How do you make peace – or at least try to draw it? Most of us wouldn’t know where to start. Neither would many world leaders, going by current crises. But you can never underestimate children’s creativity. Or their hopeful optimism
Out of hundreds of entries we received for this year’s Spring Kids Cover Competition, six-year-old April Floyer from Northampton has been chosen as our winner. Her message resonates with Big Issue – ensuring people have a safe place to sleep echoes our own core values – but it is also a simple and hopeful message for a world where lives are being disrupted by conflict and chaos. “It must be scary for people who don’t have a safe bed or have to live outside,” April says. “I know I am lucky to have a safe bed to sleep in. When you’re in bed it’s nice and quiet – if your mum and dad are not hoovering.”
In this week’s Big Issue, check out some of our Kids Cover Competition entries. Plus much, much more, including a new dedicated section for children.
What else is in this week’s Big Issue?
The protest against paying water bills
Thousands of people have pledged to “take back water” by withholding payment of their water bills – but lawyers warn it’s not risk-free. We dive into the detail as water bills go up again.
Make play not war
Children use play to shape their relationships, and the lessons they learn influence how they experience the world and what they bring to it. Play is how society learns to build itself, and it is also how we keep hope alive. So how do kids play in warzones?
David Olusoga says conscription might be coming back
Chances are, you’ve never fired a gun. According to historian David Olusoga, that might be about to change. “We don’t come into contact with guns. They aren’t part of our lives, because we are very, very lucky to live in a country with grown-up gun control laws,” Olusoga says. “But that makes us unusual, both historically and geographically. This period we’ve lived in, from 1963 – when the last generation of young British men went through conscription – to now, is a period where we’ve not had guns as part of our lives. And that period might be coming to an end.”
