Ten days of transformation: The Big Issue’s big shakeup

SATURDAY 21 MARCH

Over the weekend, Big Issue frontline staff set about compiling lists of all vendors, hitting the phones to speak to as many as possible to reassure them that they would be supported throughout the crisis. Many of these people have underlying health issues, and the team were seriously worried that rough sleepers would be exposed to the potentially fatal virus – it wasn’t until the following week that the government promised to house all rough sleepers in temporary accommodation. 

“The most important thing is not the life and death of The Big Issue,” says Bird, who founded the magazine in 1991, and has remained closely involved in its work since then. “The most important thing is to help the vendors and also [protect] the health of the public.”

And for Bird – who grew up among poverty and has previously been a rough sleeper himself – that period of huge uncertainty also brought a glimmer of hope. “This was the first time in recent history where the government took responsibility for people they had ignored for over 50 years. I was exalted, because I have campaigned for over 30 years that nobody should have to suffer the human rights abuse of sleeping rough.”

But with vendors soon to be off the street and forbidden from selling the magazine – a similar situation for vendors in almost all of the 35 countries where street papers exist – their enterprising route out of poverty had suddenly vanished. “We’ve always functioned on the ethos of ‘a hand up not a handout’, but for the foreseeable future we will have to be a handout. That's a seismic shift,” says McNamee.

MONDAY 23 MARCH

At 8pm on Monday 23 March, UK prime minister Boris Johnson announced the expected lockdown. For at least three weeks, other than to exercise once a day and for essential shopping, people were to stay at home. All but essential businesses would be required to close their doors.

The Big Issue’s publishing director, Russell Blackman, had already begun conversations with leading supermarkets and retailers, hoping they would start to sell physical copies of the magazine in their stores. The magazine had never been sold in shops before; the social enterprise’s model was based firmly on engaging individual vendors as the sales agents. For now, though, the magazine desperately needed other options.

Sainsbury’s was the first to agree to stock the magazine, trialing it in a few stores from 2 April. This quickly led to a domino effect, as deals with Asda, McColls, The Co-op and other leading retail outlets came in thick and fast. 

But getting the magazine into these stores wasn’t enough – people had to pick it up and buy it. And that meant another change for the organisation.

“Covers need to work slightly differently in retail. We had to think about how we adapt our cover and our editorial,” explains McNamee.

THE FUTURE

What does the future hold for this almost 30-year-old social enterprise?

“We're thinking about how different the organisation will look, because it certainly won't look the way it did before,” says McNamee.

For vendors, The Big Issue will continue with handouts, even if it contradicts a decades-old philosophy, for as long as needed, he says. Meanwhile, vendors have been calling every day to find out when they can start selling again. McNamee is unsurprised: “They want to earn their own money, they want to be in control of their own destiny.”  

For the past 18 months, The Big Issue has been trialling cashless payments. Given concerns about handling cash as a means of passing on the virus, the aim is to set up as many vendors as possible for cashless transactions when they return. 

They’re also figuring out – together with the vendors themselves – how the magazine can be sold without passing it from hand-to-hand. One option is placing the card-reader and magazine at a distance from the person selling it. “We're preparing a guidebook for vendors for when they return. It will include some tips on the best ways to communicate,” says Falchi-Stead. 

And the future of the magazine? “This has helped solidify things with a subscription base, so that’s good,” says McNamee. The digital version of the magazine “has huge potential”, he says, “but will take real application to make it work”. In the meantime, they’re clearly under pressure to continue raising cash, having recently launched ‘The Big Issue Seller’ campaign, to encourage people to ask three friends to sign up, creating a network of engaged readers. Falchi-Stead is “heartened” by the number of people who have never subscribed before, but is aware that the wider economic situation has changed: “Obviously people have a lot less money in their pockets. There's certainly a huge degree of economic uncertainty, but we have to do the best we possibly can. That's all we can do.”

The overriding sense from Big Issue leaders is of a certain trust in the organisation. “I’m really confident that we have the intelligence to come out the other end,” says Bird. “Whether we are as big as we were, whether we are in the same form as we were, is secondary.”

What is primary is the Big Issue’s end goal – to eradicate homelessness and rough sleeping. For Bird, it’s not just about supporting those in need, but about tackling the systemic issues – and that starts with government policy. 

“I went into the House of Lords because I wanted to destroy poverty. I think outside the box. The box isn't working. So I realised that I had to get into the box and make it work,” says Bird. He is among the loudest voices in parliament advocating for permanent housing for the homeless post-pandemic. 

“You can return to the old days, and let people rot on our streets – but this will be at an enormous cost. If you lift people out [by temporarily housing them], raise their expectations and then dash them, you then create even more damage,” Bird explains. He won’t be going down without a fight. “There’s going to have to be a revolution right at the frontline.” 

Read more about The Big Issue here.