Introducing BS-ME, a print and online collaboration between Crack Magazine and Ace & Tate celebrating five creatives doing amazing things in our home city of Bristol.

Bristol will always be our home. Since founding the magazine here in 2009, we’ve been continually inspired by its diversity and the resilience of its creative community, who hustle hard to make it a brighter place. To celebrate Ace & Tate’s arrival in the city with a store opening on Park Street on 12 July, we spent some time with five people who embody the fearless, boundary-free ethos which makes our hometown so special.

Jo wears Capri in Poppy

Jo wears Milan in Blush

Jo Bligh

Performer, Curator, Producer

Bringing together the fringes of Bristol’s arts scene with its LGBTQ community, Jo Bligh celebrates the outsiders.

Bligh is the producer and curator behind Bristol collective Thorny, a platform for the city’s marginalised voices producing club nights, performance art and live music. As a hardworking, vocal and creative non-binary figure, they have influenced a huge shift in visibility for Bristol’s queer community.

Get to know Jo in our BS-ME interview here.

@mxjobligh

Joe wears Paul in Smoke

Joe wears Ringo in Chocolate Chip

Joe Talbot

Frontman, Songwriter

A linchpin of Bristol’s music scene, Joe Talbot’s visceral punk has a disarming tenderness at its heart.

Joe Talbot is the frontman of Bristol-built punk band IDLES. The band formed in 2012, but reached a far larger audience with the release of their debut album Brutalism in 2016. As a lyricist and performer, he confronts people, politics and his own personal experiences with brutal honesty and wry humour.

Find out more about Joe in our BS-ME profile here.

@idlesband

 

Eno wears Max Metal Template in Lilac

Eno wears Vivian in Matte Black

Eno Mfon

Playwright, Performer, Writer

As a playwright, Eno Mfon finds power in untold stories.

Eno Mfon is a playwright originally from London, who graduated from Bristol University two years ago. Her experiences of the city were mixed: she felt lost in the confines of the university, yet through building a creative network soon found space for her work to flourish. She performed her first full-length script Check the Label at the Bristol Old Vic in 2016 – a one-woman play that deals with the dangerous and too-common trend of skin bleaching among women of colour. Her plays since have been similarly deft in their handling of race and family, with a particular focus on Nigeria where Eno’s mother is from. Her writing has been staged at Hamilton House, the Colston Hall and London’s Young Vic.

Eno unpacks the themes of her work in our BS-ME profile.

@byenomfon

Danielle wears Donna in Mint

Danielle wears Monty Metal Temple

Danielle Doobay

Illustrator, DJ, Mentor

As a DJ, illustrator and mentor, Danielle Doobay’s multifaceted work shapes the identity of Bristol’s nightlife, injecting the culture with fluidity and colour.

Doobay is a Bristol-based illustrator, and one of the DJs behind Mix Nights – the informal DJ skills workshop run for women, by women. As an illustrator, her visual style is unmistakable, using linocut she produces bold, textured prints that feel alive with movement and improvisation. Her signature look is now associated with the likes of Livity Sound, whose Bristol event series Danielle produces posters for. She’s also created artwork for releases of artists such as Ploy and Tom Dicicco.

Read more about Dannielle’s cross-discipline work in our BS-ME profile.

@d_doobay

Nikesh wears Hugo in Hunter Green

Nikesh wears Byron in Caramel Havana

Nikesh Shukla

Writer, Editor, Mentor

One of the city’s most influential minds, Nikesh Shukla has found community in Bristol.

Positioning himself at the forefront of contemporary creative writing in the UK with 2016’s The Good Immigrant, Nikesh Shukla is an esteemed editor, author and curator of stories from people of colour. Shukla is also a known mentor to aspiring young creatives in Bristol. Through his work at the Watershed’s community project Rife, he’s leaving a lasting imprint on the city’s diverse hotbed of talent.

Nikesh pens a personal essay to the city which has shaped his creative method for BS-ME.

@nikeshshukla

All photography by Dean Davies

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