King hears East Side Voices

ACity visiting lecturer was part of the reception at Buckingham Palace to celebrate and recognise British East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) communities.

Helena Lee (MA Magazine, 2011), Features Director at Harper’s Bazaar and editor of East Side Voices, met King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla, and later commented that media representation of ESEA communities is “massively important” .

The inaugural reception, which fell during the Lunar New Year in February, welcomed guests in the community from all industries including healthcare, business, government, and fashion. Other attendees included Chinese-Irish designers John and Simone Rocha, Chinese-English model Alexa Chung, and Japanese-British actor Will Sharpe (The White Lotus). May Parsons, the Filipino nurse who helped administer the frst Pfzer coronavirus vaccine in the UK, was also present.

Ms Lee said: “It was a meaningful event for many communities who feel overlooked. It was also an important recognition for those from these communities who have worked hard to get where they are.”

Last year, King Charles (then Prince Charles) and Camilla walked around Chinatown in London to boost the morale of the ESEA community, who suffered increased racial abuse during the pandemic. The prince also attended a roundtable meeting about the impact of hate crimes on the community.

According to recent National Hate Crime statistics released by the Home Offce, hate crimes increased by 26 per cent in the year ending in March 2022. Of 156, 000 hate crimes recorded, 47,000 targeted Asian communities.

“I spoke directly with Charles at Buckingham Palace. He’s a good listener and is interested. I reminded him that we had met exactly a year before at the roundtable for hate crime, and he was surprised that it had been a full year,” Ms Lee said.

“When I was growing up, I never saw anyone who was British-Asian, or British South or Southeast Asian,” Ms Lee added. “Being an object of mockery is historically how Asians and Southeast Asians have been represented in media and culture.”

In the UK, 50 per cent of South Asian women report that they rarely, or never, see people from their ethnic group in advertisements, according to research from UM media agency.

“The work and experiences of ESEA communities in the UK are as valid as anyone else’s,” Ms Lee said. “Representation is massively important.

“Change in attitudes towards communities can be a slow process. However, if a change is getting on people’s radars and people are being heard, then it’s all the better for it.”

Ms Lee created East Side Voices in early 2020, a literary salon that “aims to increase the number of voices in the media, flm, in the arts, and literature by bringing to the fore stories that illuminate what it is to be ESEA”. The salon’s mission is to dispel clichés, change cultural narratives around ESEA, and unite the community. Ms Lee edited an anthology of essays and poetry under the same name, published in January 2022. Speaking on the representation of ESEA communities in the media, Ms Lee said: “It’s hugely important that there is an understanding of the issues of the nuances and textures of different communities that make up our society.”

Eoghan O’Donnell

PPA win for Mag grad

Magazine alumna Sarah Green won the 2022 PPA Student Journalist of the Year award, the 14th time out of the last 15 years a student from the City course has triumphed. Ms Green’s winning portfolio included an investigation into US adoption fraud. The 5,000-word piece – which started as Ms Green’s fnal project –was published by ELLE

The judges described Ms Green as a “true editorial talent” and somebody who “tackles serious topics with tenacity, maturity, confdence and real heart”. Ms Green said: “I moved across the world to pursue my MA at City. Being recognised reminded me of how far I’ve come and how far I have yet to go.”