Photo - Martin Gammon
John Bird is a British social entrepreneur and co-founder of The Big Issue, a magazine edited by professional journalists and distributed by street vendors affected by homelessness. The magazine offers people affected by homelessness the chance to earn a legitimate income and today is published in four continents and in multiple languages. Bird himself became homeless at the age of five and has been in prison or on the streets a number of times since - he prides himself on being someone who once was part of the problem and is now part of the solution. He was awarded an MBE for services to homeless people in 1995.
Speaking at the Beyond Profit (Cambridge's only social enterprise society) Annual Lecture on Tuesday night, Bird created a relaxed atmosphere by drinking a glass of Guinness during the speech and kept the crowd laughing throughout. Going back to the early 1990s when Gordon Roddick, co-founder of The Body Shop, asked him to start a magazine to help homeless people, Bird expressed that his first reaction was "I'm not doing anything for nothing; I have a wife and two children." In an interview with The Cambridge Student before the Beyond Profit lecture, Bird tells how this clear motivation for profit can be combined with contributing to a social cause
The Big Issue is not a charity magazine; it's an ethical business. Where do you have to draw the line between being ethically responsible and making a profit? Or do you think that there is no line?
Being ethically responsible is rather strange when you talk about business. My attitude is that we [The Big Issue] run the same ads that, for instance, the Guardian would run - the Guardian's a pretty good measure by which you can gauge ethical issues. If ads are run in the Sunday Times, that's a different issue. So we have our guidelines. We don't take cigarettes, we take drinks because the Guardian takes drinking, but we don't take stories which are unethical. We would never run an anti-gypsy or a racist story. We're very careful, but at the end of the day, we do have to make a living. I've often got into trouble, especially with other similar newspapers, some of which I started, saying we're too commercial. And I say "Yeah, but we're here to sell as many papers as possible in order to give work to the homeless". We're not a homeless paper: we're a paper sold by homeless people. And that's an important difference.
Is the street-vending model profitable? (Would the magazine sell more copies if it were sold in stores?)
We wouldn't sell more copies, because what people are largely buying is the relationship with the vendor. The relationship with the vendor is of vital importance because people say, "I buy the paper from a homeless or an ex-homeless person I can talk to, I can learn about their life, I can engage".
Do you think it's important that vendors read the magazine themselves?
I think it's very important that the magazine is read by vendors because the magazine is for them; we're treating them the way we treat every other member of the public. The problem with the vendors, of course, is that they could see an advertisement for a holiday which they're never likely to go on. But that's the same for millions of other people. I always say that the vendors who sell very well are the vendors who read the paper and then tell the people what's in it - they can say "Oh, look what's in this!". A lot of vendors always claim that they know me, and that they read my stuff, but I'm not so sure whether they do.
Are the vendors of The Big Issue quite a dynamic group, with some leaving as they receive housing and other types of employment and others entering, or do some vendors stagnate in the same position for long periods of time?
It depends on where you are. In Cambridge, you've got a regular group of people who've been selling for quite a period of time (and that's one of the reasons why we've developed a digital publication which is going to be launched on the 21st November, called Answers From Big Issue). One of the things that I'm trying to do is to create new forms of employment away from the streets so that vendors can then not just sell on the streets but also become content providers and write stuff for us, or deliver magazines to people who've pre-ordered them. Turning vendors into deliverers is a whole new way of employing homeless people away from the streets. But the problem with people we meet through The Big Issue is that they have been around homelessness for quite a long period of time, they've got severe problems because they've been in and out of it, and we often meet them when they are at their lowest. So sometimes, you're holding those peoples' hands until the day they die. Others, you're helping to move very quickly. I always say that The Big Issue's a bit like the sea. The nearer the top of the water you are the more the oxygen, the deeper the less oxygen. So very few fish at the bottom move up very quickly. But then, it could be that those at the bottom have never really had a proper job and have never really established their own credentials, so no one's going to give them a job, and it could be people who are so mentally and physically unable that they're going to be with us forever.
The Big Issue is now published and sold in four continents and in multiple languages. I read online that in July 2010, 2000 copes of The Big Issue Malawi were circulated. Did you foresee the global impact that setting up the magazine would have?
No. When we started The Big Issue, we started it for a very specific problem, which was the fact that the middle of London was full of homeless people sleeping on the streets who were causing problems for themselves and the public, and the police were being brought in. When other people in other parts of the UK saw what we were doing, they came to us and they said, "Can you bring The Big Issue here?" - to Bristol, to Brighton, to Manchester and so on. And then a French camera team came over to see me and made a film about us for French television, and then there was a paper in France. Then there was a German camera team, and then a Russian one. So all these people started to beat on our door, saying "Wow, you're working with homeless people who would normally have been in trouble." So it spread. We never knew it was going to be so important, and we had no idea whether it was going to work. We weren't really professional business people - we just had a fierce determination to help the homeless.
Is the content of the non-UK editions of the magazine completely local to the country that it is being published in, or is there some content that exists across different editions?
Well, what we say to our international sisterhood is that any article we do, you can have. Last year we had an interview with Prince William, and it was picked up by the organization that we helped to start, the International Network of Street Papers, and they spread the interview all over the world. Japan is always asking us for interviews with Beckham, or interviews with Prince Charles. The Japanese and the Taiwanese and the Koreans are very desirous of us having the top stars, whether it's Lady Gaga or whoever. So if we get it, we immediately offer it to them. We don't get paid for it. We do everything as a service, and it's worked largely quite well.
In 2007, you announced your intention to stand for election to be Mayor of London, and later took back this decision. Do you see yourself involved in politics in the future? Why or why not?
Well, I got involved largely because David Cameron let it be known through various other people - he was in opposition at the time - that he wanted me to stand for the Mayor of London against Ken Livingstone. I said I'd consider it, but they said I'd have to join the Conservative Party and I wouldn't do that because I'm not conservative. Then they had to go for Boris and he got the job - Boris was very pleased that I refused to do it. And then I was going to stand as an independent, but then when James Oyebola was murdered by some lads in a club at the beginning of the smoking ban - they shot him in the head because he tried to stop them smoking - I thought... God, if I get involved with politics, then I will be explaining why the drains are not working, or the planes are not working, or the trains are not working. I'd rather be trying to fight for social justice. I don't think I would ever go into conventional politics, but I'm a political animal. I've just finished a book called The Necessity of Poverty, which is all about the politics of poverty. The other thing is, and people complain at me, they say, "Why did you let David Cameron be guest editor?" "Why did you let Tony Blair be guest editor?" And I say, "Look, I'm a provider. I provide for the homeless and the needy." I cannot have a left or a right badge - if you're receiving support from the general public, then you can't piss off one lot for the sake of another lot because you might lose some of your readers - and that would affect homeless people. So I have to be politically neutral, which is difficult because I consider myself a revolutionary.
Iravati Guha
Source: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/issue/interviews/interview-john-bird-founder-of-the-big-issue/
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