The Skinny North: The final editorial

For four years the Skinny North has been reporting on the vibrant cultural scenes from three of the most friendly, creative and righteous cities in the UK. This, dear readers, is our final missive. After August, people in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds won’t find our beautifully designed magazines in the great indie venues, cafes and cultural institutions who’ve been kind enough to stock and support The Skinny during our four year journey.

The reasons for our print cessation are myriad, and detailed elsewhere on this website, but suffice to say the staff at The Skinny North are disappointed we’re no longer able to cover the North’s considerable talents and the vital events put on in the region. The chief reason being that the North and its amazing artists, bands, artisans, filmmakers, theatre-makers, comedians and venues deserve to be written about.

A magazine doesn’t make a scene. Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds had it all going on long before The Skinny came to town, and no doubt the North’s arts scene will be lively and buzzing and full of innovation long after the last dog-eared copy of The Skinny is put in the recycling or shredded to hamster bedding. But the creativity of these three cities and the North in general is so vital it deserves to be evaluated and championed. Without The Skinny around, it’s up to you, readers, to be even more vocal than you have been in the past. You need to be that little bit louder about the art and creativity you love in this region; shout the North’s talents from the rooftops, at least until another bunch of upstarts decide to put a magazine together in our wake. (Do it: it’s the best job in the world.)

The Skinny North couldn’t have achieved what it has done without a lot of very talented people working long and hard to help put this together. Over the last four years, we’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the most gifted writers in the region. Many of them were ridiculously young greenhorns making their print debuts, but you’d never know it. Their adroit prose was matched by an unwavering enthusiasm, and it was a pleasure watching their writing improve with every issue.

At the other end of the scale, we were also able to give space to veteran journalists of the North’s cultural scene who appreciated the rare opportunity to dig deeper into arts in the region than they might have been afforded at more mainstream outlets. We, on the editorial team, didn’t say this to these writers enough: you are brilliant! We hope you all the very best in your futures.

Thank you, too, to the venues that have stocked The Skinny North; you’ve become as much of a platform for rising talent and independent culture as anyone else. And thank you to all the brilliant artists, bands, filmmakers, comedians, theatre-makers and creatives who agreed to interviews over the years and invited us to their events – we hope our writing did you justice.

Perhaps above all else, thank you to YOU, our wonderful readers, who are the passionate, culturally-hungry and open-minded figures that this world needs right now. Members of The Skinny team felt no greater thrill than heading for coffee on Sunday morning or having a mid-week pint on Wednesday night and seeing someone with their nose in The Skinny. We made this magazine for you and we’re delighted you seemed to enjoy it – it made all the late nights writing on deadline and early morning proofing after three cups of coffee worthwhile.

Join us on 14 Jul at Islington Mill for The Final Fling, a farewell party open to all that will celebrate not only our final issue, but also four years of being a kickarse magazine. We’ll have DJs and live music from local favourites like Chester’s indie-pop trio Peaness, making it a positive-minded (and probably very boozy) blowout that doffs a cap to the North that we love. See you there.