“…and that’s always the thing, it’s deeper than aesthetic, I
mean, partly that’s why I wanted to do it, it’s quite provocative,
because, like, why would you be defending this –”
– yeah –
“ – and we were trying to explain it, because we didn’t expect to
be on the side of this random vape shop, but it’s funny how these
things turn out – ”
– strange bedfellows, yaknow –
“…yeah, so true –”
– but you don’t get that kind of resistance to the vape shops down in
Withington, for example –
“ – no, exactly –”
– you might in Didsbury – it’s this complete disconnect, if something is
aesthetically displeasing or doesn’t fit this Manchester vibe that’s being
curated … but then the things really harming the Manchester vibe and
aesthetic are these bloody skyscrapers, these private accommodations
driving up the rent –
“…yeah –”
– and these corporate-leaning newbuilds instead of any kind of
social housing –
“ – and the thing that’s interesting is that it’s got utility, it’s a
normal shop, it sells normal things, it’s not just a vape shop,
obviously it’s got vapes in there…”
We’re sat in Stevenson Square, NQ, with a coffee and an untouched notebook lounging on the table between us. A few feet away a teenager scrawls in a sketchpad, eyes darting up now and then to glance at MCR1, an off-license whose nuclear yellow shopfront apparently scorched Mancunian retinas enough to prompt a media frenzy, a council investigation and, eventually, a removal of the offending signs.
Opposite me is George Francis Lee, commissioning editor and co-founder of STAT magazine. Last time I saw him he was violating a harmonium and jamming candles into a body made of clay and dirt, symbolically exorcising the North of England while I fiddled knobs on a mixing desk. Six months later we’re jostling for waveforms in my voice notes app, half-discussing STAT’s wholehearted defence of MCR1’s obsolete shopfront, half-rambling about northern aesthetic fetishisation. I’m wondering whether I’ve started the interview yet.
STAT is a northern magazine. More specifically, north-western. Founded by Pete Mercer in 2020, the art & culture-focused publication was birthed in Leigh, Lancashire, and lives there still, operating out of a former cotton mill. The magazine, ran as a co-operative, is unabashedly anti-capitalist and anti-profit, rejecting the accumulation of wealth that the team see as artistically and socially destructive to the North.
“We’re very opinionated, and we don’t pretend to be impartial at all, but I guess we don’t advertise it in that way,” George tells me. “It’s a political project, but not a politics publication.”
But STAT’s north-west has little to do with Oasis reunions, bread-roll-naming debates (barm, George reluctantly offers), or bee-emblazoned tote bags. To STAT, such surface layers of ‘northernness’ represent a quasi-acceptance of northern identity that’s selective at best and sickeningly corporate at worst. This ‘North’ is one of conditional approval, more evocative of a classist pantomime than of a cultural powerhouse.
Instead, STAT finds its northern culture in the nooks and crannies that make up the silenced majority of the region. “We’re maintaining that local, satellite-town focus,” George tells me, “and continuing to ignore Manchester as a kind of focal point.”
STAT walks a delicate tightrope between principled and contrarian. Opposing the commercial façade of pop-culture northernness, STAT is happier showcasing edgier independent art from Leigh, Wigan or Blackpool, rejecting the notion that all art in the North West emerges from Manchester.
But if they find favour in the obscure, underground and personal, STAT readily direct their ire towards projects and perspectives they consider mindlessly nostalgic, opportunistic, or self-objectifying.
Invoking defanged, commercialised icons like Frida Kahlo and Che Guevara, George suggests that the same process is happening to the North: northern artists compelled to churn out empty clichés of northern or working-class life, thus reinforcing a perception of the region that is stagnant, unchanging and hollow.
“The commercial version of working-class art is incredibly uninterested in examining itself,” George notes. “It sort of presents itself as a caricature.”
They’re no strangers to controversy. A February article covering Utopia, an interactive “gallery-cum-sitting space” at Factory International adorned with working-class northern aesthetics, disparaged the exhibit as “a flat-roofed simulacrum inside a £241mil venue”, picking from stereotypes of northern culture – rainbow streamers, Maggie on a dartboard – without examining what these cultural touchstones really represent.
Followers were not pleased. Comments on the accompanying post accuse STAT of “gatekeeping,” “missing the point” and of overlooking artist Trackie McLeod’s “genuine lived experience” as a working-class northerner. Where STAT saw hollow poverty porn, others saw a vision of unity and inclusion that proudly celebrated oft-maligned cultural touchstones.
“That got us in trouble,” George admits. “People I know, that I’m in circles with, have been very upset … I got a lot of social blowback from that.”
Just a few days before our conversation, STAT had again run afoul of public opinion. Their public support of the MCR1 shopfront had taken some followers aback. Wasn’t this the ugly face of capitalist enterprise, swallowing up a northern region’s unique identity?
George doesn’t see it like that. “I live around the corner, and there’s not that many shops that sell 75p kitchen roll – it’s more useful to people than a Nancy Spains, or whatever.” Ever keen to avoid aesthetic fetishisation, if a shop is serving the material needs of a community, it shouldn’t be shunned “just because it doesn’t look the right way.”
Besides, George reckons, “the worst looking bit about it was the inside.”
These contradictions are, to STAT, a fundamental part of northern identity. Articles swim between seriousness and satire, with well-articulated discussions on social atomisation presented alongside ex-cocaine dealers telling readers that “being an objectively terrible coke dealer is a better option than you might think.”
It’s an irreverence without disrespect; when STAT exalts the virtues of Southport’s Lawnmower Museum, or celebrates the Wigan “folk tradition” of getting really pissed in an alien costume, you feel that latent desire to tear through capital-approved ‘northern’ aesthetics and write about the real people who live in these towns.
But recognising the impact of capitalism on the North hasn’t made STAT immune from these struggles. Although STAT is part of a wave trying to reclaim neutered marginalised identities from the mainstream, they’re still fighting against the tide.
“There’s certain projects that embrace northern identity and are very commercial, and they’re much more lucrative than what STAT does,” George says. “Advertising, sponsorship opportunities … we’ve never done anything like that.”
Even STAT’s relatively minimal social media sometimes feels like a betrayal of the publication’s values. “You’re constantly rubbing up against things that are kind of hypocritical,” he says. “We try not to do it an excessive amount, we don’t post that often … I try not to moralise about it too much.”
Undeniably, this anti-capitalist commitment has limited STAT’s reach. “It would be a lot easier for us to succumb to the Manchester thing, or lean into the whole we’re Northern! thing, talking about what you call a bread roll and s**t like that,” George tells me, with a hint of bitterness.
But then again, STAT’s anachronistic approach is core to its not-inconsiderable success. “We’ve carved this specific niche, completely against that, and I think that has built us a strong audience,” he says. “Not toeing the line means that, over time, people recognise you – it’s like, ‘oh, that’s STAT.'”
In a way, STAT itself is a microcosm of the North it seeks to represent. How much do you acquiesce to the forces of capital, handing over your identity and independence for the promise of profit – and would that promise really come through?
George sums it up well. “The North is a struggle,” he lands on, trying to pinpoint the elusive spirit of his home.
Find STAT magazine’s online publications here.
Thank you George for letting me waste your time for two hours and for pretending not to notice I forgot which mic channel your harmonium was plugged into in October.
