Describe your work environment.
I live in a Victorian terraced house in south London. I look out onto a small urban garden, and overlook of other peoples gardens, I try not to be nosy but I like seeing other people pottering around. It’s summer so you can hear kids playing.

The plants in my garden have really matured the past couple of years and my cats are usually lazing in the sun or in my office sitting on my keyboard. Sometimes if I really need to focus—I have two teenagers in the house—I go to a local cafe. I always have focus music on to help me write, music like Brian Eno’s ‘Neroli’ which I’ve had on loop. I’ve lived in my area for over 20 years, my kids grew up here and I have a strong sense of community, so while working from home can be isolating I know if I nip out I will always bump into someone I know which I love. It’s home. I grew up 20 minutes down the road in Croydon and often bump into people I went to school with. 

WFH is great in terms of flexibility and no commute but I would like to get into an office for Godmothers eventually. I think more happy accidents happen working IRL rather than on Zoom, especially for layouts, copy editing and proofing. It’s visual—you want to touch pages and look at words and potential layouts together.

I am disciplined in how I run my day. I separate tasks as per how my energy levels work. For example, I do creative and brain-heavy working the morning, that’s my sharpest clearest time to think from like 5.30–10am. I’ll write newsletters, come up with editorial ideas, mind map strategy and write copy, develop ideas for thematic content. In the afternoon I schedule meetings, execute more administrative tasks and exercise.

Which magazine do you first remember? 
Twinkle was the first ever magazine that was for me; gentle fantasy and magic at an early age that probably defined me! Then Just Seventeen which was a secret pathway into knowing grown up stuff like an older sister with the black and white story strips which I loved. I had pen pals in US who used to send me Teen Beat and YM.  It was like Christmas receiving those in the post, a magic package from afar with handwriting and precious jewels inside. I always spent my Saturday job money on magazines and records.

The Face and i-D were mirrors and guides. My room was a homage to them. I remember an issue of Sky with a fold out, black and white shoot by Bruce Weber with River Phoenix on his ranch, documentary-style with his family, it felt such a behind the scenes moment. 

One of my neighbours as a kid was featured in The Face and I was just blown away, it seemed like a far away place I wanted to belong to. The magazine was the price of admission to a community. Also as a young yoga student Yoga Journal in the nineties was very practical with instructional photo shoots and contemporary writing about embodying ancient practices into urban life and also social commentary about yoga as a social science and it’s introduction into prison communities. The photo photo shoots were really helpful in a how to ways, the articles abbot how yoga was taken into prisons and other initiatives like that. 

I had a huge collection 300 issues of The Face, i-D’s a solid batch of Empire too. I carted them around from flat to flat for years. Then I moved into a smaller place flat with no space for them, and I had to sell the whole lot. Took them down to the old Vintage magazine store on Brewer Street, got peanuts for them. They are probably on Ebay somewhere now.  A really sad day, I still think about it!

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine?
I love Too Much magazine—it makes me travel. I love the photographic layouts, the themes, the mix of paper and illustrations. My favourite issue so far was ‘The Sacred’ which I keep on my desk for inspiration.

I really like Season Zine, even though I’m not into football. I love how it takes football off the pitch and into different cultural conversations. I find it a super interesting read, I love the profiles, the styling and the size too. I aspire to what editor Felicia Pennant’s done for women in football with women in tech.


What other piece of media would you recommend?
I love Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton for its confidence and less-is-more philosophy. I love Mille World for art and culture in the MENA region and I love The Emerald podcast for it’s cultural and political depth - you can tell how hard Josh Schrei works to develop it, each idea feels so utterly complete, expansive yet contained…they are long though it feels like watching a film, the soundscape makes it almost visual.

Describe Godmothers in three words 
Urgent, aesthetic, intergenerational


You have experience of major publishing brands like Vogue and Tatler. How does making your own magazine compare to that experience?
I started after college at a listings magazine called The Lock in Camden, then I was working at Sleazenation, documenting dance culture against the backdrop of Blair's Britain, driving round London in a white van dropping copies exactly where our readers hung out and going to clubs with photographers documenting culture as it was happening.

I moved on to Vogue and Tatler, and it was a completely different world with huge budgets, well-oiled commercial machines, editorial and business working at a scale, it was such a culture shock—a magazine is really an expression of whatever subculture made it. The people working there usually come from that subculture too. People who grow up in Croydon don't typically end up working at Tatler. But it was interesting to be inside the machine like Andy in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. I find understanding how the codes and rules of a subcultures function endlessly interesting. 

Last week’s launch of Godmothers zine at Reference Point, London

Why use a print magazine to address the gender balance in tech?
Because women in tech have yet to be iconised in editorial and that has a knock-on affect to their cultural visibility. We interviewed 50 people on the streets of London this summer and not one person could name a woman leader in tech or AI.

At the most critical turning point in civilisation, representation and values-led leadership is crucial and I don’t think beauty and politics are mutually exclusive, I want to read their profiles, I want to see long form features about their creations, vision and ideas, I want to see them dressed in Prada, I want to hear their opinions about the incredible opportunities available from this moment in time. And the style element transfers across all our platforms …our Instagram, the website and the podcast which is launching soon.

Platforming independent journalism and women’s voices across everything we produce, the zine is the anchor and a DIY spirit creates trust, at least that’s the impression I’m getting from our members. We have members from Tel Aviv to Austin, Texas. Women are lighting up around the world and responding, we get so many comments about the look and feel of the zine, people like looking at something beautiful even if the topics can be serious…the word ‘Godmothers’ has a sense of care and recuperation in it, something sorely lacking from the dominant mainstream narratives we are fed on a daily basis

You get iconised by being documented in print, in a form someone can physically tear out and pin above their desk.

Did you use any form of AI in creating the first issue of the magazine? 
Yes for practical time saving pulling together notes scattered across Notes, Word, and Pages, drafting contributor contracts and certain emails where there is a lot to gather and streamline.

I am hugely optimistic about AI, that’s what Godmothers is about. The inevitable narrative around AI that it's too big, too powerful, unstoppable is a lie manufactured by Silicon Valley itself to perpetuate a certain helplessness. We need to hear more voices which are illuminating other narratives. I’m optimistic, but only because I believe we still get to decide how this goes, there is a window and it’s now. That’s why I created Godmothers as a five year project as that’s the size of the window, in my view, and Godmothers is a contribution to those collective voices. The social, economic and political control is the problem not the tech itself.

Highlight one story in the issue that sums up the new issue and explain why you selected it .
I chose Luba Kassova's founding piece, the one that lays out the data and argument for why Godmothers exists in the first place, a direct follow-up to her own 2023 Guardian article asking where the ‘Godmothers of AI’ actually are. I read that piece, realised how much it had already dated given how fast things have moved, and asked her to write the sequel: where are we now, and why still no godmothers? Everything else in the issue builds on the case she makes there, and we have beautiful illustrations by Astrid Chesney which indicate the surreal circus aspect of it all. Ominous but hopeful, which is the main tone note I gave to all our contributors!

What has publishing taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
Independent publishing takes total belief. You have to start with the thing that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning, because you're the one carrying the baby. I went into the magCulture Shop at the start of this year, researching the zine, and asked Bella for everything they had on the intersection of feminism and tech. She checked the stock of around 700 titles and there were none. I did the same thing in Casa Magazines in New York, same response. I remember thinking, wow! and then, great!

Once our Instagram was up and I started to connect to like-minded people and saw there was an audience waiting for the idea, it helped galvanise me.


What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
We are going into a studio to record the podcast trailer which is exciting—we have some amazing Godmothers in this first series. I’m also going to an event with Josh Schrei who I have been following for ages on ‘The Emerald.’ I really respect his work and to know he’s going to be in London IRL is such a buzz. His podcast has such attention to detail and is really his own world that he’s defined that I love to dive into so seeing him speak IRL will be great. Also it’s one of my son’s 18th birthday a graduation for both of us, looking forward to that!

Founder and editor Claire Belhassine
Art director Ellen Jonsson

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