 | |
| Categories | Music, arts, culture, listings |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Circulation | 32,191 (ABC, 31 December 2014) [1] |
| Publisher | Radge Media C.I.C. [2] |
| First issue | May 2005 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Website | theskinny.co.uk |
The Skinny is a monthly free magazine distributed in venues throughout the cities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland. [3] Founded in 2005, the magazine features interviews and articles on music, art, film, comedy and other aspects of culture across Scotland and beyond. [4]
The Skinny was founded and launched in 2005 as a free Edinburgh and Glasgow listings magazine. [5] From the outset, the magazine secured interviews with high-profile music acts, including Mogwai, Pearl Jam, Wu-Tang Clan, DJ Shadow and Muse as well as becoming early champions for Scottish bands such as Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad.
In August 2006, The Skinny formed a partnership with established Edinburgh Festival magazine Fest . The first year of this partnership saw the publication renamed SkinnyFest, before it reverted to the title Fest in 2007.
In September 2007, The Skinny began the annual publication of a Student Guide. The guide is distributed through a number of Scottish universities and art colleges.
The Skinny launched a Northwest edition in April 2013, focusing on cultural happenings in Manchester and Liverpool. [6] In September 2016, this was expanded to include Leeds; the Northwest edition was discontinued in 2017.
In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Skinny suspended its publication [7] and furloughed the majority of its staff between April and September. The magazine ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to finance its return, raising over £16,000 of donations in under a month. [8]
In 2021, The Skinny launched new city guides to the magazine's home cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The guides were reissued in 2022, alongside a guide to Christmas and Hogmanay in Scotland.
In 2022, The Skinny launched a new fortnightly film podcast, The Cineskinny. [9] In December, The Skinny celebrated its 200th print issue with a party at Summerhall in Edinburgh. The party also acted as a fundraiser for Tiny Changes, the charity founded by the family of late Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison. [10]
As a listings magazine, The Skinny largely runs content that relates to events taking place within its catchment area during the month covered by the issue. [11] This consists for the most part of previews, reviews, and feature interviews.
In March 2007, the magazine secured the first UK interview with Arcade Fire after the release of hit album Neon Bible . The following month, it secured the first UK magazine cover for the band Battles in anticipation of the release of their debut album Mirrored . In June 2008, the magazine said that they would dedicate an entire issue to sex workers. [12] Scottish author Alasdair Gray provided a self-portrait for the magazine's November 2010 cover. [13]
Recent musicians featured on the cover of The Skinny include Run the Jewels, Wet Leg, Sacred Paws and The Pictish Trail, [14] with many of the magazine's covers featuring illustrations and artworks by Scotland-based artists and designers. In February 2023, Young Fathers hosted a 'takeover' of The Skinny, with the band co-commissioning a selection of feature articles and discussing the influences behind their album Heavy Heavy . [15]
The Skinny has established itself as a 'media partner' and sponsor for a range of events, including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, [16] Edinburgh Festival Fringe, [17] Edinburgh Art Festival, the Scottish Album of the Year Award [18] and dozens of music festivals across the UK and Europe.
The Skinny has hosted writer development programmes with organisations such as Disability Arts Online and the Edinburgh International Festival. [19] The magazine has also collaborated with a variety of Scottish arts organisations on publishing projects. In 2023, The Skinny worked with Film Hub Scotland to produce a new 32-page magazine dedicated to Scottish independent cinema. [20]
The Skinny has been media partners of the Royal Scottish Academy's New Contemporaries exhibition since its inception, and, as of 2023, sponsors an annual prize at the exhibition. [21]
In 2006, Jasper Hamill won the Press Gazette / Reuters Student Interviewer of the Year, for his piece "Another View" – an interview with avant-garde musician John Cale.
The Skinny won Print Publication of The Year in 2011 and 2012 at the Scottish New Music Awards.
Writers from The Skinny have been shortlisted in The PPA Scotland Awards' Young Journalist of the Year in each year since the award's inception in 2018. Megan Wallace won the Young Journalist of the Year award in 2019, Iana Murray won the award in 2020, and the magazine's Intersections editor Eilidh Akilade won the award in 2022. [22] The Skinny Guide To Edinburgh was also nominated for Best Brand Extension at the 2021 PPA Scotland Awards.
In November 2011, the Advertising Standards Authority determined that the publication had breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 8.2 and 8.15 (Sales promotions) in a promotion shown in the April edition. This was due to an insufficient deadline being provided for a non time-specific prize which was administered in conjunction with Edinburgh International Science Festival. [26]
The List is a digital guide to arts and entertainment in the United Kingdom.
Subcity Radio is a non-profit freeform radio station, arts collective and events promoter based at the University of Glasgow which is run by volunteers from the University and local community with the aim of providing an alternative to commercial and mainstream radio providers. It currently broadcasts online year round and until September 2009 also on temporary short-term FM Restricted Service Licence broadcasts. The station also hosts a large catalogue of audio for on-demand listening and podcasting, including recordings of the live stream, sessions, interviews, news and live recordings. Off-air, Subcity runs various events and club nights throughout the year, with previous venues including the Sub Club, Art School, Research Club, Stereo, and The Arches.
Stuart Leslie Braithwaite is a Scottish musician, singer and songwriter. He is the guitarist of post-rock band Mogwai, with whom he has recorded ten studio albums. He is also a member of the British alternative rock supergroups Minor Victories and Silver Moth. He has used the name Plasmatron in the credits of Mogwai's debut album Mogwai Young Team, as a social media handle, and as the name of his signature guitar pedal.
Optimo Espacio was a weekly Sunday-night club based in Glasgow, Scotland at the Sub Club on Jamaica Street, as well as a collective moniker for the night's resident DJ duo. Having run every week since it was founded in 1997, on 11 March 2010, it was announced on the official Facebook page that the weekly nights would come to an end on Sunday 25 April 2010. However, JD Twitch and JG Wilkes continued to tour, promote and release music as Optimo.
Fest Magazine is an Edinburgh-based arts magazine that publishes during the Edinburgh Festival each year. It is a free, bi-weekly, A5 glossy publication distributed through key Festival venues.
The Journal was an independent, fortnightly, local newspaper originally produced by students at seven major higher and further education institutes in Edinburgh. It was distributed at a number of locations across the city's universities and colleges, as well as at bars and cafés throughout the Scottish capital.
We See Lights is a Scottish alternative indie pop band from Edinburgh, Scotland.
Scotland Loves Animation is a charity that promotes anime in Scotland. They hold an annual film festival called "Scotland Loves Anime" in October and work with other festivals to programme anime content into their schedules. It will celebrate its 13th festival in 2023, which is currently scheduled to take place between 3 and 5 November in Glasgow and 6 and 12 November in Edinburgh.
Bob Slayer is an Edinburgh Comedy Award winning comedian, musician and promoter. He has been part of a new economic model for venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which has made the event fairer and more affordable for performers and audiences. Acts that have performed at his venues have won and been nominated for a number of prestigious awards.
Bunkered is a golf magazine from Scotland published by DC Thomson. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, the magazine was launched in 1996 and is published ten times per year.
John Michael David Robins is an English stand-up comedian and radio presenter.
Graham Fitzpatrick is a Scottish film director and screenwriter.
Nasty P is a hip hop Producer/DJ from Edinburgh, Scotland. As an artist and producer he has worked with Akil from Jurassic 5, Skinnyman and Ed O.G.
Kirsty Logan is a Scottish writer.
The Scottish Alternative Music Awards (SAMAs) is an annual music award based in Glasgow, Scotland. The SAMAs present awards in seven categories to the best emerging artists in Scotland.
Lewis Marc Capaldi is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. He was nominated for the Critics' Choice Award at the 2019 Brit Awards. Capaldi also won the 2020 Brit Award for Best New Artist. In March 2019, his single "Someone You Loved" (2018) topped the UK Singles Chart where it remained for seven weeks, and in November 2019, it reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100; it was nominated at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and won the 2020 Brit Award for Song of the Year. "Someone You Loved" was the bestselling single of 2019 in the UK. In May 2020, it was announced that Capaldi's song "Someone You Loved" had become the longest-running top 10 UK single of all time by a British artist.
Tartan Features is a filmmaking network and distribution platform based in Scotland. It supports the production of micro-budget feature films.
Felipe Bustos Sierra is a Chilean-Belgian film director, producer and editor based in Scotland. His debut feature-length documentary, Nae Pasaran (2018), won the Best Feature award at the 2018 British Academy Scotland Awards, where Bustos Sierra was also nominated for Best Director (Factual). Bustos Sierra is also the founder and creative director of Debasers Filums, an independent film company based in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The Margaret Tait Award is a moving image prize for artists living and working in Scotland. It is named after the Orcadian filmmaker and writer Margaret Tait (1918–99). Recipients of the award have included Alberta Whittle, Charlotte Prodger, Rachel Maclean and Torsten Lauschmann.
Bryan M. Ferguson is a Scottish filmmaker and music video director, best known for his music videos for artists such as Garbage, Alice Glass, Ladytron, Arab Strap and Boy Harsher.
