From Day of the Dead to Samhain, celebrating autumn is centuries old. Now, I want this to be a moment of magic and connection for my kids

Darker nights are drawing in, there’s a hint of a chill in the air and the supermarket’s seasonal aisles are groaning with spooky paraphernalia. Halloween is coming. Every year about now, I tell myself I’m going to get my hands on a pumpkin and bake a pie like the ones my mum would make with us when we were little.

Halloween wasn’t a huge deal in our house, and neither was baking, but I hold warm memories of helping my mum go through the steps that led us to one delicious latticed pumpkin pie and one ugly jack o’lantern that we would display in the window with pride.

After representing society’s dispossessed, Ponder started a music career in her 40s – then faced miscarriage, anxiety and more. She explains her survival instinct

“You can get everything you dreamed of career-wise, and your life can still crumble, and that is what happened to me,” says US singer-songwriter Danielle Ponder.

Five years ago, and five days before her 40th birthday, Ponder left her job as a public defender – a lawyer for those without the means to pay for one – to pursue music full-time. Ponder’s rich, church-reared voice and resonant music quickly lent themselves to cinematic moments: she wrote and performed the theme song for Apple TV+’s Manhunt and her trip-hop-infused track Roll the Credits has been used by adverts, TV shows and video games. Several comments on the YouTube video come from viewers who searched for it thinking she was Nina Simone. Her debut album, Some of Us Are Brave, came out in 2022 and was warmly received by critics, and she appeared on Seth Meyers’ talkshow. Her gamble had paid off. “But personally,” she says, “it felt like everything around me was falling apart”.

Ignore the party poopers who say toddlers spoil the fun. I’ve braved the raves with my twins – and I’ve seen how families add to the magic of events

The woman I used to be died the day I gave birth to twins. That life – full of spontaneous travel, impulsive decisions and a decorated social calendar – evaporated, giving way to a blank canvas of motherhood and two glorious little human beings. While I was inside that summer, many of my friends continued on their child-free paths. They posted pictures of themselves enjoying festivals, sleeping in tents with pop-up communities that I used to be a part of.

So when the twins turned one last summer and we’d found our rhythm, I decided to take on the challenge of sharing the magic of live music with them. It went better than I expected. Before their second birthday, we had danced at day festivals such as Situation Dance, put on by Femi Koleoso from Ezra Collective, camped out overnight in the Brecon Beacons for Green Man and been to the child-focused TOTFest.

Iman Amrani is a freelance writer and producer

Radicalised by the inventiveness of groups such as the Harlem Renaissance, the LA-based musician is determined to reclaim the radical possibilities of culture in an age of institutional and algorithmic exploitation

‘For many years, I’ve called myself a surrealist blues poet,” says Aja Monet in her warm, deep voice. Sitting in a London cafe, the Los Angeles-based artist looks striking, with her blue braids woven up in an intricate style. She was up late uploading the final master recordings for her new album, The Color of Rain, which she says was heavily influenced by her reading around how “surrealism was a real intentional device that artists used in response to the rise of fascism throughout history”.

High-minded and yet invested in the cut-and-thrust of our lives today, it’s a typical comment from Monet. With themes around love, resistance and the absurdity of our current times, her performance, poetry and music offers a balm for the suffering and abuse meted out by establishment power. Already in 2026, her second poetry book Florida Water was nominated for an award by the foundational US civil rights organisation the NAACP, and she performed alongside Stevie Wonder at Time magazine’s event celebrating Martin Luther King Day.

The 22-year-old singer is up for two Brit awards thanks to her frank songs about family strife and predatory men. She explains why she’s fighting for her fellow council estate kids

Although she is on course for pop stardom, with two nominations at next week’s Brit awards, 22-year-old Skye Newman lives in a cabin at the bottom of her sister’s garden in London. It’s the backdrop for the music video to her song Hairdresser, which has 7.5m views on YouTube. In the clip, she is made up, her hair in rollers, lounging with a gaggle of friends. Licking her fingertips to roll a joint, she laments a one-sided friendship with another woman: “When I’m needed, know I’ll be there first / You don’t reciprocate and, girl, that hurts.”

It’s typical of Newman’s songcraft: ballad-driven contemporary soul that goes beyond romantic heartbreak to cover all kinds of pain and recrimination.