Variant was a Scottish based magazine of cross currents in culture, focused on critical thinking, imaginative ideas, independent media and artistic interventions. Variant existed in two incarnations (1984–94) and (1996–2012)—the archive of which can be found here.
The magazine was renowned during this period for its critical independence and support for a range of dissenting critical voices, whose analysis of art, culture and politics was consistently highly prescient and widely discussed. Its editorial stance grew directly from a response to the fact that then, as now, “freedom to criticise is dying out in the UK”. A keystone of the magazine was its support of new and emerging writers and artists, who were committed to saying the unsayable.
In 2025 Variant will be relaunching in a print and online form to commemorate the death of former editor, Leigh French. We are looking to publish on a range of topics in a variety of forms—a non-exhaustive list would include reviews, long form essays, poetry, interviews, polemical pieces and artists’ pages. Part of the rationale for this new edition will be to revisit and reflect on issues previously explored by Variant, including but not limited to:
- Cultural Regeneration
- Cultural policy
- The politics of Nationalism
- The crisis in criticism
- The stealth privatisation of arts funding
- The emergence of new forms of Populism
- The further commodification of education
This list is not exhaustive and we are as always open to work that explores current areas of art, culture and politics where there is critical neglect or silence. Given the sensitive nature of the subjects we are looking to discuss we are happy to publish under pseudonyms and actively encourage collective writing.
We are looking for contributors to submit in the first instance a short abstract (max 200 words) and if possible a link to previous work (although this is not essential as we are committed to supporting new writing). For longer articles we are looking for pieces around 4–6,000 and for shorter pieces 750–2,000 words. For artists pages all artwork will need to be in black and white.
This iteration of Variant will be independently financed and limited to covering the costs of printing and distribution. As such, we cannot offer payment initially, but we will seek donations at launch events, and any generated funds will be redistributed to contributors.
Please send submissions to no later than 15th November 2024. We will respond by 29th November.