke suffered two life-threatening brain haemorrhages while starring as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO series Game of Thrones.

“When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight,” Emilia Clarke told the Big Issue. “The first fear we all had was: ‘Oh my God, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?’”

She has been interviewed in this week’s Big Issue, out today (10 June), about the difficulties of returning to work after experiencing a brain injury.

Meanwhile polling from the Big Issue Group and brain injury charity SameYou found that a third of people felt they did not feel ready to return to their jobs after their brain injuries. Of these, more than half (53%) of survivors said they had to return to work for financial reasons.

Read more in this week’s magazine!

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Malala Yousafzai has a harrowing story to tell, with help from Jennifer Lawrence

Nobel Prize-winning activist Malala Yousafzai talks to Big Issue about her new documentary, Bread & Roses, which shows the brutal realities of life for Afghanistan’s women under the Taliban.

“Most people know me as an advocate for girls’ education. I started producing films and working in the entertainment space because I believe that storytelling is the soul of activism,” she said.

The next government must prioritise ending poverty. And there’s a straightforward way to do it.

“We’re already more than two weeks into this election campaign, yet the silence around poverty has so far been deafening,” writes Cass Francis, campaigns co-ordinator at Southend Foodbank. “At the time of writing, no party has even mentioned the issue, let alone put forward policies to support the ever-increasing number of people who are struggling to get by.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Our books special features a festival guide, summer read tips and a belated celebration of a literary legend

Book festivals have a flattering reputation for camaraderie and intellectual exchange. Here’s where you can get involved this summer, from Edinburgh to Hay.

Big Issue Invest (BII) recently hosted a social impact investment event in the House of Lords for Pension and Insurance sector leaders, highlighting its dedication to unlocking social and economic opportunities through enterprise. The event was attended by chief executives, chief investment officers, and heads of sustainability from over 20 financial institutions with the focal point comprising a panel of Pension and Insurance experts; Linda Zuberi, Head of responsible investment at Beazley, Aileen Matheson, Chief Investment Officer at Aspen and Charlotte O’Leary, CEO of Pensions For Purpose. 

Lord Bird, founder of the Big Issue and a champion of the social movement for over 30 years, opened the event, emphasising his ongoing efforts in the House of Lords to drive social justice and create a Ministry of Poverty Prevention, a holistic cross-ministry solution to the causes of poverty. 

This event followed the April co-signing of a Financial Times letter calling on the next government to establish national and local community growth funds. These funds aim to attract private and institutional investment into sectors delivering social impact. 

7 outcomes pension and insurance providers need to know 

Social impact and financial returns go hand-in-hand

The panel discussion underscored the necessity of achieving social impact alongside financial returns, focusing on sustainable, impactful investing. However, the integration of impact investing into financial decision-making presents challenges such as defining impact, overcoming organisational inertia, alignment with fiduciary duties, and engaging professional trustees and advisors. The panellists stressed the need for systems thinking and support from investment consultants and professional trustee firms to drive catalytic change. 

It’s important to be clear on the difference between impact and social impact

During the panel session, participants agreed that impact investing involved an intentional additional impact on people and the planet alongside market-rate returns. Social impact is a narrower definition, focusing on positive social outcomes. The conversation also explored how organisations incorporate impact investing within illiquid markets, which allows for flexibility and selective impact integration. 

Be clear on your social impact investment strategy

The panellists debated the merits of finding impact within asset allocation strategies versus creating dedicated impact portfolios. Both approaches have their advantages and challenges. Different strategies for pension funds were discussed, including creating impact sleeves versus constructing top-down portfolios based on sustainable development goals. The former approach was felt more suitable for early-stage incorporation of impact allocation, while the latter requires a deeper understanding of interconnected risks. 

For pension funds embarking on social impact investing, the advice was to define their purpose and construct impact investment approaches accordingly at the outset, rather than being market takers. Passionate advocacy and support from stakeholders are crucial in driving impact investment strategies. A focus on responsible business can make the case for impact investing easier, despite initial challenges. 

Investment consultants play an important role in championing social impact 

The important role of investment consultants was discussed, emphasising the need for their enhanced education for example on positive social impact to integrate impact philosophy into their advice. Currently, their focus is often narrowly on financial returns possibly due to concerns about fiduciary duty and contractual arrangements.

There is a difference between ESG and impact investing

The distinction between ESG and impact investing was also discussed. ESG was described as a risk assessment framework focused on specific reported KPIs for reporting an organisation’s good citizenship, whilst impact investing requires intentionality to generate a positive impact in making investment decisions. Clear guidance and education for asset owners are necessary to differentiate and promote impact investing. 

Act in the best interest of the end customer 

The panellists also discussed fiduciary duty, emphasizing the importance of considering the end customer. Investments should not only secure adequate financial returns but also positively impact the communities where stakeholders live. This dual focus fulfills fiduciary duty well and responds to growing consumer interest in socially responsible investing. 

Education, advocacy, and strategic alignment are key 

With the support of institutional investors and professional advisors, impact investing can drive meaningful change while delivering competitive financial returns. The discussion underscored the need for education, advocacy, and strategic alignment to integrate impact investing more deeply into financial markets. 

Please contact james.potter@bigissueinvest.com for more information on social impact investing with Big Issue Invest.

Paul Weller, or the idea of Paul Weller, has been a dominant thread in popular British culture for almost 50 years. He has just turned 66 and has been the Modfather longer than many of his fans have been alive. Through it all he signalled that the elements many people want him to remain locked into – hits of The Jam, a feather cut and Fred Perry top, music that is tied in the past – are not for him. Forward, never looking back; ever changing moods for the changing man.

Johnny Harris is one of Britain’s best character actors. Harris and Weller first worked together almost eight years ago on Jawbone, the dark but redemptive movie written by Harris about a former boxing champion who is trying to lift himself back from alcoholism, homelessness and hopelessness. The film, which echoes Harris’s own story, saw Weller write his first soundtrack. The pair have been friends ever since. 

This year, Harris has created the video for Weller’s forthcoming single “I Woke Up”. Shot in black and white, it details a day in the life of a homeless man in London, told simply and without hyperbole, but ending with a call to help St Mungo’s, the charity primarily focused on getting rough sleepers into a bed.

In this week’s issue of the Big Issue, Paul Weller and Johnny Harris reflects on the state of the nation, the ageing process and spirituality.

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Alan Rickman’s advice for his godson Tom Burke helped the Strike and Furiosa star figure out what really matters

Tom Burke was quickly bitten by the acting bug, but godfather Alan Rickman helped him keep his feet on the ground.

“It was a lesson in getting on with it and being grateful for the work, whatever it was, knowing you’re blessed to be getting paid to do something you love,” he says.

Our Blueprint for Change calls on the next government to pledge to end poverty

Talk about an impact. Just over a fortnight after we published our Blueprint for Change – our call on ALL political leaders to commit to ending poverty for good – prime minister Rishi Sunak announced a snap summer general election. You’re welcome.

It’s worth reiterating what the Big Issue Group Blueprint is all about. Read about it in this week’s issue.

Photographer Asmaa Waguih’s images tell the story of the ‘forgotten war’ in Yemen

The conflict in Yemen is often called ‘the forgotten war’. Egyptian photographer Asmaa Waguih asks why this might be and explains her determination to tell the stories that would otherwise be lost. “The goal was to share the human experiences,” she tells us.

The world’s first museum dedicated to homelessness finally has a home. And it’s probably the world’s first museum to have a black bin bag as a headline exhibit too. The Museum of Homelessness (MOH) has existed for a decade but the search for a home has been a long one which has ironically mirrored the community it represents.

Co-founders Jess and Matt Turtle have set up alongside friends from The Outside Project at the Clerkenwell Fire Station or at Streets Kitchen’s Solidarity Hub in London over the years. At one point they even set up an exhibition on the street, displaying objects in the aptly named Street Museum. But last week they finally opened the doors of their own space at the Manor House Lodge on the edge of London’s Finsbury Park.

The museum, which is free to visit, uniquely offers a collection of objects and artefacts that tell us more about the realities of homelessness and the people who experience it. It is also a base for MOH’s community activism: to shine a light on the injustice of homelessness and challenge its existence. And the message from the Turtles is already a clear one: it’s good to be home.

“We really appreciate the generosity of other organisations but to have our own space means so much. It feels really good,” Jess tells Big Issue. “Everyone involved in this organisation: most of us don’t have more than one room. Suddenly we’ve got a building. I remember when we first moved in back in October, we were just running up and down the stairs all the time, going in the different rooms like, wow, really overwhelmed with all this space.

“There’s still a dream to have a residential Museum of Homelessness. So baby steps. But even though we can’t have people actually living here, it is providing an emotional home already. That really means something, I think, in the middle of a housing crisis.”

Big Issue was among the first punters to visit the MOH’s immersive experience How to Survive the Apocalypse at the former park rangers’ house before it opened to the public last week. It’s an exhibition of the kind you won’t see at one of London’s traditional museum heavyweights.

Read more in this week’s Big Issue!

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Water mess: controlling the most important resource of this century

Dr Liam Fox’s The Coming Storm tells the story of water, from how it arrived on Earth eons ago to how it influenced evolution. It also points out potential pressure points regarding scarcity, global security and its importance in healthcare and climate change. It contains simply staggering facts that put precipitation in perspective. Of all the water in the world, only 3% is fresh water. Only 0.3-0.5% is available for our use. What does that mean for our drinking supply?

Benedict Cumberbatch, homelessness and the monsters that lurk

“History judges us on how we treat those who are most vulnerable.”

New Netflix drama Eric tackles big issues with a little help from an enormous blue monster puppet. Benedict Cumberbatch, Gaby Hoffmann, McKinley Belcher III and writer Abi Morgan tell us how.

As the election comes, Big Issue will speak for those who need it most

“At Big Issue, we’re ready to speak for those who have their voice quietened or feel left behind. It will be an election of change. And we will work to make it positive,” says Big Issue editor Paul McNamee. He reflects on the upcoming general election and what it will mean for the most vulnerable in society.

A rotund willow tree is missing a ring of bark, cut out like a belt. Tree stumps stand, gnawed to a point. A path has been worn into the grass by the water’s edge. These features haven’t been seen in the capital since Shakespeare’s time.

That was until October 2023 when, four centuries after beavers were hunted to extinction in London, they were reintroduced to the wild. In the latest Big Issue, we explore how they’re settling in.  

You will not see the beavers. But if you know where to look, the signs are everywhere. Over the past seven months, this family of history-making mammals have made themselves at home in a woodland next to a trading estate in Greenford, West London. It was hoped the group – two adults, a juvenile and two children – would increase biodiversity, reduce the risk of flooding and galvanise the community around rewilding efforts.

Big Issue returned to the landmark project to see the difference they’re making – and to find out whether Britain’s future is truly wild. “I think everyone across the project has been surprised how quickly they have got to building across different dams,” says Ben Stockwell, senior urban rewilding officer with Citizen Zoo. “Beavers have a right to exist here. The only reason they don’t is we hunted them to extinction 400 years ago.”

Read more in this week’s issue!

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Why the next general election could (and should) be fought on the frontier of poverty

Poverty is set to be a crucial factor in the next general election – with political leaders urged to act on the soaring number of people in poverty and give the disillusioned public something to vote for. Low-income voters are the least likely to turn out at the ballot box, but are also more open to switching sides, research shows. This combination means there is an “untapped pool of support” for any party willing to get serious about tackling poverty.

Return of the Max

Furiosa is a new film but it’s an old, almost primal, story. The feverishly anticipated prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, revs and roars into cinemas this week. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the fifth film in the franchise, now spanning almost half a century and set in a dystopian wasteland where dwindled resources are fought over by rival – mostly vehicular-based – factions. The first film, released in 1979, marked the arrival of one of cinema’s most original auteurs, George Miller. In a distant future that also feels increasingly familiar, characters battle for survival and redemption among the detritus of a collapsed society. The 45-year-old saga feels like it’s showing where we might end up in another half-century.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Kathleen Hanna’s Letter to My Younger Self

After teenage traumas, the singer and riot grrrl pioneer found catharsis in activism and screaming out her feelings on stage.

“I wanted there to be more girls and women in the scene. Because making music directed at a certain audience then singing it to straight white men feels stupid,” she said.

The true scale and scope of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s achievement across nine series of Inside No. 9 may only become clear in the years and decades to come. Perhaps by the year 2099 they will be getting the full plaudits this marvellous, macabre, genre-melding anthology series truly deserves. 

When the ninth and final series closes next month, they will have written 55 episodes (and acted in most of them). Each one standing alone, beautifully crafted, smartly written and surprising. The series expanding the possibility of what a half-hour TV comedy can do. 

Shearsmith and Pemberton burn through ideas like they are going out of style. Ideas that many would try to turn into a career-defining long-running series are played out with precision in just 30 minutes. 

The pair are ruthless in maintaining their standards. But there have been standout classics. A Quiet Night In was superb silent slapstick. The 12 Days of Christine was a heartbreaking tale of love, life and loss – built around a stunning central performance from Sheridan Smith. Dead Line saw Shearsmith and Pemberton live and unleashed in a Halloween horrorshow, toying with and eventually tearing up all the rules of television, going one step beyond meta. And as for the Devil at Christmas, from 2016, well, we laughed, we cried, we squirmed, we screamed and we gasped at the final twist in this demonic tale. 

Along the way, the duo have been joined by a roll call of the best in the business. Each actor signing up confident in the knowledge that, in just five days of filming, they will create a little piece of TV magic.   

Shearsmith and Pemberton go back a long way. Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of their debut stage performances alongside Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson as The League of Gentlemen. The comedy troupe transferred to television 25 years ago, for three series of off-kilter dark comedy and a clutch of specials. And, from Psychoville to Inside No. 9, it’s been one psychological comedy drama after another ever since.

They reflect on the end of their current chapter in this week’s Big Issue, taking us deep inside Inside No. 9. On sale now from your local vendor!

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Big Issue’s blueprint for change: join our campaign to end poverty for good

Big Issue Group (BIG) is calling on Britain’s next leader to fi nally end poverty for good. Our call comes in an open letter to current prime minister Rishi Sunak, the Labour Party’s Keir Starmer – the favourite to replace him – and other political leaders, laying out a blueprint for change for the next government to implement within its first year of office in order to dismantle poverty.

“The time has gone for a light-touch approach from any incoming government. Clear and real change is essential. Failure to act now will be catastrophic,” said Big Issue founder Lord John Bird

How we could quickly fall into a food crisis unless farmers are better protected

In March, farmers came together to drive their tractors past parliament in protest at the government’s lack of support for their industry. The disruption mirrors the actions of others across Europe, who have blockaded roads, dumped manure and burnt tyres in the centres of major cities from Paris to Berlin. We explore why the protests are happening.

Drama was off limits to Liz Carr as a child but the actor and activist shares how she eventually found acceptance in a Letter to My Younger Self

Illness gave her the toughest of starts, but the actor and activist found her calling after a lightbulb moment changed her life.

“It hurts me to [know] that my younger self didn’t see a future. I would love to tell her you’ll fall in love, have mates, travel the world and do a job people can only dream of. She wouldn’t have believed any of it.”

Have you tried to get a seat in The Black Dog pub in Vauxhall recently? After providing the title for a track on the “Anthology” edition of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, it’s seen overwhelming footfall from fans.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a statistician’s fever dream. The US leg has already been hailed as the first billion-dollar tour, where Swift sold 4.3 million tickets, with an average price of $238 (£190). Each show (typically to audiences of 72,000 people) grossed around $17m (£13.5m). Then add in $200m (£160m) in merchandise.

Taylor Swift creates a new financial centre of gravity in every city she deigns to visit and so the places she’s due to play in the UK from June must be as excited as the Swifties.

As well as looking at the economic impact of the Eras Tour, we bring our annual festival guide this week. The Association of Independent Festivals found that “a 5,000 capacity festival is worth £1.1m to the local area, while a 110,000 capacity festival can be worth over £27m”. This pales in comparison with Glastonbury which “generates over £100m into the economy of South West England each time it takes place”.

The economic impact of festivals tends to lift the local economies in rural areas, that’s part of the reason why they are so vital. The other is that it’s a great excuse to have a good time.

The other major music event taking place this week is, of course, Eurovision and we also have a fascinating piece about how the history of the continent shaped and continues to reshape international politics.

Since the first ever Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson Européenne was held in Lugano (lasting a relatively merciful one hour and 40 minutes with 14 songs from seven countries) Eurovision has rarely been entirely apolitical. The voting is frequently not just about the music, but about linguistic or cultural affinity or even just who hates who.

Perhaps accepting that Eurovision can and does play a political role, even for countries that are not, in fact, in Europe, would be no bad thing. There are worse ways of settling national differences than a song contest.

Read more in our bumper music special this week!

What else is in this week’s issue?

Madness frontman Suggs sang ‘Our House’ – and he shares happy memories of growing up on a council estate

For council house kids of the 1980s, “Our House” by Madness was an anthem and an affirmation. The Conservative government was flogging off social housing and celebrating ownership – slowly, paying rent to the local authority became something to be embarrassed about. But Madness frontman Suggs was having none of it.

Nadine Shah has had demons to fight but now she’s exorcising them on her new album

When singer-songwriter Nadine Shah lost her mother at the height of Covid, she plunged into a nightmare world. But she’s turned her life around and documented her harrowing experiences on a powerful, cathartic new album.

Bruce Dickinson has risen higher than he could have ever dreamed he tells us in a Letter to My Younger Self

Once the Iron Maiden frontman discovered the gift of music his life became a series of sky-high moments. “My escape was into music,” he tells the Big Issue. “I decided to be the John Bonham
of the bongos – but then realised I could sing! I tried acting and had loved it, but it was more like acting up. At least I knew I loved performing. So I stole some bongos from the music room to try to be a drummer.”

When actor Christopher Eccleston said he wanted to celebrate turning 60 by running the London Marathon for Big Issue, we were delighted. Now, after completing the course in a gruelling five hours, 21 minutes and 20 seconds, he has paid tribute to the more than 570 sponsors who have helped raise more than £13,000 so far for Big Issue Group to continue our vital work.

Less than 15 minutes after he had crossed the finish line and had an emotional reunion with his children, Albert and Esme, Big Issue ambassador Christopher Eccleston, 60, sat down with us to talk about why he was so moved by the response.

“I get so emotional when people sponsor me,” he said. “I’ve looked at the sponsorship page every day. Some people put in incredible amounts of money and some people put in just what they can afford. And everything is equal. It has been very, very moving, what people have done. Some people have only been able to afford a pound – we’re in such tough times – but they’ve done it.”

Before the race, Christopher Eccleston had received messages of support from actors including David Thewlis and Billie Piper, who said: “Run, Chris. Run for your life!” before explaining (for those who needed it), “that was one of his first lines to Rose Tyler in Doctor Who”. And Big Issue vendor (and fellow actor) Clive Rowe thanked him for “representing The Big Issue and all us vendors”. 

Support around the course was strong. And there were emotional scenes as Eccleston ran down the home straight, past Buckingham Palace and up The Mall. “I was worried that my legs were actually going to seize up and I’ve never had that in a marathon before,” said the actor, who had last completed the distance a decade earlier. 

“I felt like they were going. My breathing was fine, and mentally I was fine. But to be conscious of heavy legs from 11 miles in is tough. During that last mile I kept thinking, ‘I can’t wait for this to stop.’

“What gets you around is the sponsorship. We are trying to get people off the streets. We’re trying to get a roof over their heads and we’re trying to lift them out of poverty.” 

We celebrate his remarkable feat in this week’s Big Issue, on sale from your local vendor.

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

How many Milton Keyneses will it take to fix the housing crisis?

For some the words ‘new town’ make the mind’s eye picture concrete carbuncles, others a bygone atomic-age dream of collective living. But decades after Milton Keynes, Stevenage and Bracknell were sprung from the earth in the wake of World War II, looking to our past could soothe the UK’s very modern housing crisis. Does our salvation lie in new towns?

Visit the community fighting back against regeneration that threatens them with homelessness

Earlier this year, Southwark resident Aysen Dennis’s one-woman crusade against the demolition of her council estate successfully thwarted plans for the Aylesbury estate to be levelled – for now. That high court ruling also lit a fire almost 200 miles away in Runcorn, Cheshire. Residents of the Uplands Residents Group are fighting the regeneration of their own estate, fearing that the number of homes delivered will be fewer than currently exist. They wrote in to the Big Issue to ask us to meet them

Meet James Timpson: the man with the key to high street renewal

James Timpson is the CEO of his family business, founded in 1865, and now spanning more than 2,000 shops where shoes are fixed, keys are cut and watches are repaired. Timpson is an unusual kind of boss. He talks about the value of kindness in running a firm, doesn’t look at CVs and campaigns for prison reform. In fact, over 10% of Timpson’s employees are ex-offenders. He believes work can turn lives around. Read more in this week’s issue.

The power and potency of Earth Day has waxed and waned since its inception. Originally conceived at the Unesco conference in 1969 as a means of highlighting growing desires for environmental protection, following a serious oil spill in Santa Barbara, it was launched in 1970.

The global impact of Earth Day and its aim to make us aware of the fragility of what we have around us, and do something about it, reached its zenith in 2015. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21), on Earth Day, 175 countries signed a legally binding agreement to limit global warming and to reach net zero on greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century.  

In the intervening short period, the idea of doing right for the planet and for the future generations who will inhabit it, has become fodder for the culture wars. It’s easy to marginalise calls that are for renewable energy or within what are categorised as ‘green’ politics as removed from the essential day to day. 

At Big Issue, we see it the other way. Never before has it been so important to push ahead, with renewed intent. It is why our focus this Earth Day is on resources: those we consume, those we’re lacking including, in Britain, essential reservoirs; on energy needs and a need to retrain a workforce to produce them, and on the minerals needed for contemporary living and how we treat the people and nations from which the rest of the world draws them.

It’s broad in scope. We investigate why reservoirs have gone to the dogs; how the quest for valuable resources has led governments and private enterprises to seriously look into mining the moon; the lessons that can be learned from five species of wildlife successfully making a comeback in the UK; the importance of the Climate and Nature Bill; the environmental cost of conflict, and much more. We also meet Aasen Stephenson, the incredible artist who created this week’s cover. Explaining why he uses leaves as his canvas, he says: “leaves are beautiful before I’ve even turned them into art”.

Buy this week’s bumper special edition from your local vendor!

What else is in this week’s issue?

Olly Murs tells us how he was boyband obsessed as a teenager

Olly Murs’ boyband obsession eventually led to the pop stardom he’d long dreamed of. But the reality also exposed fame’s dark side

“My life at 25, it went WHUMP. I would say to my 16-year-old self, hey, being famous is cool, have your wits about you, make sure you have the right people around you, trust your instincts, trust yourself and you’ll be OK,” he said.

What happened when Sadiq Khan answered questions from our vendors and readers

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says if he saw someone shoplifting baby food or nappies, he’d take out his wallet and pay for the goods.

Visibly moved by the hypothetical scenario, Khan replied. “What upsets me is the tags you have now, on nappies and baby foods because of the issue this is related to. “I’ve not seen somebody, by the way, who’s shoplifted from a supermarket. But in the hypothetical case, I suspect I’d take my wallet out, and I would pay for it.”

How Germany’s more welcoming approach to refugees compares to our own

Though there have been tensions in areas where there’s a large influx of people, Germany remains welcoming to refugees. In fact, it is the third largest refugee-hosting country in the world with 2.5 million (only Iran and Turkey have more), including over 900,000 Ukrainians.

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.