STAT10

 

Design & editorial work. Book-binding. Reviews. For STAT issue 10. February 2024.

An issue loosely centred around my home town of Stockport. Perhaps my fav issue of STAT yet. I’m starting to like my writing more and more. And I think I’m developing a clearer style of design. Lovely stuff. All hand-bound. Cover has the latest “poem” I wrote on it as well as a black mini print of some bins under Runcorn Shopping City.

"Surely not!"

***

A psychologically flimsy idea though it is, I lived my so-called formative years in Stockport. I have vague memories of being pushed around Sainsbury’s in a pram, others sprinting away from spiders, but otherwise I recall very little. After my brother was born we moved into my grandparents' old house. That house sits in the dead space between Wigan, Leigh, and Warrington, not really belonging to any of them.

Migrating from Stockport isn’t necessarily something to write home about, but it certainly plays with my sense of identity sometimes. I’ve spent the majority of my life in that dead space and yet I still stutter when people ask me where I’m from. Do I say Stockport? Wigan? Do you know where either of those places are?

Hanging my head in shame, I generally resort to “Half way between Manchester and Liverpool.” Yes, I’m from that amorphous no man’s land outside the urban centres, so frequently chastised and (sometimes deservingly) stereotyped, to which the response calls: “Oh, well, that’s alright, at least you’re not too far from the action.”

I don’t believe there’s less action back home. Fewer big name gigs, for sure. Less money, yeah, but that’s merely a virtue of a sparse population. We can cry about funding and Tories and managed decline ‘til the last mintball rolls out of Uncle Joe’s (and believe me, we should), but at some point, as insufferable as it sounds, we must be the change we want to see.

Politically, culturally, it’s clear the institutions that are in place are failing to offer us a modern idea of community. Not in Wigan, nor in Stockport. How do we change that? Go to those weird basement gigs. If they’re shit, try putting your own on. Write things. Buy zines. Criticise. Work with whoever you can. Engage with local arts and political organisations. Don’t outsource decision making to local authority curators or (God forbid) The L*bour Party – they will not save us. Challenge them, form groups, join groups, create things. Build something – it’s on us. Go for a wander, take pictures of random shit on the street, write a poem, go for a pint in a pub on the other side of town. Hang out with decent people doing cool things. Trust me, there are loads of them.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re already thinking along these lines anyway. I’m partly writing this spiel for my own good. And I know it’s hard work. It’s taken me far too long to put this issue together.

Help us. Build something. If we take action, then maybe we’ll be less inclined to go to Manchester and see the newest act out of South London. We’ll have our own thing.

I’ve heard Stockport’s the new Berlin.

Pete Mercer, STAT Issue 10 Editorial

February 2024