Stories Seldom Told

"These kids are so privileged...I knew that they were all going to third level education, they're going to be doctors and engineers... I realised that the class structure was so profound and it's developed at that level in education, right from the very get-go. Where those kids would have been in local creches or play schools, the Traveller (indigenous ethnic group) kids lived on the other side of the road."

Ken McCue is a graduate of the International School of Politics and Culture, Moscow. He holds a Master of Philosophy Diploma in Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a Post Graduate Certificate in Cultural Planning from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. 

Ken specialises in the area of Cultural Integration and Social Capital in urban regeneration. Ken is a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and was officially declared an Atheist by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

In 1997, Ken co-founded Sports Against Racism Ireland (SARI) during the European Year against Racism.

For more information, visit https://www.sari.ie/

"What I'm saying is, is that because they're not aware of their unconscious bias, they think they actually believe that what they're doing is right... There are a lot of people who disagree with me, not just the people on the left or the right, because many people on the right refuse to recognise how complex racism is.... People in the middle recognise that racism isn't just black and white, it's actually far more complex. And it reveals itself unconsciously, in all kinds of ways, both on the right and on the left.  We tend to just think people on the right are racist people and people on the left are not... I'm saying, no, what they're doing is signalling virtue, they are not actually being virtuous."

Katharine Birbalsingh is the Headmistress and co-founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, London. Michaela is known for its high standards of discipline, tough-love behaviour systems, knowledge curriculum and teaching of kindness and gratitude. In 2017, OFSTED the Office for Standards in Education, graded the school as “Outstanding” in every category.

Katharine read Philosophy & Modern Languages at The University of Oxford and has always taught in inner London. She has made numerous appearances on television and radio and has written for several UK publications. Katharine has written two books, edited a third and a fourth called Michaela: The Power of Culture has just been published. Whether you agree with Katharine or not, she will make you think. In the 2020 Birthday Honours, Katherine was awarded CBE.

Follow Katharine on Twitter: @Miss_Snuffy

"We were exactly the class which filled the Imperial hierarchy...sufficiently well connected to get a place with the East India Company or in the Raj Civil Service, but desperate enough economically to need to send the younger sons out... It was a guy called Stair Dalrymple who ended up in the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1756. And so, generations have been there one after another and like almost all the Brits, probably all the Brits who I'd ever met, it was assumed that colonisation was an act of bringing civilisation to poor benighted natives."

William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award,  the Kapuściński Award and the Wolfson History Prize. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literary Festival.

"Others conspire that if you're not cut, you are not clean, nobody will marry you. You are not going to be the same as other girls. You're going to school and you feel like you're different. Because you are not cut. That is why I am an activist and campaigner on female genital mutilation."

Ifrah Ahmed is an Irish-Somali activist, campaigner and Civil Society Organisation director working in the field of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting abandonment. She has also set up the United Youth of Ireland in 2008, in response to youth immigrant integration issues in her adopted country.

The Ifrah Foundation is working with the UN for the worldwide eradication of FGM/C by 2030.

A feature film, A Girl from Mogadishu, based on her life is out now.

"In 2017/2018 I opened a restaurant called Tapestry in New York City that served food from 17 or 18 countries at one time on the menu. And people loved it. It was in the West Village. And we had the who's who of New York coming to eat with us. But there were certain food critics that were absent. And I then got an email from one food critic who said to me, don't you think you're being too daring that you're cooking something other than Indian? And I asked them, do you ask this question to all the American chefs born and brought up in America, who are cooking French, Italian,  Vietnamese, Mexican and Indian? Do you question them about the cuisine they are cooking?"

Suvir Saran is the author of three celebrated cookbooks: Indian Home Cooking, American Masala, and Masala Farm, as well as the chef and owner of The House of Celeste, a modern Indian restaurant in Gurgaon.

Saran’s approachable style has helped demystify Indian cuisine and earned him the first Michelin star awarded to an Indian restaurant in America.

"When I pray five times a day, it's interesting that the way I start my prayers, I refer to God, as the God of all creation. I don't say the God of Muslims, I say the God of all creation which includes everyone on Earth. So that's part of my faith. And that's why I feel that my faith underpins and underlines the way I behave, and I interact with people."

Reza Beyad is a multilingual entrepreneur, philanthropist and fundraiser. He's a practising Muslim who completed his schooling from a Jesuit school. One of his main interests is to engage in constructive interfaith dialogues and help build bridges between different faiths and communities. His own faith underpins his efforts to create a more caring, just and inclusive society. In 2014, for his work in this regard, he was given the freedom of the City of London.

"A lot of the young people that I work with, see themselves in a troubled state. But the minute they start engaging with something positive, they have an identity shift, they start to position themselves as an artist. And that takes them away from what they perceive themselves to be in the past. We can all create these identity shifts, but it's about just taking that one positive step and having a reinforced positive loop to keep going."

Rosemary Jane Cronin is an artist and university lecturer specialising in fine art, gender and psychoanalysis who has exhibited and performed at The Freud Museum and The National Portrait Gallery in London. Her film Reverie was selected by the Guggenheim Foundation as part of their 'Under the Same Sun' season in 2016. As an educator, Rosemary works for the Outreach department at University of Arts London and museums and galleries across London to help make art accessible for all.

Content Warning: This episode deals with material of a sexual nature.

"The Kama Sutra was written in metaphors. And it talks about pleasure  so delicately and with such elegance and refinement that it actually inspired about 2000 years of ancient Indian literature."

Seema Anand is a mythologist and a storyteller with a focus on women's narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature's of ancient India. Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. This was the first text to give women a platform of equality.

Seema Anand is also the author of The Arts of Seduction.

"I guess I could see unconscious bias in other people's ideas of a Muslim. You could be White, Asian, Black, you could be from any type of background.  It's a religion, like other religions where you choose to become a Muslim and fall in that religion. People make a lot of assumptions, on what a Muslim looks like. It could be anyone."

Matt Henderson is originally from Scotland and lives in Yorkshire. With over 20 years’ experience as a community worker, Matt is currently working as a project manager for Bradford for Everyone, a UK Government social integration pilot programme

"In September 2019, Aditya Atri was defined by what he did for a living, what car he drove, what his status was in society. Post September 2019, Aditya Atri is defined by the fact he has cancer."

Aditya Atri has over 30 years' experience as an advertising and marketing executive He has managed large consumer facing programmes and campaigns for both local and multinational brands across South Asia, Middle East and Australia. He has held leadership positions across financial services, retail and marketing communication companies.