to add an item to your Itinerary basket.
We have decided to get to know some of our local business & event partners a bit better - today we speak to Greg Stanley from Offie Mag...
Please tell us about your business and what you offer to visitors coming to Brighton
Offie Mag is an underground music and culture platform that was founded in Brighton in 2018. We have a biannual print magazine that is stocked all over the world, radio shows on local station Platform B and South London's Balamii, and we host lots of events.
We tend to book a mixture of artists who have never played in the city before - such as US Hip Hop acts or international vinyl DJs - and mix them with independent artists from under-represented scenes and local acts from the city. We like to use a wide range of venues across Brighton & Hove since there are so many amazing spaces and grade-II listed venues here. It also makes each event feel as unique as possible, so visitors to Brighton who pass through an Offie Mag night will hopefully feel like they get an authentic experience of what it's like to live and go out here.
What do you like most about what you do?
My favourite part of running Offie Mag is seeing people at our events. We love running the print magazine and it's a great feeling every time I go to the post office to ship orders around the world, but seeing our readership in person at events, seeing people engage with music they haven't heard before or perhaps make new friends on the dancefloor - that's the best bit. I'm a big believer in the power that music and culture have to make everyday life more enjoyable so seeing that in action is what it's all about.
What inspired you to start your business?
I started my business because I wanted to provide a platform for a lot of musicians and artists who I felt weren't getting the attention they deserved. When I moved to Brighton to study, I discovered so much music both locally and through meeting fellow music lovers who liked to go on deep YouTube binges just as much as I did. As I was studying to be a journalist, naturally I started to pitch interviews with some of the artists I was listening to but major publications weren't interested in covering smaller artists and blogs weren't able to pay me for my work - so I set up my own magazine and it's just sort of snowballed from there.
What is the best thing about your work?
If not the above thing about meeting our readers in real-life, then it's interviewing some incredibly interesting people. I always feel like I get free inspiration and motivation after a good interview that can often lead to a new series of events or idea for a radio show.
What is your average day like, or is it never average?
The plan is always to wake up, run on the seafront, get back home for breakfast and a coffee, then open up the laptop and see what needs doing. From that point on there isn't really a typical day, expect on Thursdays when I'll either be playing 5-a-side football at Hove Park or playing records at Dead Wax Social.
What would you like to be doing as an alternative career?
I think this is already my alternative career, to be honest. But if someone would pay me to sit and play Football Manager all day that would be good, too.
What is next for you and your business?
Next for Offie Mag is our biggest project to date, our Long Hot Summer with Champion. It's a series of live music events across Brighton & Hove in four different independent venues. It's all about supporting the grassroots music sector during the Cost of Living Crisis and, with support from Arts Council England, we're not only able to provide lots of work for artists, venues and music sector staff, but we're also able to make the tickets for each gig just £5. The series runs from June until September and once that's done, it'll be time to work on ISSUE TWELVE of our print magazine.
What do you like most about Brighton and what is the best thing you like to do in the city?
It has to be the summer, doesn't it? Being able to swim in the sea on a sunny morning or have a BBQ on Hove Lawns on a midweek evening. That's something that never wears off.
And when the sun's not out, playing Toad in the Hole in the pub with dear friends and kind strangers. Sussex's oldest pub sport is a must.
Thank you!
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