Marcus Rashford is a professional footballer currently playing for Premier League side Manchester United. His family is of Kittitian and Jamaican descent, but he was born into a working class family in Manchester. Even from a young age, Rashford’s natural ability as a footballer was quickly recognised by Manchester United youth coaches and he trained with the first team when he was just 16. By 19, Rashford was a regular first team starter making 53 appearances in the 2016/17 season. During his time at United, he has won 2 FA Cups, 2 EFL Cups, the FA Community Shield, the Europa League, as well as a multitude of individual awards.
Rashford is also well known for his charity work. In 2019, he set up the In The Box campaign which encouraged people to donate essential items over the Christmas period to help homeless people. During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, Rashford teamed up with FareShare to deliver meals in Greater Manchester to children who previously would have been given free school meals. The UK government have recognised Rashford’s continued contributions towards those less fortunate, and made him a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), and a week later he published a petition to end child food poverty. The petition received 200,000 signatures in a single day.
Viggo Mortensen
b. 20 October 1958
Best known for his role as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen rose to prominence when The Fellowship of the Ring became the fifth-highest grossing film upon it’s release. Since then, Viggo has gone on to star in films such as Eastern Promises, Captain Fantastic, and Green Book, all of which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor.
Whilst Viggo is best known as an actor (and perhaps to some simply as Aragorn), he has gone on to work in a variety of different fields. He founded Perceval Press in 2002 with the intention to help artists publish works that might not find a home in more traditional publishing venues. He’s also published some of his own work through this publishing house, including books of poetry, photography, and paintings. Viggo has talked about his family’s struggles with dementia. Both of his parents, 3 of his 4 grandparents, aunts, uncles, and his stepfather have been diagnosed with the condition. He has used his influence to raise awareness about the condition, and how it affects those diagnosed and their families. His directorial debut film, Falling, is all about a son who cares for his father with whom he has a difficult relationship as his father’s condition deteriorates. In his press for the film, Viggo spoke to Dementia Carers Count about his feelings on dementia care.
Dave
b. 05 June 1998
David Orobosa Michael Omoregie, better known as Dave, is a British rapper and actor. Dave spent much of his childhood in Brixton, London, and faced a myriad of issues in his younger years including his father being deported, temporarily being homeless, and his brothers being involved in gang violence.
Dave’s outlet as a young person was music; he started writing lyrics at 11 and taught himself piano aged 14. His debut album Pyschodrama was released when he was just 20, and follows the narrative of a therapy session mainly dealing with Dave’s older brothers prison convictions, along with his struggles with mental health, and the tough conditions that young black people have to face. The album was a massive succeess, debuting at #1 in the UK Album Charts and gaining widespread acclaim, winning the Mercury Prize as well as Album of the Year at the 2020 Brit Awards.
Dave has also used his fame to raise money and awareness for a number of causes. Using his clothing brand, he raised nearly £500,000 which was donated to charities helping people in Palestine, Congo, and Sudan. He also released the song Peace Dream to promote the campaign, which sought to raise awareness about the pain and suffering happening in the world and urging people to educate themselves and stand up for what they think is right.
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez was a writer and journalist from Columbia. He is generally adored by much of South America, and is affectionately referred to Gabo or Gabito. He is well-known as being one of the pioneers of the magical realism genre, infusing his stories with fictional portrayals of real-life events, allowing the reader a somewhat objective place to reevaluate what they think and feel about things happening in the real world.
Perhaps Gabriel’s most famous novel is One Hundred Years of Solitutde, which has sold more than 50 million copies and been cited as one of the supreme achievements in world literature. Published in 1967, the book follows multiple generations of the Buendía family, who’s patriarch founded the fictitious town of Macondo. One of the main themes of the book is history repeating itself in Macondo. Ghosts routinely visit the characters in the book, representing the past coming back to haunt the characters and the town. This represents the development of Latin America, as well as major events in it’s history, and subsequently the state and events happening at the time of the books publication.
Gabriel sadly passed away in 2014, but his writing has done a very important job of chronicling and sharing the history and beauty of South America.
Sanjit “Bunker” Roy
b. 30 June 1945
Sanjit “Bunker” Roy is an Indian social activist and educator. In his words, he had “ a very elitist, snobbish, expensive education” in India, and when he finished he had the world at his feet. In 1965, he visited a village and witnessed people starving and dying for the first time. He said that this experience changed his life, and returned and told his mother that he wanted to work in a village. His mother did not speak to him for a very long time after this.
He started Barefoot College in 1986, a college only for poor people. In 2008, approximately 3,000 people attended with a large majority of them being girls and women. The college focuses on teaching the following:
Technology:
Architecture
Solar Power
Traditional occupations:
Water diviners
Midwives
Bonesetters
Animal care
Language
Taught to read and write Taught sign language
Sociology & Politics
4 - 14 year olds participate in elections
What to do if you are arrested
The college does work in 93 countries worldwide, including India, Madagascar, Senegal, Guatemala, and Fiji.
Lil Nas X
b. 09 April 1999
Montero Lamar Hill, better known as Lil Nas X, is a hip-hop artist from Georgia, USA. He is most famous for being one of very few openly gay artists in the hip hop and country genre due to the homophobic culture within both genres. Lil Nas X came out publicly on 30th June 2019, the last day of pride. The response was mostly positive, but received some homophobic backlash from the hip hop community as well as the Christian community.
Lil Nas X’s career started in 2018, when he released his first mixtape Nasarati. Although the mixtape did not get much attention at the time, he released the country rap song “Old Town Road” later that year. The song currently has over 1 billion views on YouTube, and the success of the single ignited an “intense bidding war ” between record labels to sign Lil Nas X, with Columbia Records coming out on top.
In 2021, Lil Nas X released his debut album Montero. Marketing for the album was incredibly innovative and ultimately successful, with a virtual concert taking place on video game Roblox, singles for the album featuring in the Superbowl half-time ads, and a campaign to raise money for LGBTQ+ charities. Lil Nas X has been praised for his “unabashedly queer ” visuals, especially considering many famous queer pop artists have had to hide or minimalise their sexuality to remain successful and free of hate.
