From Fringe of Colour and the Scottish BPOC Writers Network
On 10 September 2026, Scottish arts and culture magazine The Skinny announced it is shutting down immediately after over 20 years of publishing.
This follows the end of operations for Radge Media CIC, who also publish Fest and GNAW magazines. Fringe of Colour and the Scottish BPOC Writers Network have provided the following statements:
Statement from Jess Brough – Fringe of Colour founder & director
The Skinny were one of the first media platforms to publicly support Fringe of Colour. They gave us a place to talk about inequalities at The Fringe and spotlighted our hard work to address it. Since 2019, The Skinny consistently showed up for Fringe of Colour by arranging interviews, commissioning articles, and in a much more interpersonal sense; many of their editors and contributors have become our lifelong friends and close collaborators.
The Skinny always understood the value of Scotland’s vibrant arts and culture landscape. They spoke directly to the people engaging with it. Without them, we will all have to work much harder to find and support local work that traditional media tends to overlook. Crucially, The Skinny have been incubators of talent, often acting as the first platforms to commission new writers and artists who, following this experience, have gone on to enjoy fruitful careers as journalists, authors, illustrators, designers, and more. Without them, many of us may not have broken through the gatekeeping that is so prevalent in Scottish journalism.
The Skinny was one of the few publications that actively pushed back against that gatekeeping. As an organisation dedicated to supporting People of Colour in Scottish arts, we have always appreciated the space afforded to a wide range of voices by The Skinny. A report on Scotland’s journalism by Boyle, House, and Yaqoob, published in 2022, revealed that People of Colour are more likely to be photographed than quoted in articles – that they are more likely to be “seen than heard.” In the Scottish media landscape, our acknowledgement as producers of expert knowledge or as agents is often overlooked in favour of our white peers.
Scotland also has an enormous issue of misrepresentation and bias in the production of arts reviews. According to the Quines report, written by Dr Christina Neuwirth in 2025, 82% of reviews published by The Scotsman and The Herald were written by men. This data was not broken down by race, but we know from experience how few Writers of Colour actually have prominent voices at these publications. This is in stark contrast to the roster of editors and contributors at The Skinny.
We would like to thank The Skinny, its editors, its writers, and its readership for championing Fringe of Colour from the start and we are so incredibly sad to see you go. This is a devastating loss for Scottish arts.
Statement from the Scottish BPOC Writers Network
The Skinny is a crucial media platform in the arts and culture sector in Scotland, one that champions important and changemaking creative work that often does not receive coverage from other media outlets. At the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, advocacy work and professional development opportunities for Black and Global Majority writers is at the heart of what we do. Our success as an organisation to meet these aims is critically linked with others in the literary industry, and publication platforms that focus on arts and culture journalism like The Skinny are an integral part of the ecosystem supporting our writers. There are already too few cultural magazines in Scotland, and this lack of space predominantly affects the coverage and visibility of writers from marginalised backgrounds who already face systemic barriers over the course of their professional writing careers.
The Skinny is a beloved publication with a significant legacy in Scotland, and it is one that platforms the work of Black and Global Majority creators with a careful, attentive, and rigorous eye – creators who are too frequently absent from the pages of other review outlets and broadsides. More than that, The Skinny is independent; it is not part of a conglomerate or media group, and it gives space to truly radical and exciting voices and ideas. It is produced and edited by several editors and freelancers of colour, many of whom are part of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, whether as part of our events and programmes, or as friends in our audiences.
Meanwhile, the few mainstream publications for culture writing and journalism in Scotland that are still available are often led by people who do not reflect the lived experiences of those in our network. As several reports, from the Ledbury Poetry Critics Report to The Quine Report, suggest, we as creative writers are interacting with a wide and varied ecosystem of people in the industry and it is the efforts of places like The Skinny that shape literary culture. In Scotland, with the loss of this essential platform, we will see devastating consequences for true equity and equality in our literary industry.
We will all feel this loss deeply.