Big Issue has always been bad at promoting itself. Andy Burnham can teach us a lesson

The Independence Initiative in Bootle in Liverpool got the full governmental treatment in the middle of the Labour conference last week. As Big Issue Invest, part of Big Issue’s fight against poverty, had supported the Independence Initiative with a £100,000 loan, we invited Andy Burnham to visit the project. 

We were therefore astonished to find not only that Andy Burnham agreed to come but that the chancellor
John Healey and housing secretary Angela Rayner also turned up. News of this was embargoed until Burnham’s major conference speech the next day, on the basis that he would make reference to the wonderful work that the Independence Initiative does around rough sleeping. 

The Independence Initiative is a boon to many rough sleepers in Liverpool. It has a garden and wood workshop, a pantry and even a little shop for the local community to get food. And there is accommodation, with our investment allowing them to increase the number of beds by 30%. Burnham jumped in with his fellow cabinet members and took part in stacking shelves and having a go at apple crumble. He and his colleagues talked at length to many of the users. And the atmosphere was a delight. 

Unfortunately, what we wanted was a celebration of the working relationship between a top-notch rough sleeper project and Big Issue. Alas, Burnham did not mention the project or Big issue’s work in his very important speech. Realpolitik it seems was the reason we didn’t get the chance to crow about our work to the press; it was all shut down for some higher ideal. Some of the press did run it, but considering the two-dozen reporters and photographers in attendance it did look like it could have been a bigger story. 

After all, wasn’t rough sleeping the first thing zeroed in on by Burnham when a few weeks ago he stood in Downing Street outside No 10 and said it was his big issue? 

What can’t be denied is the thrill his presence made to the users of the Independence Initiative. It was a sunny afternoon but the light cast by a senior politician taking time out gave everyone a fillip. 

I might well have been the only miserable sod on that fine afternoon, feeling like a spare prick at a wedding, having invited the PM but been made to feel redundant as the seemingly sealed trio of performers hoovered up dozens of clicking cameras. 

Of course in politics you have to always be there for the clicks and the social media, so media-soaked are we. The media seems to be more important than the electorate at times. If you get the media shining their light on you, you could be home and dry. So let’s forgive the media-hungry, for they thrive or fall with or without it. Getting the job might be the easy part – their jobs seem to be about those clicks. God forgive if our news gets trodden underfoot; it’s understandable. 

Read more:

• New prime minister Andy Burnham starts with vow to end rough sleeping. Here’s how he aims to do it
• Andy Burnham: ‘It’s so hard when people just walk past’
• Celebrating 20 years of Big Issue Invest: Proving what was once only imagined

But what a story: Big Issue starts on the double yellow lines of the West End of London, and here through Big Issue Invest it’s shining its light on such projects as the Independence Initiative in Bootle. And bringing in an army of press because we could get the prime minister. 

Of course we are ourselves in error: we are crap at promoting ourselves. Big Issue has never been very good at promoting itself. And showing how important it has become in filling holes in the community. Finding a gap and trying to get the finances to make that community gap disappear. 

But we have the same appetites as government ministers. That same desire to be seen. I wish we were as good as the government is in doing its utmost to appear big and good and useful. Those scurrying publicity-hungry ministers should be a lesson to Big Issue. Let’s be shameless and greedy so that we can be seen, for being seen means today being ‘real and relevant’. 

I wore myself out at the conference and limped home with a terrible cough. Talking to all and sundry, meeting people who want to help us become even more useful. Giving talks where I am louder than loud – it comes at a price. 

But the high point was definitely the Independence Initiative. Feet on ground. Paulene, who’s been there for 22 years says it’s not a job, it’s a vocation. She runs it with her team and she led the three cabinet ministers around the project. 

I hadn’t seen Paulene since the 1990s when she worked for Anita and Gordon Roddick at The Body Shop. A chip off the old social innovation block. What a surprise and a joy to see her again.  

In spite of not getting all the glory I wanted, it was a brilliant five days in Liverpool. And let’s take a leaf out of the cabinet’s book: be seen!

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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