UK-based freelance journalist covering culture, politics, and specialising in feature writing. 

With support from the Journalism Diversity Fund, I am currently studying for my NCTJ in Multimedia Journalism. 

I have words in Dazed, The Times, Europinion, The Boar, and on my Substack, Opalesce

Commission me: katebevanjourno@gmail.com

Articles

Life is a Cabaret

It is red carpet season and the streets are filled with blood.A woman cuts a solitary figure in a blurry video taken at dusk. She is screaming. “Cierra las puertas”. “Quèdanse adentro”. “Estan aqui”. A five-year-old boy wearing bunny ears on his way home from school was detained. I suppose he must have been a criminal, they said it’s to get the criminals. Bad Bunny won album of the year at the Grammys. His English was fine. They disarmed then shot a man named Pretti. He was an intensive care nu...

Rutte Is Too Calm Before The Storm

Churchill may or may not have said – it’s an aphorism with cloudy provenance – that “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte may or may not believe it. After all, as American threats to obtain Greenland, a member of NATO via the Danish commonwealth, grow increasingly bellicose, the “Trump-whisperer” is all but silent. Adopting a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude with almost monkish flair, Rutte tol...

What we can learn from Timothée Chalamet

Armed with the idiomatic hypothesis that ‘one man’s rubbish may be another’s treasure’, Timothée Chalamet has been testing the limits of fan loyalty. Embarking upon a highly unconventional press tour for the Josh Safdie film Marty Supreme, which began with a maniacal Chalamet successfully pitching a giant orange blimp to A24, detoured via Liverpool for a remix with rapper EsDeeKid, and ended with the actor becoming the first person to stand atop the Sphere in Las Vegas, Chalamet’s actions - love...

I Was A Juror. Lammy’s Proposals Are Misguided.

Never has time felt more like a construct than in the jurors waiting room at Wolverhampton Crown Court – once inside, you’d be hard pushed to guess the decade let alone how long you’d be kept waiting. There are three clocks dotted along the pale blue walls and no television; the Wi-Fi works (just about). Fifties-style dinner ladies are arbitrarily summoned by a bell to dish out fish fingers, chips, and beans whilst queues spring up at the vending machines for hot drinks that poorly resemble latt...

Art is getting challenging again

The creative process behind Rosalía’s fourth studio album LUX was Sisyphean. If retreating into isolation in Los Angeles for the best part of three years and writing (and rewriting) lyrics in 13 different languages doesn’t sound like impossibly hard work, then I don’t know what does. No stranger to Herculean efforts, though, Rosalía persevered; LUX has seen the light of day, complete with features from Björk and the London Symphony Orchestra. However, the true challenge – the real metaphorical b...

Starmer Has Finally Found A Story

Keir Starmer has always reminded me of one of those schoolteachers – the perfectly decent, dithering kind whom good kids pity, and bad kids prey on. The kind that starts the term brimming with do-gooder ideas only to have abandoned them before Week One is out, by which time the kids, launching questions and rogue glue sticks their way, have reinstated the law of the jungle. Maybe it was just my school…Except if the first 14 months of his premiership are anything to go by, then this image is no r...

New York Fashion Week Is Unsure Of Itself

Home to the very first Fashion Week, then Press Week, in 1943, New York makes a natural fashion capital. A city of superlatives, creatives flock to New York on account of it being the biggest and the boldest and the richest and the grittiest city that never ever sleeps, where rats and fashion inspiration run riot in equal measures. Many a legacy brand is housed here - think Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein. Many a supermodel, too. Oh, and Carrie Bradshaw (I mean the city was the fifth character). But, for a city with such spirit, such style, we find ourselves in a rather strange predicament; New York Fashion Week is unsure of itself. Not dead, as the cries go, but unsure.

No Artificial Ingredients - The Creative Industries Will Need To Strike A Balance With Al. What Might That Look Like?

Very rarely do last-minute plans disappoint in the MCI (mischief-chaos-intrigue) department; it is why I’d advise you never to turn them down. So, when I found myself invited, just a few weeks ago, to a last-minute dinner at Akub, a splendid Palestinian restaurant nestled in between London’s Kensington and Notting Hill, I knew that I simply had to go.

‘We probably don’t see Warwick campus as a culture, but it is’: Warwick Clothes Circuit on What’s Warwick Wearing

Armed with a smartphone, tiny mic, and a keen eye for second-hand style, the exec of Warwick Clothes Circuit have taken on the guise of the modern-day hunter: the street-interviewer.
Inspired by the YouTuber, Not So Blonde, and her series What Are People Wearing in Paris?, Haneefah, Circuit’s Head of Social Media, saw an opportunity to showcase Warwick’s own sharp and sustainable dressers. 
“You really get a taste for somewhere, a destination, and a lot of inspiration and vulnerable bits of huma...

Trump and Harris' economic showdown

In the patchwork blanket of our lives, choices are the thread. From the seemingly inconsequential – ‘What do I wear today?’ – to the very consequential – ‘Who do I vote for?’ – each choice, and the subsequent decision we make, patches together the trajectory of our lives. And right now, the American people are hurtling towards a crucial fork in the road: on Tuesday 5 November, they will head to the polls to vote in this year’s presidential election.
For some, the choice is clear. Most of those i...

Why did children take part in the English riots?

On Monday 29 July, a ‘Taylor Swift Yoga and Dance Workshop’, aimed at children aged between 7 and 11 years old, was held in Southport. Intended as an all-singing, all-dancing, friendship-bracelet sharing, Swiftie safe space, the class should have been a chance for children to let off some steam in the endless stretch of summer that is the six weeks holidays. But unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the case.
At approximately 11:50am, Merseyside Police were called to reports of a mass stabbing. Liken...

Gracie Abrams pours every emotion into ‘The Secret Of Us’

Rushing into your friend’s bedroom, a story bursting from your lips, its glorious yet embarrassing details reverberating around the room, whilst your friend sits there with an expression that is equal parts shock as it is bemusement and support, is a precious moment. The physical distance between you and your friend the blank page in a journal, your soundwaves the ink unfurling across it. It is a moment of frenzied confession, infused with a level of honesty, and insanity, that only a true best...

Couture Culture: Yves Saint Laurent

If you successfully follow the dust-orange trails that criss-cross through the souks of Marrakesh, embracing the sights, sounds, and smells with certain joie de vivre, until you have left the walls of the Medina, you may stumble upon Le Jardin Majorelle. In fact, it is pretty hard to miss. With striking cobalt blue buildings rising out of an oasis of orange trees and towering palms, the garden is a place of vivacity, tranquillity, and inspiration, and it is located on Rue Yves Saint Laurent.

In

The Music That Made Me: Red Hot Chili Peppers

To start, I want you to know where I am. I am sitting, currently alone, at a beach in Barcelona. It is 20 degrees Celsius – Winter apparently – the sun is beating down on me, my freckles flourishing, and the sound of the waves is lulling me into a sun-drunk haze. A year abroad was a good idea.

Now, I need you to know that I am not really here. Under the sultry sun, the temptation to sink into the realm of possibility is too rich – my dreams are never stronger than in the daytime, and right now,

Biden promises to cancel incoming student loan debt

The Biden-Harris Administration has announced a new student loan forgiveness plan that targets borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.

The initiative, set to launch in February, shall erase the debt of borrowers enrolled on the SAVE plan, who have made 10 years of monthly payments and have an original balance of $12,000 or less in federal loans. While 6.9 million borrowers are currently enrolled in the SAVE plan, 30 million people are eligible for debt relief.

Bor

Nirvana's seminal album, In Utero, turns 30: a retrospective

Adverbially, to be in utero is to be in a woman’s uterus. Adjectivally, it means happening before birth. This perhaps leaves In Utero, the raw and seminal third, and final studio album from Nirvana suspended in limbo. Far from the protective space between woman and baby, or rather band and album, In Utero has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since its release in 1993, leaving it vulnerable to the critique of the certified, and the less-than-certified, critics. Adverbially, then, it fails. A

In conversation with Alien Chicks: 'We want to bring energy, fun, and also the best quality of music we can'

Starting out as a band in the music industry is not a particularly alien feat. Daunting yes, but uncommon? Certainly not. Like stargazing on a cloudless night, if you keep looking, new bands seem to be appearing everywhere. But to really be impressed by a singular star in such an overcrowded night sky, there must be something particularly vibrant about it. It must either shoot across the sky at staggering speed or dazzle you with some natural brilliance. The same is true of bands starting out –

'Your dad works for my dad': testimonies from working-class students at Warwick.

Dreams manifest themselves simultaneously as the spyglass, map, and compass for the achievement of a future goal. Such is the strength of dreams that we are transformed into avid chasers, marching purposefully along the intangible trail we spied ahead of us. One particular trail sees thousands of young people descend upon university campuses every autumn.

Not only an enclave of academic rigour, but also the setting of a steep cultural exchange; university is sold to prospective students as a ut

Foreign students are struggling to pay for UK universities

Foreign students arriving in the UK to study are struggling to cope with increased costs as the pandemic and issues surrounding Brexit have driven up the cost of studying in the UK.

Though international students have always been expected to pay significantly higher expenses than home students – roughly £35,250 more for a standard three year degree – many have found that the new financial strain is too much.

With the UK government’s traffic light travel system, aimed at regulating arrivals to p