Embiggening the makers
Spread love to the creators you love
Please help us get True Clown Stories published.
Try this: embiggen someone.
Try this: big someone up.
Who has touched your life recently?
Who has made, written, performed something that enlivened you.
Please write about them in the comments below.
Write about someone you admire, someone who deserves an audience, someone lovely.
Who are they
What do you do?
Why is it special?
What quirks make you love them more?
Now try this: embiggen them elsewhere: online, in print, or in person:
If you’ve a Substack, a blog, a newsletter: use it for singing praises.
Find the person on social media, follow them, converse with them, share one of their posts. And when you do, say why you like it and why they’re ace!
Review, buoy up, and support them wherever you can:
Tell your friends about them! In chatty WhatsApp messages and phone calls. In the pub.
Facebook, Twitter/X, and other social networks have started downgrading posts which link to external sites - like YouTube, Etsy, Kickstarter, Substack - so that your followers are less likely to see them.
This means that creators, small businesses, community groups… all find it much harder to show their work to people, and to get them to buy products, services, and tickets.
The Mycelium must root around them.
We, the people, must fill our social space with praise for the people we admire.
Because they deserve that.
Here’s some people I want to embiggen. The first three begin with A.
Allie Carr
I’m loving reading
’s new Substack about cultivating joy, art, and community. Here is a brave video post from Allie which inspires me to want to do the same:
Showing up; being vulnerable; seeing what emerges: this, for me, is everything.
Andrew O’Neill
I’ve seen Andrew perform half-a-dozen times already this year. Every one is different, mad, hilarious.
Andrew MCs the Troy Comedy Club on the first Friday of every month, at the Black Heart in Camden, London. And every Monday, Andrew is at Dead Leg Comedy at Tap Social Movement in Oxford, for free. And gigs in loads of other places. If you’re going to Edinburgh this Autumn, you won’t want to miss their History of Heavy Metal at The Stand.
Andrew’s podcast, The Inadvisable Trapdoor is surreal occult ambient beautiful genius.
Here’s Andrew with Stewart Lee, 13 years ago:
And something more recent:
Andy Cropper
Andy Cropper is a wonderful Sheffield-based artist who paints hyperrealistic urban night scenes which are full of soul. Andy is also a lovely lovely person.
And he provided maps and drawings for Terry Howard’s Inner City Round Walk of Sheffield, published by Peakrill Press in 2023.
Check out this new video from Sheffield Museums, see what inspires Andy:
Dave Zackin
Dave Zackin is a potter who makes wonderful ceramics with faces and wry messages. He also makes Ceramizine:
Dave has been quite ill recently. Please support his work.
Robert Lugo
Speaking of ceramics, check this out…
Bookmarks
I have now posted out or given away 1,000 Peakrill Press bookmarks. Which means that we have a new bookmark design:
If you want to find out what’s on the back, you must buy a book. Use the code BOOKMARK10 for 10% off.
Finally, please help us get True Clown Stories published. Finally.
Until next time, seekers!