Why music megastar Bryan Adams became a Big Issue Ambassador: ‘Big kudos for everything you do’
Wake up the neighbours – Canadian rocker Bryan Adams is joining Big Issue as an ambassador!
by:
17 Sep 2026
Bryan Adams
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In September 1991, when Big Issue launched, Bryan Adams was at the top of the charts in the UK with his hit single, (Everything I Do) I Do It for You – as he was for most of that year, or so it seemed.
“My friends were calling me up saying, ‘Your damn song is still number one,” he recalls, laughing. “But it was a great time.”
Now, as Big Issue celebrates its 35th birthday, superstar Canadian rocker Adams is joining us as an ambassador.
“We’ve come full circle!” he says.
Adams has sold millions of records and played sell-out shows for decades. And in recent years, his photography has been exhibited and admired around the world. Now he is joining our fight to eradicate poverty and end homelessness.
“I want people to understand that when they see a Big Issue vendor, they see someone selling Big Issue, how important it is to contribute if you can,” he says. “Because you are helping somebody who is trying to help themselves. Big kudos to Big Issue for everything you do.”
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His relationship with Big Issue goes back a long way.
In 2015, we used his portrait of Sgt Rick Clement from the photo-series Wounded – The Legacy of War on our cover to mark Remembrance Day. The powerful photograph, combined with Clement’s incredible story and Big Issue’s campaigning journalism, saw it named magazine cover of the year by the PPA – the Oscars of the British magazine industry.
A few years later, Adams called on Big Issue with the idea for a new photoseries. To create Homeless (2019), he invited Big Issue vendors to his studio for an intimate photo shoot in London. The resulting portrait series was as powerful as it was important, offering a new lens on people experiencing homelessness.
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As time passes, the portraits take on even greater power – one shows Jane Burns from Wimbledon, who died earlier this year. Proceeds from book sales and the subsequent exhibition were donated to Big Issue.
“I felt compelled to do the project and support Big Issue,” he says.
“Because homelessness is something that has always been around me. I come from Vancouver and the situation on the street is quite dire, particularly in the area where I am – the Gastown area. So it’s always been in the forefront of my visual aspect. Then of course coming to London and seeing it here…”
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
He pauses to recall a story his friend and collaborator Jim Vallance told him about his first visit to London decades ago.
“Jim was staying in a hotel, and there was a homeless person below his window. He was four floors up and threw all the blankets down to him. I thought, wow, what a great thing to have done! Maybe not for the hotel, but for the person that was freezing in the middle of winter. I’ve gone off track…
“But those portraits are a document in time. We should be aware of how many people are homeless. And who they are. When we were photographing them, everybody wanted to talk about their story. To get to the point where you agree to be photographed, you have to have an openness. And once you are there with somebody, the stories start to flow, because we are there together.
“It was hard when you hear what people have gone through. One of the women had lost her son, and that was the beginning of her spiral – because her son was her world. There’s not one story that leads someone to become homeless.”
In the years since, these photographs of our vendors have been exhibited alongside Adams’ portraits of the Queen, Mick Jagger, Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
“There’s all walks of life,” Adams says. “From the struggling to the most affluent, from people working in the armed forces to my colleagues in the music business. Everyone has got a different story. I find it interesting to capture the broad aspect of humanity. We are in it together.”
To create Homeless (2019), he invited Big Issue vendors to his studio for an intimate photo shoot in London. Image: Bryan Adams
Adams himself grew up in and around poverty. It is, perhaps, why he has such empathy and was so keen to work with Big Issue, as well as the other organisations that his Bryan Adams Foundation is supporting.
“Our situation was a struggle more than abject poverty. We didn’t have much. Deep down, you don’t forget.
“I left school at 15. There wasn’t anything in the fridge, so I had to get to work. But my mum was always super supportive when I told her that I was going to go and be a musician. On the one hand, of course she’d like to have been able to keep me at home.
“But on the other hand, she couldn’t afford it. She really, really couldn’t. She was a struggling single mum and had two jobs.
“It was just fortuitous that I had a voice. My mum’s 98 now and we often reflect on those early days and just what an enormous struggle it was to get out of poverty. It was really hard. There were a number of really hard years.”
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Adams will work with Big Issue as we continue to help people living in poverty, experiencing homelessness, or in insecure housing to find a way through.
“I saw that money is being put into fighting homelessness before Christmas, getting people into somewhere to sleep,” he says.
“That is really, really good news and long overdue, if it actually happens. But the question always remains: you can do it for the short term, what’s the long-term solution?
“I know that will be something Big Issue will always fight for. What you guys do is so great. And I want to be able to be there to support as much as I can. So keep fighting the fight.”
