As a child, whenever I watched TV, I never saw somebody who looked like me. It was hard to dress up as my favourite character from a movie. Tiana was great but I loved Belle’s dress the most. It was only when I started watching Disney Channel that I got to see Zendaya in Shake It Up and I could think that maybe I looked a bit like her. So many kids grow up not being able to see themselves in their favourite characters from the shows they watch every day. I couldn’t picture what it would be like to look at those characters and see what I saw in the mirror, especially growing up as a mixed child, I never got to see characters that looked even remotely like me.

‘Like’: one of the most frequently spoken words in the English language. It’s clear that the reputation of ‘Like’ is tarnished by its overuse. But maybe it’s time to reform our impression of it. Perhaps it is not merely the ‘lazy linguistic filler’ of the present day – why not give it a chance.

The distribution of vaccines has constantly been an area of importance for governments and international organisations, especially during times of health crises. However, targets to ensure that all nations and all citizens have access to vaccinations has historically (and quite recently) been an issue. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for discussion around this topic since we saw the inefficiency and delays in distributing vaccines that resulted in tragic losses, community disturbances and economic devastation.

Folk music has long acted as a universal preservative for common history and culture. Folk songs encapsulate lived experience and daily life in a completely unique way, making them invaluable legacies for a history, which is often excluded by traditional scholars and writings. Taking a place in almost akin to something succeeding the ancient rhapsode (a performer from ancient Greece), folk songs preserve oral history and tradition in a way that has endured the ever-changing and developing society around them, where other oral histories have not.