Epigram (newspaper)

By Sophie Stradling, Head of Photography and Benjamin Ladner, First Year, Geography The first band I got to see at Bristol’s Dot2Dot was self-titled ‘loud band’ Gaws who captured The Lanes venue with a set that felt both familiar and yet ever-changing. Playing to a crowded room at 2:30, they managed to mesmerise their audience, leading everyone to forget it was mid-afternoon with the sun bearing down outside.

By Alex Boersma, Literature Columnist 25/26 Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, author, playwright and editor. In honour of pride month and fresh off her recent international book tour for Maryville, we discussed her journey from university to building a successful career in the arts and celebrating her queerness.

By Charles Hubbard, Second Year Theatre and Performance Studies Paced like a speeding bullet and made with style to spare, Lucy Marshall’s exceptionally brash and impressively labyrinthine play is perhaps most interesting when viewed as a violently satirical and gleefully subversive skewering of late-stage capitalism and the ghoulish centrist commodification of queer culture.

By Anna Dodd, Features Editor and Lenny Osler, News Reporter The upcoming UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Bonn is set to bring together governments, researchers, NGOs, and other stakeholders to advance negotiations on climate policy ahead of COP31.

By Anna Dodd, Features Editor Cherish the Orange are back on a Bristol stage once again with their new play Foul is Fair, a brassy and bold exploration of female friendship in keeping with the themes of their previous works, Fruitcake and Kick Off. Set the night before an English GCSE exam, writers and directors Dulcie and Tildy return to their schooldays with a play centred around dynamics of an all-girls school, as pupils in Year 11 navigate the joys and perils of being a teenage girl.

By Katie Asha, Third Year, English Ruby Roberts' music is a cocktail of melancholic dance sounds. The giddy nostalgia of Wolf Alice, theatricality of Kate Bush, and femininity of Lana Del Rey are all top-middle and base notes within her work – along with something that is uniquely hers.

In a time where the job market for graduates is the worst it's ever been, Bristol based Rising Arts Agency have placed youths at the centre by announcing their new co-directors: Ellayah May Woodward Lindsey and Mitoshka Alkova. The appointment on June 17th marked the creative agency's ten year anniversary. By Alex Boersma, Literature Columnist 25/26 Rising Arts Agency is a Bristol based social enterprise run by young creatives.

By Maya Cavale, Second Year, Philosophy Now we’ve reached the end of another year, I’m sure most of us can look back on our past ‘September-selves’ and appreciate how much we’ve changed. It seems our elders may actually have a point when they say (for the hundredth time…) that these years are vital for shaping our sense of self. Uni is one of the only places I’ve felt that most of my interactions and experiences have pushed me to strengthen my interests and views.

By Charles Hubbard, Second Year Theatre and Performance Studies Nicholai La Barrie’s sneakily timely restaging of Oscar Wilde’s tale of political corruption and double standards is packed with barn-burning gags guaranteed to have you rolling in the aisles, even while it lets its characters off the hook and uses queerness as a costume. Like many an Oscar Wilde play, An Ideal Husband, while no doubt viewed as shocking and incendiary when it was first performed in 1895, does seem rather tame now.

By Hannah Roberts, News Reporter University of Bristol students are not just struggling to find jobs or afford rent. According to this year’s Big Bristol SU report, they are increasingly struggling to feel like they belong. Conducted over January and February, the survey received 2,534 complete responses with the aim of understanding and improving the university experience. ‘Cost of Living’ holds the top spot for the third consecutive year.