At a young age, Faraj Alnasser was forced to flee his native Syria as conflict swept the country. The subsequent journey was a gruelling one. After two years in transience, he finally arrived in Cambridge, aged 19, where a local family took him in. He began learning English and was able to sit his GCSEs,… Read more »
Sanchia Legister first tried yoga as part of her Drama and Applied Theatre degree but hated it. She didn’t get on with her teacher and found the whole thing inaccessible. “It was like doing a puzzle in the dark,” she remembers. She later found running and became embedded in the Run Dem Crew – a… Read more »
Over the weekend a banner appeared on a bridge over the River Lee navigation in Clapton, east London. Daubed in paint were the words “Dawn Foster Forever”. On Saturday, I went out for a walk along that very river, turned a corner, and was presented with it. As I approached it I felt myself crumble…. Read more »
Whether she’s looking after her personal collection of 150 houseplants, sharing botanical knowledge on Tiktok to her 40,000-plus followers, or working on her thesis that outlines “historically accurate info & tips to make your plants thicc”, it’s fair to say that Tesni Boughen is a green-fingered authority. As Botanical Babe, she’s injecting a fresh dose… Read more »
150 years ago, Paul Gardner’s great-grandfather started Gardner’s Bags: a miscellaneous treasure trove of a shop, stocking all kinds of different paper bags and market sundries. It has remained in the family since then – passed down to his grandfather, then to his dad, then his mum, then him. Paul took it on the day… Read more »
Launched in 2018, Avila.Diana is a greetings card company that exists to “represent the underrepresented”. But the journey here wasn’t always an easy one for its founder Avila Diana Chidume. When she was a kid, Avila was always doodling. When special occasions came around – birthdays, holidays, and such – she’d design her own greetings… Read more »
Back in 2019, if you’d asked Timi Oladeji what a typical climber looked like, he’d have struggled to answer. The sport wasn’t on his radar at all. “I’d probably have thought of a white person, middle class…” With a beard? “Yes,” he responds, laughing. “Conquering Everest or another big mountain. Or someone like [Alex Honnold] in… Read more »
Jamie Brisick and Trace Marshall have been embedded in surf culture for most of their lives. Jamie first made his name as a professional surfer touring the world but since he hung up his sponsored trunks has dedicated his life to a new craft, that of writing, telling the story of how surfing has influenced… Read more »
Over the last three decades, Gary Younge has established himself as one of the most respected and admired names in British journalism. After several years reporting around the world for The Guardian, Younge was appointed as the newspaper’s US correspondent in 2003, a role he would retain for over a decade until his return to… Read more »
We’re living through challenging times, which is why it’s never been more important to find the people who share your passion for the things you love. Future Proof is a new series, produced in collaboration with Squarespace, sharing the stories of people who have taken their passion to the next level by bringing it online…. Read more »
It’s a frosty morning in October and Dale Vince is explaining how he accidentally became the chairman of the world’s first carbon-neutral football club. “It was the summer of 2010. Forest Green Rovers was 120 years old, it was in our back yard and I’d been reading about its financial problems in the local newspaper,”… Read more »
In January 2015, a tragic fire burnt through the Honyarado, a cafe I owned and managed for 43 years, along with my life’s work – my photographic archive. The fire destroyed two million negatives, thousands of prints, and a huge collection of photobooks, along with the treasured cafe, which I established in 1972 with a… Read more »
