Amy Dawson

Cultural activist Ansel Wong has spent half a century using art to fight for change, playing pivotal roles in UK Black History Month and Notting Hill Carnival. We asked him to tell his London story… ‘I grew up in Trinidad & Tobago and came to the UK in 1965 to study in Hull, before moving to the capital. London in the late 1960s and early 1970s was pretty exciting, particularly for someone who had been living in Yorkshire! It was the centre of everything: you were able to meet everybody here. That was crucial. This was the psychedelic ’60s, and we were engaged with the avant-garde. For me, being a black man in London at that time meant being immersed in the counterculture, which had a strong link with black culture. We took our drive from what was happening in the USA: for instance, the ‘Black Is Beautiful’ movement. The West Indian Students Centre in Earl’s Court was a key focal point at the time. It was there that I encountered some of my major influences, like the Caribbean Artists Movement, which was set up by writers such as Andrew Salkey and John La Rose. As young students they had almost a celebrity status for us: we were emboldened by them, as well as by the politics of people such as the radical activist Michael X. My emphasis has always been on culture and the arts, as well as local politics. I wanted, always, to give access to people’s voices. In 1969 I set up a theatre group, Black Arts Workshop, which was an opportunity for young people to say important things t

Accompanied by three friends, Jon Cooper has run the entire length of the London tube network above ground, notching up more than 350 miles… ‘Back in 2014, I was looking for a new challenge that would raise some money for charity. I had been running for a few years and had done 48 miles around Jersey, but I would still have classed myself as a casual runner. The flash of inspiration came when I was meeting some friends in Farringdon to watch the football. There was an issue on the tube, and I remember thinking: I could probably just run there. That’s when it dawned on me that we really could try and run all the different tube lines. The four of us –  Simon Gibbs, Adam Broadbent, Sébastien Hine and I – did some research and discovered that the combined length of all 11 lines on the London Underground network is 250 miles. Before we began, we set ourselves a few rules. Going from station to station as directly as possible, all lines without separate branches had to be run in one go. Any separate branches (for example, on the Northern line) had to be completed in another single run. Any overlapping lines or branches had to be run multiple times. As a result, in the end we actually ran a whopping 362 miles, finishing the challenge in 23 separate runs. These ranged in length from two-and-a-half miles to 36 miles – considerably longer than a marathon. The whole thing took us 70 hours over the space of 18 months. We were fitting the runs in at the weekends, and had to deal with vari

Robin Weir knows everything there is to know about ice cream, and his vast collection of memorabilia is the star of a new exhibition devoted to the cold stuff… ‘I first tasted ice cream in 1946, when I was eight or nine years old, outside Valentines Park in Ilford. My mother, my sister and I queued up for ages, because ice cream had been banned due to rationing during the Second World War. It was a hot summer day and the ice cream was so cold, unlike anything I had ever eaten before. It was a total shock: wow! What really got me interested in ice cream, though, was one Saturday at the supermarket in Shepherd’s Bush. My three children snuck a great big tub of ice cream into the basket. At home I had a look at it, and there was hardly a single natural ingredient. It went down the waste disposal unit, and I said: Come on, we’re going out to buy an ice cream machine. I found the recipe leaflet that came with the machine very tame, and so were most books I could find about ice cream, so I started buying very old books instead. Then I moved on to penny licks: the small glasses they used to serve ice creams in before cones. Over the course of the last 40 years, my wife and I have accumulated around 14,000 items of ice-cream memorabilia and co-written four books about ice creams, sorbets, gelati and other frozen delights. Once I’d started experimenting and collecting, I got into the science of ice cream. I run a pharmaceutical company, and if I get involved in anything, I need to kno

This week, on June 7th, the artist formerly known as Prince would have celebrated his 60th birthday.  But just because the purple pioneer is sadly no longer with us in person, doesn't mean we can't toast his fabulously funky legacy in style. So grab your raspberry beret, and head on down to one of these special events. Because getting down on the dancefloor is most certainly what he would have wanted. Party (like it’s 1999)The most apt way to pay tribute to the life of Prince Rogers Nelson is, of course, to dance your ass off to his heaving back catalogue. Shoreditch Platform hosts a Purple Music party on the occasion of what would have been Prince’s birthday, with sublime DJs Osunlade and Karizma at the controls. Shoreditch Platform. Thu Jun 7. Free before 10pm, £5 after. Relive an iconic London gigCafé de Paris and the PRN Foundation (a non-profit made up of Prince’s former employees) are marking the 20 years since they hosted Prince’s invite-only ‘Beautiful Strange’ gig, which was filmed and then released on VHS only, with a purple party on Thursday. The bill includes music from New Purple Celebration, the live act devoted to His Royal Badness, as well as talks and stories from Paisley Park staffers. Café de Paris. Thu Jun 7. £50.Nab tickets for an epic tributeIn the absence of Prince himself, perhaps the next best thing is a night of his music performed by New Power Generation, the band who toured, wrote and recorded with him. There’s plenty of time to gather your dearly

After hitting rock bottom following a road accident, Shaina West reinvented herself as a cartoon-inspired martial artist and Instagram star: The Samurider… ‘My motorbike accident was four years ago now. I don’t actually remember it, but from what witnesses said, I was splitting lanes and a van pulled out to the right and cut me off. I was pretty badly concussed, fractured my neck and broke my thumb. My boyfriend at the time broke up with me before I even had the chance to leave the hospital. Because I couldn’t fulfil my contract at work, they had to let me go. It was a low point in my life, but thinking about it now, it was absolutely necessary. I don’t think I would have been able to muster up the same motivation if I hadn’t had that setback. Growing up, I was always really into comic books, action movies, video games and all that superhero stuff. After my accident, I was stuck in the house for weeks on end and binge-watched anime shows. I had this feeling that I wanted to become a real-life anime character. Something inside me said: You know what? I’m going to get up from my bed and start teaching myself martial arts! I literally taught myself in my bedroom, using YouTube and other internet tutorials. I started off by training with a couple of plastic knives. My mum, who is quite traditionally Ghanaian, was worried to say the least! After being in my room for several weeks, I suddenly had what probably appeared to her to be quite erratic and extreme hobbies – though she’s c

As the Stones hit town this week, here's our four paths to satisfaction... 1 See the lads live in concert. First off, in case you’ve missed it, The Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World (™) bring their No Filter tour to town this week. They play London Stadium on May 22 and 25, then Twickenham on June 19. Supports for different shows include Liam Gallagher, Florence + The Machine and James Bay. Tickets are still available, and if reviews of the European leg of the tour are anything to go by, the snake-hipped septuagenarians are still in their prime. But if you can’t see them live, there are other Stonesy shindigs to be aware of...2 Shop at a Stones pop-up. Fancy resting your rock ’n’ roll rear on a Rolling Stones velvet armchair, for a mere £10,000? Perhaps while quaffing your £44.99 Rolling Stones gin? Fans of varying pocket depths can get their sticky fingers on exclusive merch at a new Stones pop-up at Selfridges, open until June 3. Alternatively, there’s a free display of their most flamboyant fashions and the opportunity to watch recent concert film ‘Havana Moon’ in store. 3  Watch the band at work 50 years ago. Jean-Luc Godard’s experimental rock doc ‘One Plus One’, aka ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, is as much a provocative portrait of a troubled and violent moment in counter-cultural history as it is a fantastically detailed depiction of the Stones at work. Catch it on the big screen tonight (May 22), as part of the BFI’s Uprising: The Spirit of ’68 season. 4  Finally,