What do you picture when you think of a remote island? Golden sands and clear blue waters?  This is the romantic vision we’re sold. Lastminute.com describes islands as “great destinations for holidays to escape the daily hustle and bustle of urban life.” But for governments and corporations, it can also be an escape from morality: far away enough to test nuclear weapons; small enough to force out an entire Indigenous people; or inconspicuous enough to dump and burn industrial waste. Teshima is one of these idyllic remote islands. Located in the Seto Inland Sea, it is home to 760 residents ..read more

Hi, I’m Marcela: I’m a comedian, I live in Brooklyn, and I really like to tell people how to feel about the news. After wowing zoomers all over on TikTok by giving them news with a sense of humour and anarchy, I decided to start a weekly Sunday newsletter to share my feelings about more news.  My newsletter has evolved into this beautiful news column for shado which also covers international news. I hope the newsletter keeps you informed and makes you laugh a little. We live in hell and I believe humour helps keep this place a little bit cooler. I’m sharing my feelings about a billionaire ..read more

As Ryan Calais Cameron’s For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy (FBB) returned for another run, I eagerly anticipated the opportunity to finally catch the show. Having missed its previous iterations while I was in Lagos, the buzz surrounding its return only heightened my curiosity. After a long day at the university, I went to the Garrick Theatre, eager to immerse myself in this production I had heard so much about. Using a group therapy format, FBB delves into the experiences of six Black boys, navigating themes from beauty standards to the pervasive nature of ..read more

It’s getting to the point where I’m grateful for any sort of representation on childhood sexual abuse in the media, no matter how clumsy it feels.  The parents in Nightmare on Elm Street deciding to deny their children’s trauma when flashbacks resurface? At least child sexual abuse is presented as horrific. Vigilante paedophile hunters beating up abusers in the street and posting it on YouTube? At least they’re reminding us that child sexual abuse is an underfunded issue. The grooming plotline in Season 4 of Netflix’s Sex Education which introduced and wrapped up the entire story in 5.83 ..read more

Tasneem Elnayal is a Sudanese-British artist based in London whose work explores the intersection of cultural identity and belonging. How has your lived experience shaped your practice? My entire practice is a reflection of who I am. How I feel, what I think, what I’ve experienced, my beliefs and what I stand for. Art has many forms and I like to use my take from it to tell stories. As a Sudanese artist having always lived in London, I explore themes of belonging and the intersection of cultural identity. What are some of your biggest influences and motivations in your work? What issues are yo ..read more

At 8pm on 17th March 2022, I gathered with 20 other activists in the basement of the Edinburgh building I was living in. It was the final meeting before our direct action to occupy a university building the next day.  Our group was a coalition formed out of a climate activist group, the university staff union solidarity group, and a Palestinian activist group. Together we formed the idea of occupying and reclaiming a university building.  We were not trying to make demands from the university administration, who seldom listen to us anyway. Rather, we occupied the building for ourselv ..read more

Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion against Ukraine in 2022 shocked the whole world, but many are unaware that the war had already started in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and military aggression in Donbas.  While, comparatively, Crimea did not experience much violence, the war in Donbas – a geographical region located in East Ukraine at the border with Russia – caused numerous casualties, massive waves of displacement and the establishment of pseudo-states that ironically brand themselves as ‘people’s republics’. Although nowadays ‘Donbas’ commonly refers to the Donetsk and Luh ..read more

Like most people I know, de-moulding is a biweekly ritual. My furniture stands two inches away from the walls and I recently had to chuck my beloved pair of cowboy boots because they got infected. But I consider myself fortunate – I won the coin toss when we moved in, meaning my room is the biggest and the airiest. My housemate’s room is half the size and getting absolutely decimated by creeping black mould.  Last winter, our broken boiler sent her to A&E with chest issues. Our pleas to the estate agents for roof repairs have been met with indifference, leaving us to contend with leak ..read more

In their new edited collection with Pluto Press and the Transnational Institute, Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region, Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell expose the false promises of the unjust “green transition” that deems populations in the Global South expendable for the energy security of Europe. The text presents climate organisers with a roadmap for understanding and resisting the narratives of green colonialism. A crisis of capitalist imperialism The green transition is presented as a new paradigm for human civilisation, shedding its skin and ste ..read more

I’ve always been the kind of person who likes asking a lot of questions. I think I embody a Burundian proverb: ukura utabaza ugasaza utamenye. This translates as: “If you grow up without asking, you get old without knowing.”  Our lives begin in small ways; it’s like drops of rain that become little streams and then, finally, great rivers that flow into the ocean. I arrived in the UK at the end of 2022 through many countries, eight years after I had left my own country, Burundi. If someone had told me that I was going to end up in the United Kingdom, I’d have thought they were dreaming – b ..read more