After attending the 2019 Global Street Paper Summit, INSP board member, and Real Change founding director, Tim Harris offered some reflections on the state of the street paper movement and what we have to look forward to in the future.

The final day of #INSP2019 saw social media analyst Ray Serrato address delegates about social issues in countries such as Germany, Pakistan and Myanmar and how extremist and inflammatory sentiment is being spread using social media channels like Facebook and YouTube.

The #INSP2019 day two speaker was social entrepreneur Orit Kopel, a freedom of expression advocate and co-founder of Wiki-based news platform WikiTribune. She spoke to attending street paper delegates about the prevalence of fake news, community-sourced journalism and her new project, Glass Voices, a social enterprise looking to train women in public speaking to ensure a new generation of women who are given the opportunity to be heard in business.

All of us experience some degree of stress in our everyday lives. For those who are homeless, however, stress can be a debilitating and chronic issue. Street Roots talked to a number of individuals about their experiences of life on the streets and about the impact that stress has had on their lives. This is especially pertinent as delegates at this year’s ongoing Global Street Paper Summit talk about dealing with conflict and vendor welfare.

To mark the 2019 INSP Awards, we are diving into the INSP Archive to bring you the pieces crowned with editorial honours. Oklahoma City’s The Curbside Chronicle published its ‘Ghost Bikes’ photo essay last year during National Bike Month and is now the recipient of this year’s Special News Service Award.

When Trondheim street paper Sorgenfri unveiled its new design at the start of 2019, it made in-depth, longform investigative pieces the focal point. The magazine’s editor Vanja S. Holst spoke to INSP about the reasons behind focusing on investigative journalism, how it informed their redesign and the process the Sorgenfri team undertake with each new issue. Sorgenfri is a finalist in the Best Design category at this year’s INSP Awards.

Asphalt vendor Sascha talks about his struggles with his mental health, his childhood, his love of movies and his penchant for creating movie themed podcasts. Asphalt is based in Hannover, the city hosting this year’s Global Street Paper Summit.

A jam-packed first day of the 2019 Global Street Paper Summit saw three generations of street paper network figures take to the stage in Hannover as INSP chair Fay Selvan and co-founder of INSP Mel Young joined in conversation, facilitated by Hannele Huhtala, editor-in-chief of Finnish street paper Iso Numero.

A group of street paper delegates attending the 2019 Global Street Paper Summit in Hannover were given the opportunity to take a tour of three of the city’s most innovative social projects. INSP tagged along on the visit, and spoke to delegates.

At the end of January, when there was still snow in Cologne, Draussenseiter vendor Lothar was equipped with an analogue camera and asked to record a day in his life. He liked the idea and started documenting straight away. Here you can see the selection of photos Lothar captured, along with his comments.

2019 marks INSP’s 25th anniversary, as well as equally remarkable milestones for a number of street papers across the world. Michaela Gründler, the editor-in-chief of Apropos, is also celebrating a landmark: she started working at the Salzburg street paper on 1 February 1999. In this interview, she looks back on the last 20 years and talks about how the image of Apropos has changed, the work that she and her team do behind the scenes and why she loves fairy tales so much.

INSP launched the 2019 Global Street Paper Summit in Hannover by focusing on the value of being a member of its global network, with help from student-led consultancy agency FreshSight.

Originally from Romania, Reghina (55) is now an Asphalt vendor in Hannover, the host of this year’s Global Street Paper Summit. Here she speaks about being the subject of discrimination in her home country, moving with her kids to the Czech Republic, and then herself to Germany, and finding a kind of friendship with her customers.

Ahead of the welcome reception to officially kick off the 2019 Global Street Paper Summit, attending delegates were able to view two fascinating, and contrasting, exhibitions: ‘My Hannover’, a series of street photography taken by the city’s homeless population, and ‘Homelessness during the National Socialist dictatorship’, which provides insight into the plight of the homeless community under the Nazi party.

A group of #INSP2019 delegates were lucky enough to learn about Hannover’s homelessness situation from host street paper, Asphalt, and one of its vendors, Thomas. Delegates visited the Asphalt office, learning about its processes and were given a tour of social spots important to those living on the streets of Hannover.

As street paper delegates arrive in Hannover for the 2019 INSP Summit, and embark on a walking tour of the city, Thomas, a vendor of Hannover’s street paper Asphalt, gives his insider tips to where to go and what to do.

INSP was pleased to offer a series of scholarships to support 14 delegates from 9 countries in attending the Global Street Paper Summit that took place in our home city of Glasgow in August.

After speaking to delegates on the opening day of the 2018 Global Street Paper Summit in Glasgow, journalist, commentator and activist Sunny Hundal sat down with INSP to talk more about engaging those we disagree with and the importance of street papers in providing an alternate voice.

On the final day of the 2018 INSP Global Street Paper Summit, Suzanne Fitzpatrick, professor of housing and social policy at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research (I-SPHERE) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, spoke to delegates about her research showing that the statement “homelessness can happen to anyone” is not quite as true as many make it out to be. Here, she breaks down her arguments for the INSP News Service.

Delegates are heading back to their home countries inspired and motivated by three days of keynotes, panel discussions and break-out sessions with their international colleagues.

This year, Scotland is the place to be for charities, social entrepreneurs and purpose-driven businesses. The INSP Talks, an event at The Lighthouse as part of the INSP Global Street Paper Summit, hosted in Glasgow this week, will be dedicated to the country’s social business scene, as well as showcase social enterprises run by street papers. In addition, the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF), an international gathering for people involved in social enterprises across the planet to come together, share ideas and learn from each other about the future of their sector, is being hosted in Edinburgh in September. As a media partner for the SEWF, INSP is bringing you a series of conversations conducted with the folks behind some of the brightest social businesses involved in the event. David Duke has first-hand experience of what it’s like to be homeless and a lack of purpose, he says, can keep a person from finding their way out of a desperate situation. His organisation, Street Soccer Scotland, gives them an opportunity to find that purpose.

Day three of the 2018 INSP Global Street Paper Summit focused on those at the centre of the street paper mission – vendors. Delegates learned about homelessness, poverty, and the societal factors that contribute to them, and discussed the different ways in which vendors are involved in the day-to-day running of street papers, other than as the main point of sale for the magazines.

The final keynote speaker at the 2018 INSP Global Street Paper Summit, Suzanne Fitzpatrick, professor of housing and social policy at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Environment and Real Estate (I-SPHERE) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, presented her research that the statement “homelessness can happen to anyone” is not quite as true as many make it out to be.

This week, the 2018 INSP Global Street Paper Summit has been held in Glasgow, giving street paper staff from countries throughout the network the opportunity to discuss the issues affecting their vendors in our modern world. According to recent news reports in the US state of Portland, 52 per cent of all arrests last year in the Portland area were made against people on the streets, and 86 per cent of those were for non-violent violations. The city’s street paper, Street Roots, surveyed its vendor about their first-hand experience with law enforcement.

Last night, at the 2018 INSP Awards, The Big Issue Taiwan was victorious in the Best Design category. Part of their win can be put down to the work of Aaron (Yung-chen Nieh) who, remarkably, designed 95 out of the last 100 covers of the street paper. His contemporary and stylish designs have endowed the covers of the magazine with a unique visual style that has not only proved popular with readers, but which has also attracted a great deal of attention from professional designers. For the magazine’s 100th issue, Aaron shared his insights regarding how to design an effective front cover and talked more about his work with The Big Issue Taiwan.

This year, Scotland is the place to be for charities, social entrepreneurs and purpose-driven businesses. The INSP Talks, an event at The Lighthouse as part of the INSP Global Street Paper Summit, hosted in Glasgow this week, will be dedicated to the country’s social business scene, as well as showcase social enterprises run by street papers. In addition, the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF), an international gathering for people involved in social enterprises across the planet to come together, share ideas and learn from each other about the future of their sector, is being hosted in Edinburgh in September. As a media partner for the SEWF, INSP is bringing you a series of conversations conducted with the folks behind some of the brightest social businesses involved in the event. Here, we talk to Susan Aktemel, the director of Homes for Good, Scotland’s first social enterprise letting agency.

Day two of the 2018 INSP Global Street Paper Summit focused on how street papers are adapting to the rise of digital media, with an insight into street paper data and a panel discussion on how members of the modern media industry are changing to utilise digital to their environment.

This year’s INSP Talks – a regular feature of the Global Street Paper Summit – was focused on social enterprise around the world, including what street papers are doing to branch out into other social businesses, how they are adapting their publication to come more into line with the modern social enterprise landscape, and a look at why Scotland is leading the way in the industry.