Kristen Sinclair

Zines by Shannon O'Neill from Sister Ghost  The first opportunity I ever had to have my writing   published was in a zine. Imagine Tumblr circa   2013, submissions curated from likeminded blogs   on feminism and stan culture, bound together in a   PDF and fired out to a list of email subscribers to   be printed off and cherished. These free, self-   published mini magazines, with little regard for     editorial standards, censorship or house style,   allowed teenage girls to talk about whatever they   wanted to, how they wanted to. A haphazard   mixture of sketches, newspaper cuttings, defaced   images, fan art and handwritten messages were   splashed across A4 pages to express anger, love,   political views, share experiences and give advice.  Often synonymous with the 90s Riot grrrl   movement and punk scenes, zines (short for   magazines) are homemade, anti-establishment   and  anti-professional booklets and pamphlets   used by marginalised communities as a fast and   inexpensiv

Gemma Bradley does a little bit of everything. The Across the Line alumnus now spends her Sunday nights on the Radio 1 airwaves showcasing the freshest new sounds on BBC Music Introducing. Also a musician and singer-songwriter in her own right, her blend of poppy melodies, R&B grooves and signature soulful drawl have helped her carve out a unique position in the Irish music scene. Upcoming single ‘Better’ is a departure from the sugary ‘Obsessed’, leaning into her love of R&B and featuring collaborations with local jazz drummer David Lyttle and Dublin rapper Jamel Franklin. Gemma tells Dig With It about her creative process, straddling two sides of the music industry and why vanilla is a misunderstood ice-cream flavour… Gemma Bradley gets vocal What are your earliest memories of music? Being in the car with my mum listening to different kinds of records – Amy Winehouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, Bob Marley too, Macy Gray. That shaped a lot of the stuff that I began to write later on.

I am 24 and have been type 1 diabetic for thirteen years. Throughout my student life, I worked part-time in the retail and hospitality sectors; roles in these high pressure environments are often unavoidable for young people balancing studies and paying rent. Throwing a disability into this mix only makes for even more of a challenge. Most people with a disability are sadly used to ignorant comments made in passing, but one particular incident has stuck with me as it is one of the few times I have ever been truly angered by a colleague’s remarks. Whilst on an evening shift in a busy department store, I had taken a moment to test my blood sugar and eat a snack in the staff room after a rocky shift plagued with low blood sugar episodes, or ‘hypos’. Feeling flustered from the drop in blood sugar and having already had to treat a previous episode on the same shift, my supervisor swung her head round the door and tutted.  “Have you not got that under control yet?” I was stunned. The ignoran

Off the back of my Verge article 'The Twitch Streamers Fighting to Keep Minority Languages Alive' , I was invited to chat with California-based film maker Fox Nakai about my research for the piece to be featured in his newsletter and upcoming documentary project Mixed Feelings . You can watch a preview of the interview below and on his site : Check out the Mixed Feelings trailer and Fox Nakai's portfolio here .

  Read the article on The Verge's website here .

Bandcamp Strength NIA’s second full length release opens with disembodied vocals over the ominous stuttering chords of an organ. Formed around the talents of frontman Rory Moore, the band’s USP is using old, broken instruments to create a discordant brand of post-apocalyptic pop with the occasional chorus peeking up from beneath the rubble. The band like to think of their work as “the first pop songs in the world”. Following on from their debut Northern Ireland Yes in 2018, Ulster is a Dance Master abounds with regional references and is a smorgasbord of instruments and sounds. The whole album clocks in at well under an hour and its lyrics recount eerie tales from Irish history to a more recent a youth spent in Derry. Song topics include everything from gravy buns to the population of Strabane. The comically titled ‘Dressing Up for the TUV’ is an ode to the women found guilty in the last witch trial in Ireland in 1711. Moore speaks as the TUV councillor objecting to their memoria

folking.com Dani Larkin’s debut record Notes for a Maiden Warrior is an album in two halves. The first, based around the theme of the Warrior, represents the dark side of the moon. It explores the archetype of Ulster as the warrior province, home to Cú Chulainn and his superhuman abilities. Larkin reinterprets this image in her songs, presenting the warrior’s strength through reflection and resilience. The second half, Maiden, is sleepy and sincere. It plays with ideas of light and feminine energy, showing strength through vulnerability and a celebration of love and kindness. Notes for a Maiden Warrior draws on ancient, otherworldly tales as a study of tenderness, pain and learning. Larkin’s native Armagh-Monaghan borderlands inform the sense of duality of the record, with one foot planted in each. Similarly, the ancient Irish concepts of the underworld and the supernatural underpin the LP, with the lines between the tangible and the mystical blurring with uncanny ease.   The ope

  From theverge.com Read the article on The Verge's website here .

 “Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country.”                                                                                   - C.S. Lewis   “The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in, no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place.”                                                                                    - The Secret Garden , Frances Hodgson Burnett   When I was about six or seven years old, I wrote a story called Skelly the Skeleton . It followed the story of a prince who had been turned into a living skeleton by a witch called Calcolm. Skelly was condemned to live in an enchanted forest awaiting, as the fairytale cliché dictates, true love’s first kiss to turn him human again. I used to narrate episodes to myself in the playground, endlessly adding and taking bits out. It first materiali

“ A world without memory is a world of the present. The past exists only in books, in documents .” -           Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams (1993) Dementia runs in my family on my dad’s side. We sometimes call it ‘doting’ where I’m from. I wouldn’t say this was the reason I began making scrapbooks and journals, but throughout my teenage years, it helped to justify my rather uncool hobby of documenting my life piece by piece. I imagined that one day I’d be a senile old lady able to sit back and read over my life story, significant and insignificant details sellotaped side by side. I’d no doubt forget and read it all over again with renewed amazement. I vomited on the first scrapbook I ever had sitting in the front seat of my mum’s car on the way to hospital. I can’t remember why we were going there exactly, because I was very young and it’s a vague memory. But I can remember what the book looked like, as soon after, I received an identical copy of the neon yellow binded noteboo

An electronic patchwork of moving tiles and faces, some lifting a guitar up to the camera, some poised next to a microphone and all smiling, fill young girls’ computer screens across Ireland and beyond. This virtual band practice is the most recent incarnation of Girls Rock School NI. Founded at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre in 2016 as a spinoff of Ladies Rock Camp, Girls Rock is a summer music camp that gives girls and non-binary youth aged 11-16 the opportunity to learn an instrument from scratch, form their own bands, write their own songs and cut their teeth as burgeoning rock stars. Weeks of coaching, merch-making workshops and Q&As with the province’s leading women musicians lead up to the final showcase where the new-fangled groups take to the stage to showcase their original material to a live audience for the first time. Girls Rock NI was the brainchild of Sister Ghost frontwoman Shannon O’Neill back when she was a student. After hearing about a similar Girls Rock Cam