Nervemeter magazine is sold on the streets by homeless and vulnerably housed people mainly in London, but also Manchester and Glasgow.

We are an independent, non-profit organisation entirely dependent on your donations to pay for the printing of magazines.

Nervemeter tries to come out approximately once per quarter depending on fundraising efforts. Nervemeter magazine is created by artists who donate their work and time to the project for nothing. All production and design work is done for free.

Unlike the Big Issue, we do not ask our homeless vendors to purchase our magazines to sell at a profit. We give these out in batches for free. We ask for nothing back. All money stays with the vendors.

We carry no advertising. Some of the content we publish is unpalatable to advertisers. Each issue explores a different subject. Past issues have looked at housing, mental health, the lies we are fed by those who govern us.

Nervemeter is not a registered charity. We don't trust registered charities and you shouldn't either. We are a charitable org and are 100% transparent, which means every penny you give us goes on printing and nothing else.

Find out about the Nervemeter charity DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) and our plan for the future.


Past issues

Issue 1

Each issue of Nervemeter has a particular theme. We have tackled: child sexual abuse, addiction, our global system of capital and debt, vagrancy and begging, mental health, the London 2012 Olympics, and this, our first issue is alternative methods of employment.
Issue 2

The London 2012 Olympics issue includes a comparison of the 2012 Olympic mega-event with the London riots of a year earlier; predictions about the future of disabled sport and the cyborgification of competitors; an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle chart; an interview with a Muslim fanatic.
Issue 3

The madness issue carries an interview with Antonin Artaud and overviews the work of SPK, Thomas Szasz and Terrence McKenna. An essay on art and insanity examines Goya, Van Gogh and Artaud in the context of Michel Foucault's history of psychiatry.
Issue 4

The vagrancy issue provides an assortment of views of this complex problem. Composed in part of quotations, it considers the history of the law surrounding vagrancy and progresses towards a modern urban context. This issue also features articles by academics working in the field of criminality and social exclusion.
Issue 5

The wealth issue includes poetry, fiction, quotation and screaming Satanic invective in an attempt to arraign capitalism, greed and inequality. You don't have to be sad to be militant, even though the thing you are fighting is abominable. Features a two-page 'Rent Strike' poster and namechecks such bastions of corporate morality as Foxtons, Equitable Life and UBS.
Issue 6

The latest edition of the Nervemeter considers the problem of addiction. Composed entirely of quotations, it includes a wide range of sources, from the likes of Aleister Crowley to nineteenth century exerts from the temperance movement, through to recent work on pharmacology and theories about addiction within the biosciences.
Issue 7

The 2014/15 edition is composed mainly of writings and artwork by homeless people and hostel-dwellers, most of whom have sold the magazine. It features exerts from the weird and wonderful Big Foot News, Little Jay's infamous prison diary, as well as contributions from regular vendors: Aidee, Aslan, Harry and Michael from Peckham. There's also best wishes from London Mayor Boris Johnson, and a letter from HRH Prince William, thanking us for a copy we sent to St James's Palace for his royal perusal.
Issue 8

This edition tackles the difficult issue of child sexual abuse, a topic which has been riding high on news agendas in recent years. We sample quotation from a range of texts relating to child sex abuse, including some restricted material published by the Paedophile Information Exchange. Cover-ups connecting the likes of Kincora to the corridors of power in Westminster are explored in charts and infographics.
Issue 9

This issue of Nervermeter takes a historical view of London's housing crisis. The issue is structured in two halves. The first half is about gentrification - a highly emotive yet strangely elusive concept, by which the middle-classes can thoroughly indulge hatred for themselves. Nervemeter defers to the original coinage of the term by Ruth Glass in 1964. The second is about the history of the squatting movement and includes citations from the 1980's Brixton-based squatters publiction, Crowbar. Sandwiched in the middle is an interview with a man called Kevin who was living under a canal bridge near Hackney's Mare Street.
Issue 10
There are only two types of theatre: before Artaud and after Artaud. This issue takes a look at “theatre” post-Artaud in a broad sense, to encompass performance projects such as Crass and Throbbing Gristle, as well as the English riots of 2011. The arrangement of quotes suggests a shift from resistance strategies towards spectacles of extreme violence and self-mutilation.
Issue 11
Anti-depressants treat the kind of mental illness that can lead to suicide, we are told. Over the past three decades there has been a marked increase in prescriptions of such drugs. Why then have national suicide rates not decreased? This issue follows a Foucauldian analysis of the taboo of suicide, with particular attention to the work of the anti-psychiatrist Thomas Szasz.
Issue 12
After William Blake no mind was at home in both cultures [of Romantics and Radical Craftsmen], nor had the genius to interpret the two traditions to each other ... In the failure of the two traditions to come to a point of juncture, something was lost. How much we cannot be sure, for we are among the losers.
Issue 13
The treatment of women branded as "witches" during the early modern period provides feminist historians with a potent set of discourses relating to patriarchy and subjugation. The thirteenth issue of the Nervement examines the concept of a "female holocaust" by comparing histories (herstories) and also considers ideas like the displacement of healing and alternative forms of medicine by the incipient male-dominated and exclusive profession of medicine.