BAIT on Borders!!

Hello, and welcome to Issue Ten of BAIT!!! The caption above pretty much says everything: watch the launch video, make some buns, and read the zine itself! If you’ve enjoyed it, please consider donating to (or buying from) SolidariTee!

If you want more BAIT content after all that, you can check out A Term in the Life of BAIT, which one of our editors wrote for Varsity, or listen to Alex and Cate from the team being interviewed about Creativity in Crisis by the wonderful folks over at Varsity’s podcast, Switchboard!

Welcome to BAIT!

Hello! We just wanted to say a huge welcome to anyone who’s new to Cambridge (and to BAIT!) and introduce ourselves 😊

BAIT’s a fun, friendly and radical (as in political, not 80s slang) zine that’s published once a term in beautiful A5 – and we’d love you to get involved! Submissions for Issue 11 on Currents are open until the 12th February, and we want your poems, photos, paintings, polemics, doodles and anything else under the sun – you can join BAIT submissions on Facebook to find some prompts, or read previous issues of the zine on the Past Issues page! Send any questions and submissions to baitsubmissions@gmail.com!!

Have a browse around this site to find out more, and please do get in touch directly if you’ve got any questions or queries! ❤

elitism and our (very elitist) city

The second issue of BAIT – Elitism, published in Michaelmas 2017 – was full of brilliant polemics and essays, which we’ve uploaded a few of here. Kaye Song’s photos of flyovers in Mumbai and Lily Rose Sharry’s essay on intra-class relationships are just superb. These are all conversations that Cambridge (the most powerful ‘apolitical’ space in the country) doesn’t have nearly enough, and ones we’d like to have again in our pages.

sp a ce

Issue five, on Space, was published in Lent 2019 (when the current team were just glints in the admissions tutor’s spreadsheet). It’s got loads of brilliant prose, especially former team member Esme’s essay on occupying the Old Schools – as would happen again, on a bigger scale in 2020. How many of the occupiers this time round had read BAIT on space? Who knows. But we’re happy it was in our pages. Radicals, we want you!

life (and/slash) death

Some more highlights from the archives, this time from Issue 4 – Life and Death, released in Michaelmas 2018. Not only did this edition of BAIT literally encompass every part of existence, it was reversible: with Life on one end with numbers, and Death on the other, the other way up, and numbered with Roman numerals. We don’t even know how to turn a page sideways these days, let alone upside down.

all the way back

We’ve been doing some digging in the BAIT archives (a very melodramatic way of saying looking at old Google Drive folders) and found some highlights from Issue 1 – What does it mean to be British?, released in 2017! It’s great, looking at the old issues, especially given we’re about to reach our tenth. Seventeen team members later, hopefully what we’re making isn’t too far from the ideals with which Amy founded the zine – to interrogate political issues, to provide a space for self-expression, and to raise money for the Cambridge community.

BAIT issue 9

https://fb.watch/2j8DFSeYFK/

Welcome to our online issue for Easter 2020 in aid of Black Lives Matter UK! Below you will find donation and zine access links.

Please click here to donate to Black Lives Matter UK if you read this issue. For reference, past issues of BAIT cost £5 each, so you may want to match this with your donation – though we know that this might be a difficult time financially, so please give whatever you are able to give. Equally, if you want to donate more than £5, please do! In the interests of reducing processing costs as much as possible we are asking you to donate directly to the UKBLM fund rather than collecting the money ourselves, so we are setting no exact price other than asking you to support this incredibly important cause.

And here is the link to issue 9! We hope you enjoy reading, examining and generally perusing this online version of BAIT. It has been great fun putting it together, and once again we thank our submitters for their imagination, thoughtfulness and skill, all of which has made this the most varied (and longest) issue to date.

Here you can find the launch party mix put together by the amazing Joe Turrell especially for this issue, for something to listen to while you read! And if you haven’t already, check out our launch video on the facebook event page, featuring readings and talks by our lovely submitters.

Please share this page with friends and family if you enjoy!

Thank you for your support, and we wish you all the best.

Love from,

The BAIT Team

BAIT issue 7

Issue 7, internet (or alternatively __internet__, or XXXinternetXXX, or #internet) was our edition in Michelmas 2019, launched at a chilly and funky event in the abandoned Sidney Sussex squash courts. (Note to selves: spaces with no door or heating in winter aren’t such a great idea). Anyway, here’s some art, poetry & photography from the wonderful BAIT submitters.