As a child, I loved swimming – working my way up through the Duckling Awards, earning Kellogg’s patches to sew onto my Little Mermaid towel. I remember the echoes of the weekly school swimming lessons, the comfort in feeling my body thud to the bottom of the stillness as I expelled all the air out of my lungs. Incidentally, I’m terrified of swimming in the ocean, but bring me to any pool or lake and I’ll rush myself through the water in glee.

Author: Catriona Morton

Category: SELF

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TW: Mentions of sexual assault, murder. Powered by Black people and racialised campaign groups throughout the world for decades, the police and prison abolition movements are finally getting mainstream recognition in the UK, and the system transformation they suggest is just what the country needs to keep our people safe.

Author: Aara Syed

Category: POLITICS

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LOVE is an unrequited love story told through the eyes of Oscar, an autistic man, and will be premiering at the BFI London’s Busting the Bias next month. “Can autistic people fall in love and get married?” is one of the searches that come up when you research autism and love, and Gemma Harvey has had enough of it. Through her first short film, entitled LOVE, writer and actress Harvey tells the unrequited love story from the point of view of Oscar, an autistic man. When he faces uncomfortable social situations, Oscar communicates through the lyrics of the Streets.

Author: Jennifer Hakim

Category: CULTURE

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When it comes to the meaning of a name, there is a lot to unpack, so please bear with me while I sort through my feelings here. My name, Chourouk, means sunrise in Arabic. Some of you might be thinking it’s a beautiful name (and it is). Who wouldn’t want their name to be linked to the sun, right? I love the meaning of my name: it encapsulates something beautiful, vibrant, and warm, which I like to think matches with who I am.

Author: Chourouk Gorrab

Category: CULTURE

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With a whole lot of generational baggage and a complex heritage, I laughed at all the micro-aggressions thrown my way, and I wish I'd understood why earlier.

Author: Jennifer Hakim

Category: LIFE

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In 2017, I was an undergraduate struggling to navigate my sexuality. I was wading through bouts of anxiety and depression so intense I was often rendered unable to do anything other than lie in bed and listen to music. The soundtrack to this difficult year was About U by American alt-pop group MUNA.

Author: Eleanor Noyce

Category: ARTS

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Content warning: Sexual assault - This article contains Sex Education season three spoilers.

For a country that considers anything related to sex as ‘vulgar’ and ‘profane,’ we Pakistanis sure love consuming content about it. While there’s already a national ban on pornographic websites, recent measures by the Pakistani government to “curb vulgar content among the youth” include banning TikTok - for the fourth time and counting - and excluding the chapter on reproduction from school books (because it’s too “dirty”).

Author: Arsh Khan

Category: CULTURE

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What if a breakup, rather than being a world-ending experience, was a vital piece of the grand puzzle of discovering our sense of self? I believe that we should view recovery from heartbreak, however protracted, as a success at learning rather than a failure at love.

Author: Rosie Wilby

Category: LIFE

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Lights suddenly darken. Curtain slowly lifts. Twelve thousand screams crescendo as souls find their voices again. Bass notes echo through speakers, blurring the space between me and the crowd of buzzing bodies beside. A pulsing beat injects my veins with electric adrenaline, overtaking my chest until my arms have nowhere to go but up, bouncing on my feet like the ground beneath is lava.

Author: Megan Wray

Category: SELF

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As someone who has adopted, I have high hopes for the Government's new national adoption strategy, and what it means for LGBTQIA+ families

Author: Damian Kerlin

Category: LIFE

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