Covers round-up: Street papers on sale in November

Mei-yu Lan sells The Big Issue Taiwan from her pitch at the IKEA Taipei City Shop Arena. She has been working as a vendor since the launch of the magazine 13 years ago and is part of the community where she works. She is a straightforward woman who believes in treating people right; it’s led to her building a large customer base. It’s these loyal customers who keep her motivated.

A unique Housing First effort in Düsseldorf combines art, newspapers and advocacy to pair the unhoused with apartments. The brainchild of the city’s street paper fiftyfifty, revenues from sales of works by famous artists are used to buy apartments for those who need them most.

Gary Barker, who sells Portland street paper Street Roots, writes for the latest in INSP’s Housing for the People – a column that allows those with lived experience of poverty, homelessness and insecure housing tell their story – writes about being “in a hell of my own doing”, but how with the pandemic making the world seem like world was falling apart, circumstances in Gary’s life suddenly made things start to come together. He writes about his work as an ambassador for Street Roots and leading on its MoJo scheme to get vendors into journalism, and how being in housing allows him to “find a way to get problems off my mind”.

What if the Queen had the vision of a Big Issue vendor? The street paper asked its team, who sell the magazine across the country, what they’d do if they were Queen for a day as the UK’s reigning monarch celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years on the throne. The insights are intriguing.

Megaphone storytellers and vendors of all street papers, including the writers featured in the pages of this Vancouver and Victoria street paper’s Voices of the Street literary anthology, regularly face a host of challenges, all linked to the inequities that come from living in poverty. When Megaphone hosted a series of writing workshops earlier this year, it became clear what was of great importance to participants: our environmentally distressed planet. As a result, the pages of the new edition of Voices of the Street (Stealing Looks at the Sun: Writing About Climate Change in 2022), which is on sale now, are packed full of prose driven by the growing impacts of climate change.

Yu-fu Hsieh is a veteran Big Issue Taiwan vendor who started selling the magazine in April 2010, after he retired from his sales rep job, from his pitch at Exit 2 of Gonguan metro station in central Taipei. He has never moved pitch since then. Hsieh delights in his work, crediting it with bringing enjoyment and happiness to his retirement, and he looks forward to many more years of working with The Big Issue Taiwan.

It’s all happening for Big Issue vendor Oprea, 48. Originally from Romania, he has just moved to a new selling point – at Bristol’s Temple Meads train station as part of a partnership with Network Rail – where he is perfecting his sales technique, and he has a new card reader to offer digital payments. He is studying a business course at university too.

Put on the elastic pants and serve up a Megaphone meal using vendor recipes sourced from their food memories.

Everyone who is a part of the global street paper network knows what a street paper is – that extends to the staff that put each publication together and those who buy them. But the people who truly know what a street paper is – what it means – are those who sell them. Here, a collection of street paper vendors – from Greece to Australia – tell us, in their own words, what a street paper is, personally to them.

Everyone who is a part of the global street paper network knows what a street paper is – that extends to the staff that put each publication together and those who buy them. But the people who truly know what a street paper is – what it means – are those who sell them. Here, a collection of street paper vendors – from North Macedonia to Canada – tell us, in their own words, what a street paper is, personally to them.

Everyone who is a part of the global street paper network knows what a street paper is – that extends to the staff that put each publication together and those who buy them. But the people who truly know what a street paper is – what it means – are those who sell them. Here, a collection of street paper vendors – from Brazil to Finland – tell us, in their own words, what a street paper is, personally to them.

Ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, the global street paper movement calls on leaders to take urgent, coordinated and necessary climate action to protect the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Those shopping in the area between Taipei City Hall Station and VieShow Cinemas pass Chu-fang Chuang as she sells copes of The Big Issue Taiwan outside a Chunghwa Telecom shop. Chuang volunteers for multiple organisations in addition to her work as a vendor and thrives on self-reliance and keeping busy.

World-renowned contemporary art exhibition documenta is celebrating its 15th instalment next year in the German city of Kassel. In line with its leading artists’ values, the line-up for the event was exclusively revealed by street paper Asphalt in nearby Hanover, who will act as a media partner for the exhibition.

‘Empowering The Poor: Street Newspapers and their Global Impact’ was panel hosted by the Society of Journalists on Wednesday 18 August. Moderated by founder of Real Change and INSP board member Tim Harris, the discussion included members of staff from INSP and its associated member publications. Watch the panel again here.

As she prepares to leave the Portland street paper after more than 18 years at the helm, Street Roots editor Joanne Zuhl talked to INSP about her lengthy stint leading one of the street paper network’s most established publications and where she leaves the paper after one of the most unpredictable years of her tenure.