Editorial: Bigger, Deeper, Bolder

The warmest of welcomes to issue 2 of Star & Crescent, a community news, culture and commentary site casting a critical eye over Portsmouth. It’s been an exciting, if busy, couple of months since issue 1 and, in that time, we’ve had almost 12,000 visits from readers not just in our area but from all over the world. We couldn’t have wished for a better response.

Issue 2 is certainly bigger, arguably better and, we think, deeper and bolder than issue 1. We’ve added new dimensions to our coverage, engaging with asylum, the arms industry, students’ rights, surrogate parenting, self-harming, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s spiritualism, Portsmouth’s upcoming Pride event, independent local cinema, how music and creative writing have changed in the digital age, Portsmouth’s standing as a global and multicultural city, and a lot else besides.

We delayed release of the issue in order to land a little closer to the most unpredictable general election in living memory. We hope you enjoy our vox pops from local voters, our call to women to get involved in the political process, our commentary on the rise of smaller parties and our thoughts on the meaning of class in mainstream politics.

To lighten our workload and make S&C an even wider collaboration, we are now working with a group of passionate and accomplished contributing editors. A big thank you to all of them and an extra special thank you to Conor Patrick, who edited some of our fiction for this issue.

And of course, many many thanks to absolutely everyone who contributed writing and visual art this time.

Tom Sykes and Sarah Cheverton

21st April 2015