Latest news with #BrightIdeas
Telegraph
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Choose to have fortitude: life lessons from Andi and Miquita Oliver
Anita Rani is finding out how you can live your best life on her new podcast, Bright Ideas with Anita Rani, in partnership with EE. In the latest episode she gets double the life hacks with mother and daughter duo Andi and Miquita Oliver. Andi is a top TV chef, best known for her appearances on Great British Menu, now in its 20th series, while Miquita was a household name on T4 and Popworld in her teenage years, and has gone from strength to strength ever since. More recently, they have been winning over audiences with their podcasts Stirring It Up and Miss Me?, the latter of which Miquita hosts with childhood best friend and singer Lily Allen. Sitting down with Anita, the pair explore what it takes to be happy during and after periods of adversity. Drawing on her experiences as a single mother, Andi discusses some of the toughest moments in her life and what got her through them – 'You have to choose to have fortitude and step towards the light' – while they both reflect on their journey rediscovering their Caribbean heritage with their show The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita: 'They were having a drumming circle ceremony, and we got out the van and they all said, 'Welcome home.' I couldn't stop crying.' They also talk about the importance of a holistic approach to life, surrounding themselves with good people, the challenges of staying organised – and which apps can help – and why they are each others' best friends. For all their chat, laughter and advice, enjoy the full episode with Andi and Miquita Oliver Bright Ideas with Anita Rani wherever you listen to your podcasts. For more tips, life hacks, insights and stories, listen to Bright Ideas with Anita Rani on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be released weekly on Wednesdays.
Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Bright Ideas with Anita Rani: the new podcast coming soon
What does your gut microbiome really do? What's the best app to learn a new language? How do you start a business? What's the best thing to cook in an air fryer? What does living your best life really mean? Anita Rani is finding it all out – and more – as she sits down with celebrities and experts to uncover the tips, tech, life hacks and bright ideas they use to make life a little happier every day in a new podcast in partnership with EE, Bright Ideas with Anita Rani. Kicking off her career in media more than 20 years ago, Anita is now presenter of Countryfile and Radio 4's Woman's Hour, and will bring her infectious optimism and insatiable curiosity to the podcast to unearth the unexpected, the heart-warming, the practical and the insightful. Every week Anita will be joined by a different guest for a conversation about how they have fostered happiness in their own lives. Each episode covers four areas of our worlds that combine to make up a flourishing life: our home lives, work and careers, our appetite to learn new things, and how we unwind and have fun. Kicking off the first episode with Anita will be doctor, TV presenter, author and columnist Dr Ranj Singh, sharing his insights into what makes up a happy, healthy life. After beginning his career as an NHS clinician, Ranj's TV career took off after he won a children's Bafta award for Get Well Soon. As a passionate advocate for mental health, he'll be talking to Anita about the small changes we can all make to add some brightness to our lives – including the importance of dancing – as well as how his experience of coming out as an Asian man has impacted his understanding of happiness, acceptance and confidence. Anita will also be joined by Dr Julie Smith – clinical psychologist, online educator and bestselling author with a combined audience of 10 million. She shares informative and easy-to-digest videos, tips and advice online about how we can all look after our mental health, and will be passing on her best hacks and insights to Anita. Bake Off legend and TV chef Nadiya Hussain will also be revealing her best advice for a brighter life, as well as how she deals with the constant question of juggling motherhood and career – 'I don't think anyone is asking Jamie Oliver who's looking after his kids!' – and the importance of home. Also sitting down to chat will be mother-and-daughter duo Andi and Miquita Oliver – each with their own impressive careers as TV chef and presenter respectively; comedy legend and Pointless presenter Alexander Armstrong; trailblazing sports presenter Kirsty Gallacher; This Morning host Ben Shephard; gut health expert and nutritionist Dr Megan Rossi; and entrepreneur and notonthehighstreet founder Holly Tucker MBE.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Yahoo
How Japan's Wajima-nuri Artisans Are Bouncing Back After the Earthquake
Alla Tsyganova/Getty When Suzanne Ross, an English-born artisan based on Japan's Noto Peninsula, began her 40-year career making traditional Japanese lacquerware, she was told repeatedly that only men could make Wajima-nuri. To create Wajima-nuri, one of the oldest forms of lacquerware in Japan, one must painstakingly apply urushi (lacquer made from tree sap) to the object—say, a bowl or dish—let it dry, then repeat the process dozens of times. This technique, born in the city of Wajima, builds the resilience of the wood and the durability of the finished products. It also depends on the persistence and perseverance of its practitioners, such as Ross. Decades into fine-tuning her craft and growing her business, she never faltered—until a year ago, when the ground in her Wajima studio opened up beneath her feet. On January 1, 2024, the Noto Peninsula in Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture was hit by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake. More than 400 died and thousands of buildings were destroyed, including the studios and homes of many Wajima-nuri artisans, thus jeopardizing the future of the centuries-old craft. Ross is one of thousands of residents from Noto who have since relocated to Kanazawa, Ishikawa's capital. Kanazawa's appeal among those impacted by the Noto earthquake is not only its proximity to the peninsula, but also its support for evacuees and craftspeople. The city is offering displaced artisans—Wajima-nuri artists, silk painters, kimono makers, and more—who have been forced to relocate to Kanazawa subsidies of up to ¥500,000 (about $3,300) to set up new studios, no repayment necessary. Ross says that her immediate instinct after the earthquake was to leave Japan, but she ultimately concluded, in part thanks to the city-offered subsidy, that she would remain and rebuild her business in Kanazawa. Kanazawa, Japan is featured in Bright Ideas in Travel 2024, Condé Nast Traveler's list of the players, places, and projects moving the travel industry into the future. For its financial support of Japanese artists affected by the 2024 Noto earthquake, we honored the city of Kanazawa as a destination committed to the values of community and inclusion. On top of the ¥500,000 subsidy, the city has also waived fees and sales commissions for Noto artisans exhibiting in Ginza no Kanazawa, an art gallery in Tokyo, and listed the names of artisans for free in the city's online craft catalog (artists usually pay a fee for inclusion). The Kanazawa city government has also compiled sample itineraries that include local tourism experiences, from tea ceremonies to silk-dyeing workshops, and it donates a portion of the revenue from bookings to Noto's recovery. The city has also been organizing trade events, including the Support Noto craft fair held in Kanazawa Station in November 2024, where Noto artisans working in Wajima-nuri, Suzu-yaki pottery, and textiles came together to sell their products. At the helm of the craft fair was Koichi Ofuji, an energetic Wajima-nuri artist who was the first to receive the city's relief subsidy. The money allowed Ofuji to open the Urushi no Sato Ofuji gallery in the northern part of Kanazawa, which also functions as an operational base for reconstruction efforts on the Noto Peninsula. He convinced other displaced artisans to join him, saying, 'We will make a big business in Kanazawa. Just see.' The gallery exhibits products that survived the earthquake, in addition to housing craftspeople who lost their homes and workshops, so that they can continue making and selling. This sense of dignity is important to Ofuji: Department stores around Japan offered to buy his old wares, but he refused, saying that he wants to receive orders for new pieces, rather than pity. Kanazawa's support of Noto's craft heritage is guided by a long history of cultivating of the arts in times of upheaval. It goes back all the way to the 16th century, when the region's samurai lords transformed a weapons factory into a craft workshop to appease the ruling shogunate and maintain a hard-won peace. In November 2023, a report by the Nikkei, a Japanese news organization, determined that, among major Japanese cities, Kanazawa spends the most per capita on arts and culture projects (¥3,034.50, or roughly $20, per resident: 1.6 times more than Toyonaka, in Osaka Prefecture, the second-ranking city). Ofuji says that supporting the Wajima-nuri industry is so important because, for the artisans, 'making crafts is their life.' The relationship between craft and artisan is symbiotic: The survival of the craft depends upon the survival of artisans continuing to make it. 'The earthquake has revealed the problems' that Wajima-nuri was already facing, says Ofuji, as many of the region's shrinking group of artisans were already facing economic uncertainty prior to the devastating natural disaster. To prevent the disappearance of traditional crafts, Kanazawa launched its Ichigo Ichie program in 2013, which supports both the local community and the tourism economy by coordinating collaborations between travel agencies and craftspeople and arranging tourist visits to private studios. It's mutually beneficial: Travelers get a deeper look into the destination's cultural heritage, and artisans receive income that helps them continue to practice their craft. After a slow start, the Ichigo Ichie program is now reaping benefits for both Kanazawa's tourism scene and its artisans. Hitoshi Maida, a third-generation practitioner of Kaga yūzen, a 500-year-old fabric-dyeing technique from Kanazawa, is just one artisan who has seen the material benefit of tourists' visits to his studio. Over the past two years, he has made several impactful sales to visitors, including a kimono for ¥1 million (about $6,650) and a painting by his late father for ¥770,000 (about $5,100). This economic impact has helped Maida's mission to nurture the future of traditional crafts; last year, he began recruiting teenage apprentices. Yuriko Endo, CMO of the Kanazawa City Tourism Association, says that visitors' requests for the program doubled between 2023 and 2024 and that she is 'most happy when a customer purchases an artist's work.' Before the earthquake destroyed her studio, gallery, and home, Ross had been imagining a project with a similar ethos to the Ichigo Ichie program that would harness tourism to support Noto's artisan economy by bringing visitors to Wajima to meet craftspeople. The longstanding local model, she says, has been to sell products abroad rather than bring visitors to meet and buy directly from craftspeople. Ross's idea found little traction in Noto, which she puts down to its rural setting: 'It can be a bit of an island,' she says. But she's hoping that things will be different in Kanazawa. The city has a different mentality, she says, more flexible and international. 'I'm hoping that in Kanazawa it might be easier to get people [from the tourism sector] to come along with me,' she says. Finding her feet in Kanazawa has been a long and difficult process, but she's no stranger to persistence. 'You develop a certain tolerance for the long process,' Ross says of Wajima-nuri and of life as an artisan. While some artisans are rebuilding their lives in Kanazawa, others are focused on Noto. Takahiro Taya is the 10th-generation owner of Wajima's 200-year-old Taya Shikkiten lacquerware company, whose offices and atelier were destroyed in the earthquake. From his base in Kanazawa, he envisions a 'creative reconstruction' of Wajima, building back better than before. He hopes to achieve this by creating a Wajima-nuri village, a place where craftspeople can gather, work, and temporarily live. Travel to Noto is currently still limited, and rebuilding is 'just at a starting line,' Taya says, but he still believes that tourism, executed in a similar way to Kanazawa's Ichigo Ichie program, could be a turning point in Noto's recovery—from both the disaster and the economic and depopulation issues it faced before. This vision is part of Taya's longstanding mission to deepen people's understanding of Wajima-nuri; In Kanazawa, he runs Crafeat (a play on craft and eat), a six-seat kaiseki restaurant that promotes the craft by serving each course on Wajima-nuri tableware. Taya's confidence in the future lies in the enduring strength of the Wajima-nuri community, even while it remains dispersed. No matter how many coats are added, Wajima-nuri lacquerware is only ever as strong as its base, he explains: 'The community is the base of Wajima-nuri.' To read about more of Condé Nast Traveler's Bright Ideas in Travel honorees like Kanazawa, Japan, see the full list for 2024. Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler The Latest Stories from Condé Nast Traveler Want to be the first to know? Sign up to our newsletters for travel inspiration and tips 45 Abandoned Places Around the World That You Can Visit The Cheapest Nicest Hotels in Paris The Women Who Travel Power List 2025
