Issue 731: Uplift

Magazine Issue 731 Spring 2022 UPLIFT

Dear readers, Welcome to Pi Magazine Issue 731, Uplift!

This edition is all about narratives of uplifting people in our community, collaborations, and overcoming struggles through collective spirits of resilience.

You’ll find heartwarming and reflective articles that I hope will inspire you to rejoice and celebrate, and perhaps empower you to spread the spirit of Uplift!

Our writers, artists and designers have worked hard to produce this amazing magazine, so happy reading and happy end of term!

Your EIC, Vanessa

Front & back cover by Hasha Dar

Contents

Editor’s Foreword

News The Significance of Student and Academic Staff Solidarity by Antara Basu

Features The Good Samaritans by Conor Walsh

Opinion

An Ode to the ‘Useless Language’ by Kimberley Edmondston-Douse

A Revolution In Dignity: Rebranding Welfare To Restore Respect To The Poorly Paid by James Lopez Don’t Look Back: the plight of war-time children

by Chen Wei Hannah Feminist in the Becoming by Dorottya Eszter Szij

Science Looking Up by Henry Tudor Pole

Lifestyle Healing my Inner Child: How a TikTok changed my life by Chelsea Bunke Gorgeous Gorgeous Girls by Nell Wedgwood

Culture Glimpses of Self in Fiction by Rachel Lim Jiahui Celebrating Authors of Colour: The debut novelists you should be reading in 2022 by Evie Robinson Finding Solace in Challenging Times: Reviews and Recommendations by Isabelle Osborne

Solidarity Amidst the Precarious Periphery of Academic Tenure Written and Photography by Antara Basu I pay £23,300 in tuition fees. Undergraduate international students entering in 2022 will pay £26,600. That is an increase of £3,300 within one academic cycle. Yet, academic unions have to resort to industrial action as a means of disruption of study to demand fair pay. It begs the question; when students are expected to pay 100% tuition fees and international students are charged exorbitantly, why is UCL management refusing to pay fair benefits?

The casualisation of academic staff in higher education, simply put, is good for business.

Across the UK, the University and College Union (UCU)—the academic union representing academics and support staff in several higher education institutes—has launched the Four Fights Dispute. The union is calling upon university management to address the substantial gender, race and disability pay gap, end casualisation and rising job insecurity, increase pay to compensate for pay cuts of about 20% since 2009, and reduce www.uclpimedia.com

the rising workload. While the pandemic has left university staff worse off, employers want to stop guaranteed pension benefits, and for employees to pay more for the existing pensions.

A statement published on February 2, 2022, by the UCU National Dispute Committee (NDC), states that members are being forced to act because employers are “misrepresenting the health of the USS scheme.” The USS pension scheme has seen massive gains, rising from £66.5 billion to £92 billion amid a global pandemic. Stable working conditions and job security are all prerequisites for high-quality education. The clear corporatisation of education is detrimental to the health of the academic and student community alike.

At UCL, as part of the UCU, members voted yes to strike action. Industrial action is reserved as the last resort by the union and the staff who lose wages for each day they strike. Given the unprecedented and continual disruption to study over the last two years, students do not take any action that further

News impacts their quality of education lightly. The UCL Students Union passed Union Policy 2102 on October 11, 2021, refusing to extend support to the national academic strikes held in the first week of December 2021. The decision was driven by a desire to rebuild from months of disruption.

The Students’ Union, while sympathetic, hoped to prevent further damage to the student experience at UCL.

“The wages have stagnated for staff, yet the Russell Group universities have just announced a billion pounds of profit.”

However, this decision failed to consult with the student body and set in motion a series of actions indicative of strong student-staff solidarity.

In light of a student petition against Policy 2102, that received enough signatures, the Student Union held the largest referendum held by the Union. The referendum recorded an overwhelming number of votes in favour of the strikes providing a strong mandate to extend solidarity. It resulted in Union Policy 2108 that superseded previous policy, officially altering the stance of the Student Union.

Another round of national strikes was held in the last week of February 2022, to demand prioritisation of staff and students. I spoke with two UCU members on February 21, 2022, in front of the UCL Institute of Archaeology picket. On the initial position of the Students’ Union, they say, “In some ways, it’s understandable given the disruption to education over the last few years because of coronavirus but ultimately our teaching conditions are their learning conditions and in the end, these may also be their working conditions if they chose to go into academia.”

With regards to the pension scheme, I was told that while it doesn’t affect one of them personally, “the university has been pretty intransigent and that to me is the most worrisome thing.”

I asked them about university negotiations amid rising fees, “There’s a big question mark over where this money is going. The wages have stagnated for staff, the Russell Group universities

have just announced a billion pounds of profit. If that’s happening but our pensions are being cut and no longer are there reasonable contracts for early career researchers, early career staff, where is the money going?” The academic staff are being driven to an edge, with higher casualisation. It is harder because “we’re supposed to all be in this together.” But currently, it has become a struggle between staff and employers with students in between.

The continual mistreatment of the staff makes it difficult for them to be sympathetic to employers.

In a way, it is bringing the academic and student community together but at great costs.“It’s harder now for staff to direct any goodwill to management, but they want to really concentrate and focus it on their students. I think it’s a positive thing for staff-student solidarity but it shouldn’t be that way.”

The vocal support of the student community is of consequence because it is their studies being disrupted. It’s imperative to recognise that the interests of these two communities are not exclusive to one another. One can infer the university’s commitment to its employees and the student body when it is willing to allow large scale disruption but refuses to accommodate basic demands. The unfortunate reality is that academic unions have to manipulate the stability of student studies to get universities to negotiate because they would rather capitalise on the undervalued, and underpaid work of the staff.

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Volunteering at UCL Written by Conor Walsh Artwork by Chaya Steinsaltz

Since its founding in 1826, UCL has always been a pioneer – confronting some of society’s greatest problems through disruptive thinking and hands-on action.

This trend continues as an instrumental part of our student life through the wonderful work of student volunteers. In a normal year, a little over 2,000 students volunteer from across the university, collectively contributing 55,000 hours of their time to a variety of projects. Such projects include everything from gardening and befriending in local community centres, to tutoring and mentoring through organisations like Brightside.

The positive impact of these good deeds on the local community is astronomical. As John Braime, UCL’s volunteering manager, puts it: “London would grind to a halt without its volunteers.”

“There’s nothing else quite like it for creating bonds with people you’d otherwise never meet,” John says, and it helps you to get out of the university bubble and play a part in the life of the wider community. You never quite know who you might meet, or what skills you might learn from volunteering.

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St John’s Soup Kitchen and Food Bank, located in Finsbury Park, aims to eradicate food poverty in the local area, and support individuals and families who struggle to make ends meet.

This collaboration of local volunteers and UCL students is a key example of the wonderful things that volunteering can achieve.

Chemistry student Mila Akopova started volunteering at St John’s in December, and normally helps out in the food bank. When I talked to Mila about why she volunteers, she said, “the world is a harsh place… everyone deserves a bit of kindness”. A big part of her role is ensuring that those who come to the food bank get all of the practical and nutritional goods that they need; she hopes to “remind people that they are not alone, and that there is always someone out there willing and wanting to help.”

Mila told me “volunteering brings me joy and a sense of fulfilment. It also reminds me that we all live in a community and, even though it sometimes feels lonely, there are always people out there who are willing to help.”

Alongside the amazing work that students like Mila do with local, national and international organisations, many students take

Features

“You would be surprised how much happiness you can bring through the smallest of actions” it upon themselves to create their own volunteering projects – pioneering new initiatives that uplift our communities.

Project myPALS is an initiative set up by three UCL students in a hope to bring joy and happiness to long-term care residents.

Working with residents at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, Project myPALS aims to use music and conversation in order to build friendships between students and patients. Miri Aung, a first-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student and leader of the project, remarked on how “incredibly isolated” many of the hospital residents have been throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, with volunteering and visiting hours curtailed by various restrictions.

What had started as an informal karaoke performance by Miri’s older sisters that sparked “movement, smiles and even tears” has become a successful project, engaging many more volunteers and helping alleviate loneliness on a larger scale. The volunteers at Project myPALS are true champions of community, giving up their time in order to create a profound impact upon the quality of life of others.

When speaking to Miri about what she had gained from this experience, she told me that she had learnt “so much about a community of people with different needs to mine, and how the wonderful staff of the hospital help them to lead full and fulfilling lives. It’s been a moving, eyeopening experience that’s helped me to grow into a more mature and informed person, while also bringing me so much fulfilment.”

Miri encourages others to volunteer, saying: “You would be surprised how much happiness you can bring through the smallest of actions, and how truly gratifying it feels. It’s a great way to use the skills you already have to contribute to the community and offer help to those who need it” Good Samaritans are everywhere at UCL: our friends, course-mates, and perhaps even you, the person reading this article.

It’s easy to see the positive impact that these good deeds have on our immediate community, but there’s no doubt that this impact extends beyond our Bloomsbury bubble, and even London. By investing time in others, volunteers are also investing in themselves and the world around them. If If everyone took an hour out of their week to do just a little bit of good, our world would be a very different p lace. Th ere ar e hu ndreds of opportunities av ilable a in the volunteering directory – accessible on the volunteering section of the SU website; the lovely people at the volunteering service are always on hand to help make your volunteering experience as easy and as enjoyable as possible.

I am inspired and truly blown away by the good Samaritans who make up our student community. We should champion their success, and follow in their footsteps – uplifting others, ourselves, and the wider world around us.

“the world is a harsh place… everyone deserves a bit of kindness”.

Mila Akopova www.uclpimedia.com

Written by Kimberley Edmondston-Douse Artwork by Chaya Steinsaltz

Serbian-Croatian is a Slavic language with approximately 21 million native speakers. It is the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It can be written in both the Cyrillic and Latin script and, according to many people I have spoken to in central London, it is useless.

When telling people which degree I was undertaking in the weeks prior to arriving at UCL and during freshers - Politics, Sociology and East European Studies - a common response was to enquire if I would be learning Russian. I patiently took the time to explain that I would not be learning Russian, but Serbian-Croatian. The reason being that it is the most dominant language in the West Balkans, the region I hope to specialise in. However, I was quickly acquainted with the concept of a useful language. Despite the fact that I had made it into one of the best universities globally to pursue exactly what I wanted to, my studies were somehow classified as a mistake. My career plan was called into question and everything I thought I knew about the merits of learning a language was turned on its head.

This trend continued throughout my first term. I can’t say it didn’t have an effect on me. More than once I considered changing modules or even degrees.

It was when I actually started diving into the module deeper and talking to my professors that I regained total confidence and adoration for what I was doing. Indeed, an adoration stronger than the one I had before arriving at UCL. The little anecdotes of what life was like in Yugoslavia, its cultural traditions, its traditional food and its history.

Small quirks - like disputes over what the language is called: ‘Naš jezik’, intentionally ambiguous and literally meaning ‘our language’, have led me down research rabbit holes into the political significance of a language's name.

Despite my degree being focused on politics and not linguistics, it’s aspects like this that prove invaluable to the understanding of my own degree. The assumption that languages are simple things that can be categorised has disappeared. The importance of language for unifying a population, how it can have different values in different places - by leading to nationalism

Features

or by coexisting peacefully - has resonated with me throughout my studies.

There’s a pleasant excitement when talking about when I might be able to hold a conversation with other students who have a better grasp of the language. Despite being many hundreds of miles from where the langues is native, a dedicated community exists in London.

Admittedly, I’ve not been at UCL for long, but one thing I have come to realise is that despite being in a highly academic environment, there seems to be a stifling and unnecessary ranking of the value of knowledge. Quickly dismissing something as serving no purpose goes against the very essence of why universities continue to function. Without a specialism, most academics would not be here. If people had not come to find value in researching what is regarded as ‘insignificant’, we would know about very little in the world.

We perceive the pursuit of knowledge in the wrong way. There can be tremendous amounts of joy that come from learning. Yes more people will speak Russian, French or German – but why must that mean all other languages get disregarded? Why must one be forsaken for another? We get told as children that we should learn other languages. They enable us to communicate with more people, to consider other perspectives, to express ourselves more effectively and to improve our memory. This seems to have been forgotten.

We must eradicate the idea of a useless language, because there is no such thing.

It is key to remember what happens when we are too quick to abandon smaller languages. While my own Serbian-Croatian is by no means at risk of going extinct, many languages are. If we disregard hastily then we

will only be encouraging this. Langue has its own history, shaped by its people and different political and sociological forces.. It reflects the history and views of its speakers, geographical features of their land, contact with other languages and how they interacted with its grammar and vocabulary. We can gain a new perspective by becoming familiar with a langue and in turn improve our analysis of many aspects of life.

To disregard a language because it is considered less valuable than others is to let a whole culture and perspective on the world die for lack of perceived value.

Institutions like SSEES (the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, a department at UCL) are extraordinary areas for expanding upon the traditional approach taken in history, politics, economics and sociology. By looking past the USA, UK, France, Germany and the handful of other “important” countries we can develop our understanding of the world in invaluable ways. As my Serbian professor once told us, “Just because something gets discussed a lot doesn’t mean there’s the most to say about it or that it is the most important”. This idea should be understood by anyone in higher education: The value of knowledge should not be ranked, especially not at universities.

A Revolution in Dignity:

Rebranding Welfare to Restore Respect to the Poorly Paid Written by James Lopez Photography by Hasha Dar

Rising inequality. Political polarisation. Fraying social fabric. A weaker sense of commonality.

Western societies are freer than ever before, yet we are also lonelier, more divided and increasingly less happy.

The rising tide of ‘deaths of despair’—deaths from suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholic liver disease— that has disproportionately affected the poorly paid and poorly educated, has caused life expectancy to decline in the United States for the first time in over a century.

Despite widespread prosperity, material deprivation remains a grave concern. A United Nations report into extreme poverty in the United Kingdom concluded that “food banks have proliferated; homelessness and rough sleeping have increased greatly... and the legal aid system has been decimated”.

There is a tendency among policymakers to detach concerns about material poverty from claims to dignified work. For instance, a 2015 report by researcher Michael Story endorses a negative income tax—a www.uclpimedia.com

form of Universal Basic Income—in order to adapt the welfare state to a liberalised labour market. He does not, however, question the necessity of such liberalisation, or the psychological effects of insecure work.

Tackling material poverty is important, but so is creating a society where the poorly paid feel respected and acknowledged as active participants in the society they have helped to build. As philosopher Elizabeth Anderson says, “wage subsidies [alone]… won’t deliver the recognition workers need”. She stresses the need to tackle the root causes of working-class decline: “union-busting, outsourcing, and wage theft... the replacement of regular employees with temporary workers, independent contractors, and precarious gig workers… and so on”. She is not wrong. Exploitative business practices have helped to turn dignified and meaningful employment into insecure and dead-end work.

Opinion Tackling exploitation and abuse by employers will make a difference, but reviving the status of low paid work requires more than just robust regulation and decent pay. It requires respect. As work has become less stable and earnings have not kept pace with prices, in-work poverty and welfare have increased. It is important that welfare support is paid, but equally important is how it will be paid and for what reason?

Nothing illustrates this better than the popular social psychology test ‘the ultimatum game’. In the experiment, researchers pair two individuals, giving one £100 with the instruction to propose an offer to the other individual on how they should split the money between them. The latter individual can accept or reject the proposal, but if they reject it, usually when they view it as unjust, then neither individual receives anything. If the offer is anything worse than a 70:30 split, then the deal is usually rejected. This reveals an important truth: people value financial rewards, but they also value respect, honour and fairness. The way we earn money can matter as much as the money itself.

With this in mind, consider two scenarios. In both, a rich man gives a poor man £1000. The difference between the scenarios is the provided justification for this transfer of funds. In the first, it is described as long-overdue compensation, recompense for the poor man’s years of unrecognised and poorly-paid sacrifice. In the second, it’s described as a sympathy payment: the rich man explains that since the poor man cannot look after himself, other people have to do it for him. In neither case is the poor man financially better or worse off, but from a non-material perspective there is clearly a world of difference. The first scenario is marked by respect and recognition, the second reveals paternalism and superiority.

We must be wary of justifications for welfare policies that reveal a hidden layer of paternalistic ideology.

Luck egalitarians put forward a theory of justice that focuses on compensating individuals for undeserved back luck, such as suffering from accidents or being genetically unlucky. Few dispute that the state should exist partly as a safety net for those who cannot look after themselves. However, when welfare is rooted on the premise that individuals have natural deficiencies that should be compensated for, welfare becomes a form of humiliation where accepting it is akin to ticking a box acknowledging one’s own inferiority. Welfare must be understood not as a

form of compensation for inadequacy, but as a mechanism based on mutual respect and recognition.

The economic theory referred to as ‘Just Deserts Theory’ by economist Greg Mankiw suggests another, yet similarly flawed, approach to welfare. Premised on the idea that “each person’s income reflects the value of what he has contributed to society’s production of goods and services” such that “each person receives his just deserts”. Just desert theorists (including Mankiw) often support Universal Basic Income since we have “interdependent utility functions”. However, by suggesting the market outcomes reflect each individual contribution to society this theory heaps humiliation on the poor, who are portrayed as having made a lesser contribution towards the common good.

“Reviving the status of low paid work requires more than just robust regulation and decent pay. It requires respect.”

One could hardly argue that a marketing consultant makes a more meaningful contribution to society than a bus driver. As said by Martin Luther King Jr, “the person who picks up our garbage… is as significant as the physician, for, if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant”. All work makes a contribution to society, whether it requires a degree and/or comes with a six-figure salary. Financial support for the poorly paid should not be branded as a sympathy payment. Rather, it should be presented as a just transfer to those whose sacrifices towards the common good have been ignored for far too long.

How and why we are given money can matter as much as the money itself. Rebranding welfare in this way would give recognition to poorly paid workers and perhaps some manner of dignity to the work they do.

A cohesive society does not require perfect economic equality, nor is such equality desirable. But it does require that all people can interact with each other as equals with mutual respect. Resurrecting the dignity of poorly-paid work is essential in realising this ideal.

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Don’t look back: The plight of war-time children Written by Chen Wei Hannah During wartime, many are presented with two choices: stay in strife or seek refuge elsewhere, even if it means embarking on a perilous journey. For parents who pick the latter, there is a real risk of being separated from their children along the way. For those who unhesitatingly compromised themselves to protect their children, surviving traces of their sacrifice continue to shape us today…

Bloody Saturday (Source: Public domain) It is Saturday August 28, 1937, and we are in Shanghai, China. Civilians crowd the South Rail Station anxiously hoping to leave the war-torn area, when suddenly, Japanese aircrafts soar through the sky. Bombs drop.

Mayhem and destruction descends within seconds.

In the midst of all the rubble sits a dust-covered, wailing infant. The mother presumably lies dead nearby. Photojournalist Wang Xiaoting instinctively raises his camera and permanently captures the view.

Over the next two months this developed film will travel from Wang’s hands to the US Navy, and eventually to a global audience of 136 million people. ‘Bloody Saturday’ becomes an American rallying call against Japanese atrocities - or, at least, this is what one side of the story says.

With great outcry, the Japanese placed a $50,000 bounty on Wang’s head. Believing he staged the picture, they raised a barrage of accusations - from Wang’s biassed political leanings and the questionable journalistic ethics affiliated with the newspaper he works for to the suspiciously-ideal composition of the photograph. The child, along with the truth, fades away. www.uclpimedia.com

On April 4, 1975, the first flight under Operation Babylift took off, taking over 200 South Vietnamese orphans to meet prospective American adoptive families before North Vietnamese forces took over the capital.

The smell of vomit, diarrhoea and jet fuel permeated the air. Flight crew buckled two children to each seat and strapped others to the cargo floor in boxes. The crew and volunteers’ eyes darted around incessantly to monitor each child. 12 minutes into the flight, cargo doors blew open and the plane crashed. Only 78 children survived.

This was a hard truth to swallow - some South Vietnamese parents misunderstood the adoption process, they mistakenly assumed that they could find their children later. Some sent their Ameriasian children to the flight to save them from potential discrimination under communist rule. These parents unexpectedly sent their children to premature deaths.

It is August 19, 2021. We are at the last stop: Kabul airport, Afghanistan. Thousands flee as the Taliban’s hand reaches over the nation. People desperately squeeze their way to the entrance, some crushed to death. The explosive sound of gunshots pierced through the air.

Opinion With a leap of faith, Mirza Ali Ahmadi and Suraya push their infant son, Sohail, up to the sky and into the hands of a stranger. They believe that as long as Sohail enters the airport safely, as long as the rest of the family also make it through the gate, the light of survival will continue to shine.

Upon entering the airport, they find that Sohail has disappeared. Mr Ahmadi panically searches for any hint of Sohail’s whereabouts without success.

Time is ticking. Officials suggest that the boy may be on a flight already and they can find him later, so the devastated family leave for America.

Elsewhere, taxi driver Hamid Safi is on his way to the airport. He sees a lone infant child crying on the ground, and takes him home after failing to find his parents.

For the next five months, Sohail Ahmadi became ‘Mohammad Abed’. Meanwhile, the photograph of Sohail being lifted across the airport wall goes viral - the search to reunite the Ahmadi family begins.

to people losing perspective, allowing self interest to prevail, not seeing the wider interest, not seeking to understand other people who are different to you in some kind of way. We need to keep engaging with others. If you believe in those intellectual exercises, you have to believe it matters in these contexts too.

If going to university means anything, you should leave this place thinking differently about the world, not just the particular subject you study.”

It is important, even necessary, to acknowledge the pain that war engenders. The next time you read about mass exodus from conflict-torn places or viral photographs about suffering children, reflect a little over the perspectives being presented to you. These are all traces of our resilience. When the threat of death looms ahead, we do all we can to lift our children, our future, into the sky.

Upon discovering Sohail was with the Safi family, a period of tense negotiations began. In the end, the Safis tearfully returned Sohail to his birth family. They always wanted a son, but ultimately this boy was not theirs. War gives and takes away, no one is spared.

“The expectations we have for new human life, in its innocence, [are] crushed under war. These children are denied certain experiences, they cannot understand what they are going through nor can it be explained to them until later,” says Nicola Miller, Professor of Transnational Latin American History at UCL. “Perhaps they come to symbolise the difficulty all of us have in understanding that kind of horror. These young children cannot write their own narratives. If they survive, they will be given a narrative of their survival and they will have to decide whether or not to accept it.”

Linking this with how us university students should approach the news, Professor Miller affirms that “it is important to keep your mind open to different narratives. It is a process that history students engage in all the time: you are interpreting, decoding, and contextualising. You’re analysing the language, the image, trying to bring perspective. You are not eliminating the emotion (distress) because you fundamentally can’t, but you can’t let it overwhelm your capacity to try and understand what is happening. Part of the explanation for these terrible events is always related

Operation Babylift Flight Arriving at San Francisco International Airport (Source: USA National Archives)

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Feminist

in the

Becoming Written by Dorottya Eszter Szij Artwork by Daniela Gil Nieves

I pick the wrong men about as naturally as I write. I am drawn to partners who are cocky, immature and authoritative. I always feel compelled to preface my firmest opinions with an apology for my ‘arrogant’ or ‘radical’ personality. I am always so awfully sorry for having the audacity to confront anyone with the faults in their ill-considered arguments. I don’t always pull away from unwanted kisses when I am on a date. What if I led him on? If this is the price of his company, is it not better to pay sooner rather than later?

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Opinion

However, on principle, I believe that women should seek partners who are mature, introspective and supportive. I also believe that women should be opinionated. I want women to speak out, and even act out, when faced with the slightest constraint of the patriarchy. I want women to flip tables. I want them to feel empowered to enforce boundaries.

I am a feminist and I find myself in a constant struggle between my actions and aspirations. I do flip tables, but I do so apologetically. I do tell men to keep their hands away, but I do so guiltily.

Having been called a bad feminist many times, I have come to realise that men are in fact eagerly awaiting my mistakes. Always watching from the corners of their eyes, they anticipate every misstep, so they can dismiss decades of emancipation in a delightful declaration of my bad feminism. Is a woman not allowed some mistakes? Oh, come on, why do we always appreciate men’s mistakes as glorious manifestations of their complexity?

Of course, there are bad feminists in my eyes too: people who treat feminism as a trendy label they can assume without engaging in any of its ideology, or people who treat feminism as a rigid doctrine whereby you must burn your pink clothes, hate every man and renounce all inappropriate jokes.

But I am not a bad feminist. In fact, I like to think that I am a pretty damn good one. I believe in the feminist cause with every tiny bit of my chaotic self, and frankly, I spend concerning amounts of time pondering the deconstruction of the patriarchy.

So, what does it really mean to be a feminist?

My feminism is a constant battle between my conscious and subconscious, my will and my ability, my thoughts and my feelings. I carry views of men, sex and love that are tainted by my personal experiences, and they weigh heavily on my feminism.

But I have come to understand that there is a critical difference between hypocrisy and complexity.

The former is merely laziness: the violation of principles that we support in theory, but not in practice. It may not be motivated by malice, but it always ends in ignorance. Oh, but the latter, the latter is such an intricate collision between the conscious and subconscious self, that we mistake it for hypocrisy.

We are thinking women, but we are also feeling women. Women who grew up with or without fathers, mothers and siblings. Women who strive towards a better world, only because we recognise the injustice within ourselves. In order to question the world we must first question ourselves. My mistakes stem not from denying the existence of the patriarchy, but from believing in it too much. I carry with myself a lifelong imprint of the patriarchy, and it sometimes fools me into thinking that my candour is impertinence, that my assertiveness is arrogance and that my femininity is tangible.

And while my behaviour may not always reflect my ideals, this is no one’s burden more than it is mine; I am sometimes blindly guided by fears and grievances, and I struggle with the full knowledge of this. This is not hypocrisy, this is complexity.

For so long, I have felt that my internalised sexism towards myself was a weakness, but I now realise that by recognising it it becomes a strength.

Transformation is not an event; it is a process and women’s mistakes do not have to be tragic footnotes to a tragic culture. Living in a world that does not yet embody feminist values is a constant identity crisis.

It is a journey of evaluating and re-evaluating our thoughts, feelings and actions so that we can become better people. We must ask ourselves unpleasant questions and contend with unpleasant answers.

Feminism is a lens through which one interprets and navigates the world, and it is the acknowledgement of an oppression in which we all take part. But the very recognition of this puts us at liberty to make mistakes. The patriarchy is a narrative that predates its narrators, and we must cease looking for culprits, so that we can look within ourselves.

Ultimately, we should look for the same quality in both men and women: the willingness to change.

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Looking Up www.uclpimedia.com

Written by Henry Tudor Pole Artwork by Daniela Gil Nieves Like many people who live in cities, I often feel a sense of disconnection from the wider world of plants and animals things that get called ‘nature’ - despite the fact that they are present everywhere you look. So during the early lockdowns I tried to learn more about the trees of London, a city so green that by some definitions it counts as a forest. I bought a map which marks some of the most unusual trees in the city, and went around on my bike looking for them with my girlfriend. We found a spectacularly climbable caucasian zelkova in the rose garden in Hyde Park. Up in its long silvery branches there is a flat opening in which you can sit, completely hidden from anyone standing below. We visited a baobab plane in Ravenscourt Park, its fat trunk far more than two armspans wide, a stout cousin to the numerous slender planes which line London’s streets. In Tottenham a vast sessile oak shades locals with nearly half a millennium’s worth of growth, resting its heavy branches on wooden crutches.

These extraordinary trees provided a locus for a day out at a time when most things in London were shut. But despite my efforts to visit them, learn their names, observe their shapes, listen to the creak of their branches and the rush of their leaves, I failed to develop any particular sense of being ‘in touch with nature’. I had just studied them, as I might study objects in a museum. Could I become more deeply involved, or was this a sentimental fantasy?

Some Londoners go further than others to develop a connection with trees. In 2020 there was a protest in Hackney against the felling of a 150-year-old plane tree to make way for a building project by Berkeley Homes.

It became known as the Happy Man Tree, named after a nearby defunct pub. People camped in it for weeks and distributed leaflets below, arguing that the new buildings should be redesigned to fit around the tree. This seemed very odd. Thousands of trees are cut down in London each year without comment, while ‘developers’ erect ever more of their bleak towers, marginalising local residents and exhaling carbon dioxide into London’s grotesque housing bubble. But although this larger, harmful process affects everyone, the Happy Man Tree campaign barely addressed it. Instead, they channelled their energies to save the life of a single street tree.

This unusual approach and its widespread popular support indicated an understanding of trees not only as environmental assets or local landmarks, but as organisms with a right to live, regardless of their value to humans. There is a growing acceptance of such an idea. In his book Plants as Persons, botanist Matthew Hall makes the point that plants possess the ability to learn, even to reason. For example, if roving plant tendrils make contact with a support which is then moved, the tendrils change the direction of their growth in a purposeful way in order to find it again; they don’t move automatically but follow a process of trial and error. This behaviour suggests that certain plants could have some unfamiliar form of sentience.

Plants are social creatures, too. In forests, trees communicate via a ‘wood wide web’, a fungal network through which they share nutrients and warn each other about fire or peckish insects. Recently, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has also found that the oldest, best-connected ‘mother trees’ take an active role in helping younger seedlings of the same species develop, comparing their role to that of a human village elder. For scientists like Hall and Simard, these intelligent and social characteristics qualify trees to be considered in ethical, not solely instrumental, terms.

We should look after trees, not because they

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provide clean air for our city, but because they have a right to live their lives alongside us. Such ideas mount a challenge to our dominant anthropocentrism, in which the world exists for the use and pleasure of people. Instead, they propose a world cohabited by a wide range of intelligent beings, animal and vegetable, with their own needs, even legal rights.

What role, in this scenario, does the human take?

My great-grandfather once had a chat with a copper beech he met in the Bavarian Alps. He had been hoping to plant some beeches in his garden, so he asked for advice. “Sometimes I am lonely,” said the solitary tree. “We like to grow up in pairs, but this fact does not seem to be made known to those who plant or seed us.” It explained how to plant a complementary pair: “You can do this by comparing our young leaves very carefully and then obeying your instinct about them.” This tree clearly valued the role of attentive human stewardship.

Some Indigenous groups take their responsibility to trees so seriously that they don’t distinguish themselves from them, acknowledging trees as family.

The Mak Mak of northern Australia, for example, refer to certain trees as ‘uncle’, while the Wuyaliya claim descendance from the grey mangrove. I wonder if the Happy Man Tree campaigners were looking to form a comparable relationship with the plane, disguising their animism with the respectable language of ecological protest? If so, they could be an early sign of a newly refreshed set of ideas, in which humanity seeks to close the gap between ourselves and ‘nature’.

Perhaps these are one and the same thing.

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Healing My Inner Child: How a TikTok Changed My Life Written by Chelsea Bunke Artwork by Manca Rakun Growing up, I always valued how hard I was on myself. I thought that my no-nonsense attitude made me stronger in the face of external problems. This, while misguided, is still true and protected me for most of my life during tough moments. I played highly competitive sports during my formative years; due to this, extremely tough coaches reinforced that while I did very well, I could always do better and push myself more. I thought that if I already pushed myself even harder, their harsh words wouldn’t be as hurtful. Therefore, I never gave myself any credit for anything I did, and this continues to this day. I thought that only weak and unambitious people were kind to themselves, and that I was strong for being harsh on myself. I was always confused about why my peers didn’t see myself as the harsh person I was; they always described me as kind and cheerful. Only now do I realize that the only person I was harsh and competitive with, was myself.

Upon starting my second year at UCL and completely restarting my routine, I set up a routine full of scheduled gym sessions, study periods, meals to try and become ‘the best version of myself ’ in a post-pandemic mindset and return to my rigorous routine when I was younger. However, when trying to adhere to this schedule, I couldn’t seem to stick to it. I would have a three-day period where everything was going seemingly well, but that would immediately be followed by a five-day episode where I felt completely out of control of my actions and participated in self-destructive activities. Upon returning to my schedule or making a new weekly plan, even when I followed it, I couldn’t find joy in any of my scheduled habits. For example, instead of going to the gym to become stronger and feel more confident in myself, I would go as a punishment for how I felt I looked that day. Instead of eating healthy to nourish myself and feel great, I would do it to achieve the body I had maybe a year before. I was stuck in a cycle of setting myself strict rules as punishment, not fulfilling them, and repeating this obsessively.

During winter break, I was scrolling through TikTok just like any other day, and I stumbled upon a video of a video of a girl addressing her younger self, and it made me break down into a fit of tears. In the video, it shows a picture of her younger self with ‘you know, you’re supposed to protect me’, in the background. Then, the younger self goes on to say ‘but you say the meanest things to me when I try to tell you’. After, a Cigarettes After Sex song starts playing. I’m sure you’re thinking that it sounds a bit cheesy, and it definitely www.uclpimedia.com

Lifestyle

is, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful. Upon seeing the video, I had a major epiphany about the way I treat myself and the hurt little girl under everything I’ve built up over my life. I grabbed a photo of myself at age four, and that was when I realized how cruel I was to that little girl who would go through so much in her short life. I thought about how then and now, the one consistent struggle I had was feeling misunderstood by everyone around me. The person who most understood what was going on in my head was me. Given that this is the case, if even I, the person who knows me best, couldn’t see myself in my honest beauty and love what I see, why should I even bother with other people’s perceptions and ensuing opinions of me? And in that moment, I promised that I would try as hard as possible to be kind to myself - if not for me now, for that little girl who desires to be understood and loved for true self more than anything.

In pursuit of this, I don’t force myself to do things I don’t want to do unless not doing them would make my life much harder (such as a deadline #studentvibes). Instead of looking for an easy way out of a situation, I try to journal about it in the moment to find the root of the problem and also vent. In the past, I would cope in an unhealthy way and then journal about it all, ultimately making myself feel worse, potentiating the cycle of self-destruction. Otherwise, I am trying to hold others accountable and be more honest about my feelings. I know that my younger self would admire my bravery and aspire to be more like that as I’ve had trouble being vulnerable for as long as I can remember.

Furthermore, I schedule fun events free from any responsibility because I know that the younger Chelsea (and Chelsea now) deserves to look forward to things and have fun. Before, I would only schedule work and then slip into just doing nothing because of burnout and boredom. This would make me feel worse about myself, and the cycle would continue. However, now with things to look forward to, I have real motivation to get my work done so I can fully relax. Also, these events I schedule bring more colour and fun to my life. At this point, I’m sure some of you are wondering that this all sounds nice, but it may not be best if I have certain goals that require me to push myself. While seemingly contradictory, I actually push myself harder now because I know that I will feel better about myself and stronger if I push myself to my limit. Lastly, in pursuit of embracing my inner child, I’m trying to factor practices I admired at a young age into my life now. I remember looking up to Kobe Bryant and my mother a lot. Instead of trying to emulate their actions, I try to factor their perspectives into my life, and this ultimately makes me proud and more successful due to that pride.

It is impossible to thrive putting myself down for every little thing I do; no matter how I perform at school or look, it’s highly unsustainable. It makes me sad that it took me this long to realize this, but I was coming from a place of trauma and it’s not my fault that I coped by being harsh on myself. However, now I know what self-love is and I know I deserve it as well. In the past, I would practice self-love by doing face masks, occasionally indulging in sweets, and practicing other ‘self-care’ activities present in magazines and popular media. However, self-love extends beyond this. I know that I have to actively tell myself that I am in fact enough, no matter how I’m doing in school, whether I feel beautiful or not, or any other factor! It’s what the little girl inside deserves; she’s going to go through so much in her life and needs someone in her corner validating her emotions and supporting her through her life’s journey. Of course, I still slip up occasionally and beat myself up, but thinking of my four or seven-year-old self hearing those things said about her immediately stops the stream of negativity. In writing this article and in the spirit of ‘UPLIFT’, I hope this can, if it does anything, inspire you to embrace your inner child and just actively love yourself, because uplifting the world around us starts with uplifting ourselves. www.uclpimedia.com

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An ode to living with your friends.

Written by Nell Wedgwood Artwork by Meghan Shepherd

Lifestyle I live in a house of five second-year BA girls. That means you can always find three things: hair everywhere, a surplus of oat milk in the fridge, and at least one other person up for drinking wine and crying together. It’s all I could have ever asked for.

Personally, I think it’s healthy—and preferable—to romanticise your own life as much as possible.

It can be really difficult to be appreciative in the moment at the best of times, never mind two years into a global pandemic. But seeing yourself as the main character in your own life, and deciding that any minor inconvenience that totally ruins your day is actually just good for the plot is really quite comforting. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the leading cast of Flat 13…

First up: Holly, the self-proclaimed dad of the house.

Holly takes out the bins, sorts out the water and electric bills, and writes the emails and makes the phone calls that the rest of us are too self-conscious to do for ourselves. She also gives very good hair strokes when you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

Next, there’s Becky. Becky went on a gap yah, and has lots of quirky little knick-knacks around the house that she picked up in various countries backpacking around South-East Asia for 2p and a cheeky wink. She’s a Cornish girl at heart and we all brace for a bad day if the sun ever dares go behind a cloud (it was a very long winter). She’s a living paradox; the one you go to if you want a partner for causing some chaos, but also the one who makes sure you’re eating all your greens.

Thea-Rose is our little ball of sunshine. No one is ever quite sure where she actually is, with her overfilled social calendar overwhelming the rest of us. She’s always there with a gorgeous smile to lift your day. Living completely in her own little world, we all watch amazed as she never stops going for exactly what she wants. She has no idea how to cook or clean, but she tries so hard every time.

Ella is the wholesome one. She’s always got her dinner ready by five, and she’d pass up a club for a night in with hot-chocolate, sudoku and a film any day. She’s the type that seems extremely sweet and innocent to those who don’t know her well, but you know what they say about the quiet ones. Her boyfriend, Christian, is Flat 13’s favourite guest-star. He understands that being Ella’s boyfriend means he has five girlfriends. He is always our biggest hype man, and never complains when he has to squeeze into the bed, because someone else needs a cuddle with Ella, too.

Obviously it is difficult to be objective about yourself, and so I asked my housemates for some glowing reviews. In their words, I am very wise and supportive. Slotting into our comfy little bubble, my favourite way to spend my time at home is to sit in someone else’s bed—watching a film or scrolling through Tik Tok—while they spend time at their desks actually working on their degrees. Finding people you can just be with, where there is no pressure to fill pauses in conversation or filter your presence, is one of the best support nets I can think of.

For most students, moving into a house or flat in their second year is the first time they get to live with the people they have chosen. There is a time limit to our university experiences, and it feels like a unique transitional event. Living away from home for the first time, and in the midst of a pandemic that took crucial time we wanted to spend getting to know our potential flatmates (before signing a year-long contract), is an exciting prospect, but it can also be pretty scary. Living with people you love and who love you is a soothing balm for that. Whenever someone is completely freaking out, my gorgeous gorgeous girls will always come together to pick her up and sort her out—whether she needs a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear to vent to, or a tough-love reality check.

As the main characters of our own lives, we each have clear differences. With any group of people there is always the potential for clashes, but recognising and appreciating how we differ is how we ultimately come to complement and support each other. We’re all obsessed with Holly’s fashion sense, Becky’s charm, Thea’s positivity, Ella’s kindness (and I’ve been told I’m pretty funny), and we make sure to let each other know every day. Some boyfriends have been known to call us co-dependent, but we don’t think it’s a bad thing to be totally obsessed with each other. Especially so over the last couple of years, we have all come to realise the importance of a home environment in which we feel safe and comfortable. We’re proud that we’ve made ourselves a little home in London where everyone is welcome (as long as they bring a bottle of rosé). www.uclpimedia.com

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Written by Rachel Lim Jiahui

“Despite the many books I devoured over the years, most lacked characters, cultures and landscapes that I, as a Singaporean Chinese, felt any affiliation to.”

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I knew I was in trouble the moment I read the first few chapters of Fonda Lee’s Jade City. Within the pages of her Green Bone Saga trilogy, Lee built a world filled with jade and violence. In it, two powerful rival gangs - No Peak and The Mountain - grappled for control over the city-state’s territories and resources. The stakes were only raised higher by the presence of jade, revered and guarded by the gangs due to its ability to provide superhuman abilities.

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I could not put the book down. My life is devoid of the bloodshed that shadowed Kekon’s gangs or the magical jade they prized. Yet their world and stories felt strangely familiar.

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Hong Kong. Her writing was the first time I caught a glimpse of myself and my culture in a work of fiction. Despite the many books I devoured over the years, most lacked characters, cultures and landscapes that I, as a Singaporean Chinese, felt any affiliation to. The Green Bone Saga changed that.

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When asked about her personal experience with racial and cultural representation in fiction, Lynn Yeo* stated that she has never read a book centered around an Asian protagonist. The Singaporean law student at UCL is partial towards crime fiction and stories involving any form of mythology, such as Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles. She added that she chooses her reads based on their popularity since the reviews assure her that she’s committing to a book that’s worth it.

“Everytime I’m recommended a popular book, it just never features an Asian character,” she explained. “It’s quite sad actually.”

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When Lee built Kekon, she drew inspiration from multiple Asian countries. Chinese culture served as the basis for Kekonese food, festivals and names.

Japan’s yakuza provided the model for the gangs’ culture. The vibrance of the city can be credited to www.uclpimedia.com

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For Joy Xu, a third year student at UCL, her experience is pretty much the same. “I have East Asian origins and I don’t see much East Asian representation in books. If I think about the past 5 years, a lot of books are very Western centric.”

Their experiences are unsurprising. In 2020, Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek set out to find the demographic of English-language fiction books published between 1950 and 2018. Of the 7,124 books they were able to identify, 95 percent of them were written by white authors.

“Of the 7,124 Englishlanguage fiction books, 95 percent were written by white authors.”

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Things, however, have started to change. Joy pointed out that within the Young Adult (YA) genre, where most of her reads come from, there is a recent increase in diversity. For example, she highlights the presence of upcoming author Chloe Gong whose work is largely influenced by Chinese culture and history. Elaine Teo, a psychology student who enjoys works in the Literary Fiction genre, said that she’s particularly excited about how Japanese or Korean novels are being translated into English and gaining prominence.

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These gradual shifts towards more Asian representation are a welcomed and important change according to Hannah Fang*, an Indonesian Masters student. The twenty-two year old, who assured me that she can talk about books all day, pointed out that representation in novels and the wider media is especially crucial for minority groups. “In places like the UK where East Asians and Southeast Asians make up a very small part of the population, there’s definitely a model minority mindset. [Representation is] important because there’s limited information so whatever information that’s out there has more power.”

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The improvements in diversity found in Englishlanguage fiction did not happen in a vacuum.

In 2009, RaceFail, a months-long heated online debate about the portrayal of race and culture, exploded within the Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) community. Its intensity called attention to the dissatisfaction of readers of colour with the problematic depiction of their race and culture in these genres. Later in 2020, #PublishingPaidMe began to trend on Twitter as authors exposed the racial pay disparities in the industry.

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The discussions that both movements sparked have died down but their effects still linger. Readers and authors of colour realised that they were not alone in their experiences and frustrations. New communities formed, writers began to think about what they were writing and readers started to seek out greater diversity in the stories they were reading. In a blog post titled “Why I Think RaceFail Was The Bestest Thing Evar for SFF”, N.K Jemisin, who wrote the award-winning Broken Earth series, shared that after the events of RaceFail she was more comfortable as a writer of color.

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“Suddenly, everyone’s talking about race,” she wrote, “and I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.”

I flew through Jade City in two days and breezed through its sequel, Jade War with equal hunger.

When Jade Legacy, the final installment, came out last year, I took my time to finish it. Now that I had a taste of glimpsing myself within a work of fiction, I was reluctant for the experience to end.

I’ve come to realise, however, that I’m lucky to be in a time where that won’t be the case. Others have been fighting for the greater diversity I now see in English-language fiction before I was even aware of it. There’s still more to be done but Lynn told me that she’s confident that the trajectory we’re on will allow for greater representation of both Asian and other cultures. I am inclined to agree with her.

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Celebrating Authors of Colour:

The debut novelists you should be reading in 2022 Written by Evie Robinson Artwork by Dua-e-Zehra Zaidi What does it mean to uplift one another in the literary sphere? For me, it should be to ensure that everyone gets a voice. It should mean that everyone who takes pleasure from the act of reading should see a glimpse of themselves in the books they choose. Nearing the end of my time studying English at UCL, and, as I embark on entry to the graduate world, becoming increasingly alert to trends, patterns and developments in the publishing industry, I’ve been wanting to diversify the new and emerging novels I choose to read. Here are my musings about the debut stories you should be picking up at the moment:

Citing Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, and James Baldwin as some of his formative influences, his own captivatingly beautiful novel seems to have followed in the footsteps of these legendary writers as a definitive best-seller.

Amongst the novel’s most striking and original assets are its experimental form and the way it plays with perspective, positioning the reader in conjunction with its male protagonist. Perhaps the most clever aspect of Open Water is Azumah Nelson’s ability to interweave moments of the everyday with larger, more pressing issues and instances of racism and prejudice.

Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water was one of my first reads of 2022, and it’s safe to say I could not put it down. The novel centres on the relationship between its two main characters, a man and a woman, both of whom are Black artists, neither of whom are named. Azumah Nelson recently discussed his debut during an event at Waterstones Piccadilly in conversation with writer Nikesh Shukla. He explained the importance of setting and location in the novel, intending for South East London to be its own vibrant and alluring character, alongside the two young protagonists. I was also particularly interested in Azumah Nelson’s writing process. He spoke of spending many days writing in the British Library, and before he sat down to put paper to pen (or fingers to keys, as it were), he would dedicate the first hour of the day to reading.

Wahala, by Nikki May, is a gripping tale of friendship that explores issues of love, race, class and family. The novel’s three protagonists, Ronke, Simi, and Boo, met at university and have remained close friends ever since. The women are united by their dual-heritage and complex relationships with this, identifying with both London and Nigeria as locations of home. But their circumstances differing, each woman yearns for the life of their friend - Ronke’s longing to settle in a relationship and start a family, Simi’s anxiety about having children, dreading the very thing that Ronke idolises, and Boo sitting somewhere in the middle, discontented with her stay-at-home life as a mother to her five-year-old daughter. And these differences begin to surface when a fourth friend, Isobel, wealthy and mysterious, is thrown into the mix. www.uclpimedia.com

Culture In interviews, May has relayed her desire to represent herself, a biracial middle-class woman, in fiction. Though Wahala definitely has a darker, more sinister streak, May was intent on writing a novel that celebrated the fun and humour of love and friendship, explaining that so many novels about black identity often centre around trauma. I found myself speeding through Wahala, desperate to find out what happened next, whilst paradoxically longing to preserve such a joyous reading experience, longing for it to last forever. May brings us into her world of Nigerian culture, drawing on much of her own experience of engaging with her Nigerian roots whilst living in London.

I was grateful for Wahala as not only an exciting read, but an educational journey through which I felt privileged to be invited into this world.

Other debuts have been highly anticipated throughout the first few months of 2022. Daphne Pelasi Andreades’ Brown Girls is a powerful insight into the lives and experiences of a biracial community of young women, growing up in Queens, New York. Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake follows siblings Byron and Benny as they piece together their estranged mother’s secrets in the wake of her death. One of the crucial things that brings the siblings back together is a traditional Caribbean black cake recipe, left by their mother, Eleanor, in the hope of prompting reconciliation and the healing of past wounds. Perhaps the debut I am most looking forward to reading in the next few months is When We Were Birds, by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo. Set in Trinidad, the novel is said to weave together generic threads of romance and ghost stories, making for a poignant meditation on grief, and finding love in the wake of loss.

Increasing diversity in publishing seems to have become more and more of a pressing issue in recent years, but there is still work to be done. Next time you venture to your local library or bookshop, reflect on what you decide to pick up, and which voices you decide to listen to. You’ll hopefully learn something new from the reading experience, coming away from these characters and stories changed in some way. I hope you love these wonderful books as much as I did.

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Finding Solace in

reviews and rec Written by Isabelle Osborne

As the pandemic unfolded from March 2020, we turned to the comforting, the heartwarming, the encouraging. For many, this meant relieving the challenges of the every day by seeking solace in a book, movie, TV show or podcast.

The Reading Agency revealed 1 in 3 adults read more in the lockdown, whilst research from the BFI showed a 31% rise in the average time spent viewing audiovisual entertainment in the UK home. UK streaming subscriptions increased by 50% to over 30 million during the pandemic, and the daily average for watching TV and online video content rose to five hours and 40 minutes in 2020.

This shows the extent to which arts and culture help us navigate unprecedented times, offering a slice of escapism that can scarcely be found elsewhere. Perhaps one of the reasons we turn to such things is because they play a fundamental role in uplifting us, transporting us to another time or place and showcasing that better moments are on the horizon.

In celebration of the cultural artifacts that we turned to when our lives saw unparalleled change, this article is comprised of reflections on films, books, exhibitions, plays and podcasts that are not only exceptional pieces of art in their own right, but also harbour narratives that offer a shred of light in difficult times and help us see how promise and hope can be found in the most devastating, traumatic, disappointing and challenging circumstances. www.uclpimedia.com

Unbroken (2014) Based on the true story of American Olympian and Army officer Louie Zamperini (Jack O’Connell), the film follows the lives of three officers after they crash-land into the ocean whilst serving in the Second World War. After surviving 47 days on a raft, Zamperini was captured by the Japanese Army, and endured unimaginable suffering in a series of prisoner of war camps. Zamperini’s story stays in one’s mind for its demonstration of how courage, strength and resilience can see us through the most difficult and deplorable experiences.

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day In each episode of her podcast, Day interviews a new guest, asking them to bring three ‘failures’ to discuss. The podcast welcomes people from all walks of life, from singer Alexandra Burke to broadcaster Andi Oliver, actor Stanley Tucci to journalist Paris Lees. From Jaqueline Wilson’s thoughts on her failure to be healthy to Ed Miliband’s reflections on failing to keep his father alive, Day and her guests normalise the inevitability of things going wrong in a uniquely uplifting way. The podcast works wonders in encouraging us to think about the things we consider our ‘failures’ and how we can reflect differently on them, finding the positive lessons when things don’t go to plan and changing the narrative on how we perceive them.

Amy: Beyond the Stage Showcasing everything from her most iconic outfits to her diaries and notepads that hosted her songs in their early stages, this exhibition commemorates the life and work of the legendary Amy Winehouse. As you walk across the exhibition, Amy’s voice resonates across the room, with clips from performances of her most famous songs and interviews available to listen to. With collages of Amy at every stage of her life and details of the music that inspired her, the exhibition achieves an exquisite homage to an icon of the music world.

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ecommendations Artwork by Meghan Shepherd The final section of the exhibition is uniquely brilliant, an immersive experience that showcases a rendition of ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’ amidst colourful projected images and silhouettes of Amy and her band; visit the exhibition to find out more. Overall, it spotlights Amy in all her beauty and artistic glory, refocusing the attention away from the circumstances surrounding her death and onto the phenomenal contributions she made to the music industry and her legacy today. Walking away with Amy’s distinctive voice and music in your ears, it certainly leaves you feeling uplifted.

Exhibiting until April at The Design Museum, Kensington.

The Choice by Edith Eger In 1944, Edith Eger was taken to Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

After surviving heinous, unimaginable atrocities, Eger forged a remarkable life and career as a clinical psychologist and now helps others navigate experiences of pain, suffering and trauma. A truly remarkable and powerful read, her book inspires us to keep going, to look ahead and find ways of seeing the positive when times feel impossibly challenging. I’d like to leave you with a quote that remains in my mind almost two years since I finished the book: ‘Today, more than seventy years have passed.

What happened can never be forgotten and can never be changed. But over time I learned that I can choose how to respond to the past. I can be miserable, or I can be hopeful—I can be depressed, or I can be happy. We always have that choice, that opportunity for control.’

Salt of the Earth (1954) “Inspired by the 1950-1951 strike in New Mexico against the Empire Zinc company, workers at a zinc mine in New Mexico decide to strike against poor and discriminatory working conditions. During the ordeal, the men of the community discover strength, solidarity and most importantly, the power of women.”

Christopher Soelistyo, Fourth Year Computational Biosciences PhD The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun “An uplifting reminder of how a single concept can become a movement—while the pencils Adam Braun provided for underprivileged children were a tangible change, they also represented an increased access to education for so many.”

Emilia Privat, Second Year English BA

‘Uplifting’ narratives means something different for everyone; hear from three students at UCL for their recommendations for ‘uplifting’ narratives...

Come From Away: The Musical “Commemorating ‘what we lost’ and ‘what we found’ in the aftermath of 9/11, the show finds light in the darkness and leaves its audience uplifted, feeling the power of hope.”

Erin Croasdale, Third Year History BA www.uclpimedia.com

Section Editors News Catherine Nicholls Rhys Guerrier Isabel Jackson

Features Anushka Ray Joshua Jones Meghan Forsyth

Opinion Mike Hammond Noelle Gaumann Nikhil Vyas

Science Lily Tozer Maria Stoica Miranda Porter

Lifestyle Jasmine Austin Chelsea Bunke Aimee Dexter

Culture Shivam Pathak Holly Chen Palin Supradit Na Ayudthaya

Design Team

Evie P

Gabrielle Sungailaite Online co-EIC

Manca Rakun Chaya Steinsaltz Vanessa Tsao Dua-e-Zehra Zaidi

Ludovica Ardente PiTV co-EIC

Irene Mavrantonaki Welfare Officer

2021/22 Committee

Evie Robinson President

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Hasha Dar Photography Officer

Vanessa Tsao Magazine EIC

Deepali Foster Online co-EIC

Alexia Mihaila PiTV co-EIC

Nadia Freeman Diversity & Inclusion Officer

Nell Wedgwood Social Media Officer

Zsofia Lazar Co-Events Officer

Zsofia Bekker Treasurer

Akriti Gajre Marketing Officer

Hannah Chen Co-Events Officer

Manca Rakun Design Officer