Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hello, this is Pearl Lam Podcast. I’m sitting in London and today I have invited Alex and Ed who founded RED FLAGGED. What is RED FLAGGED? Alex and Ed, please introduce yourself and explain to us and explain not to me but to the audience.
Ed Lee: Well, first, we love you, Pearl I.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know, I am lovable.
Ed Lee: You. I’m so we adore you. You are lovable. We’re so grateful to be here.
Alex Han: Can we just call your mother Pearl from now on?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh no, it makes me age.
Ed Lee: So, Sister Pearl.
Alex Han: Yeah, Sister Pearl.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Sister Pearl makes me feel like a nun. Sorry, no.
Alex Han: It does a little bit actually.
Ed Lee: It’s good point. No good point. We’ll workshop this.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh sister. Well, seems I I know I study in a convent school, but still I don’t need to be reminded.
Alex Han: Sorry, I know that’s triggering, so let’s not do that.
Ed Lee: Sorry so off topic. I’ll talk about myself first. I’m Ed Co-founder, of RED FLAGGED. I also work across brand partnerships and culture partnerships, kind of connecting brands with people across music or fashion and I’m on the inclusivity board of Soho House. And just generally I’m really passionate about bringing like emerging talents and creatives together and helping minority groups. That’s me. Who are you?
Alex Han: You. I’m Alex and I’m the other partner from RED FLAGGED and I I used to run event called Bang, which is one of the first, I would say queer event that is offers something slight different to the gay community. And now I have another adventure. It’s called ASL stands for Age, Sex and Location. It’s another queer techno party. So I’m really passionate about creating safe space for the community where they can be themselves and offer them alternative way of life. And and we started RED FLAGGED last February. So it just come up to over a year.
Ed Lee: Over a year.
Alex Han: And we are a platform agency, if you may. We want that, you know, championing the ESEA community, queer community through creativities. You know, it’s very much like what you did for, you know, the Asian contemporary artists back in the days, which is we are so much, you know, so much inspiration got from you and yeah, it what you did for them is absolutely amazing. And we want maybe emulate some of that and continue to inspire people through all the creative industry.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Why? Why did you found RED FLAGGED? What was the immediate push to found RED FLAGGED?
Ed Lee: Yeah. I mean, I think it came out of like a personal story. I am queer and Asian, so is Alex. And we felt like there was a need of this community. Like if we wanted to find like minded people, we couldn’t. Or we struggled with it in London anyway. And I was so inspired, you know, travelling to places like Hong Kong, LA and New York, there was such an amazing community. And for queer Asians, like I met some of my closest friends in LA through Queer Asian Nights and like, I can’t name any that are here in London. It’s just not a thing. And so we felt like it was needed because I saw it elsewhere and I didn’t see it.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): What is the difference between queer and gay?
Ed Lee: Good question. Yeah, well, I think queer kind of is used a little bit more. You know, I think the community feels like it’s a little bit more politically correct, but it spans across the LGBTQIA plus spectrum, whereas gay is just the one letter across that spectrum, which is the G whereas queer really embodies, you know, across all identities and sexualities. So it’s it’s used a bit more these days.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you say that it is difficult to find all those events and occasions, why? Because I thought that, I mean, I always have have gay friends and and I always have gay mafia because they all stick together, they all hang out together, they’re always in a group. So why is it so difficult when you say that you have to find, I mean, an enterprise, a social enterprise in order to bring people together. Why so difficult?
Alex Han: I think when you say like, it’s difficult because in London they do have, you know, like the gay clubs, the queer event, queer spaces, but I think they’re predominantly very white. So, you know, they’re catered for specific, you know, demographic communities and for being, you know, Asian and queer, and a lot of them are immigrants. So it’s very specific and this they really need some something that’s tailored to them. So making them feel feel seen and heard. And for us to start RED FLAGGED is no brainer because we just, you know, what experience that resonance with each other so much. You know, the first thing when we first met and we, we have very different experience like growing up, you know, he was born here from, you know, parents immigrate from Hong Kong. I was born in China. I came here when I was 16 and I am very lucky. I, I think I’ve come to term with my queerness very well. However, you know, the part of me that is with my identity, my culture, being Chinese is something that is, you know, a Chinese in UK 20 years ago, 25 years ago is something that people, you know, you feel very invisible. And when we first met, we bounded through our shared struggles. You know, we we have this deep understanding of each other, and we realised that’s, you know, when my healing start beginning, you know, like, and that’s what’s the inception of RED FLAGGED.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): OK, so RED FLAGGED is specifically a community for Eastern and a Southeast Asian, right? Eastern Asian and Southeast Asian. My God, you are completely separate the group. Why?
Ed Lee: Well, you know what?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Why don’t you have a global group with no nationalities?
Ed Lee: Well, I we are community for those that believe in the power of Eastern Southeast Asian voices. And so what you talk about is a demographic. A community is not a demographic. A community is a shared belief. And so all allies, everyone’s welcome. We did a Lunar New Year party in February. It was so amazing. There were Asians there, friends of Asian people, allies like everyone just celebrating together, a really safe, beautiful space. And so, you know, we’re not just serving a demographic. We are predominantly trying to support and enable a demographic. But we are for everyone, anyone who believes in the same thing. And so but.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I remember when I first met you, we have a long conversation. And then and then you felt that you are being invisible. I mean, I never felt that. I’m I was invisible. Yeah, we still do. And I actually thought I am too loud. I never thought I’d never have a problem about invisibility.
Ed Lee: The first comment we get at our events is it’s so amazing to see people that look like me in this space and they don’t do that. Yeah, in in London. It’s like not, I mean, you’re, I’m, you are global, international.
Alex Han: You’re a star
Ed Lee: You’re an Asian.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I am the only Chinese, so I never felt that I’m any different from them.
Ed Lee: But you were. But you were right for in just in terms of like I don’t.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I don’t even think like that. I don’t see myself different from anybody. I just see that I am who I am, who cares about.
Ed Lee: That’s your superpower, and that’s amazing.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Who cares about your skin colour or what you are, where you come from? You speak the same language I used to. I mean, I used to I, I when I was growing up. I very seldom hang out with, with Chinese. I don’t even have Chinese friends.
Ed Lee: Right.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because I was in the school with, I mean, maybe in a school there’s one Chinese or no Chinese, there’s no difference. And I felt really completely taken aback when you told me that you feel invisible because in when you feel invisible, it’s not your feeling because you don’t voice, you don’t give a voice. It’s you yourself who make yourself invisible. That’s what I always thought.
Ed Lee: Yeah, I mean, it does come with a lot of self love that is needed or a lot of just like a feeling of community. I mean, you’re lucky and blessed that you never have that feeling.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I’m blessed.
Ed Lee: We experience, we experience so many people that have that shared belief and that’s why we created it, because so many people felt like they weren’t feeling seen. But actually, through this process?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you say that they don’t feel seen is because they’re Asians or because that they felt that they are discriminated.
Alex Han: I think it’s more like the representation that is missing in the society, you know, like a media. We know when you look up a billboard, it’ll be like, you know, 6 foot 4 cisgender white man, you know, 6 packs, blue eyes and all of this that comes with it. But when you know seeing yourself, like the first movie I’ve seen, not the first movie I’ve seen the first Asian, all Asian cast, Crazy Rich Asian. We all know about it like that was I still remember that moment like I was sitting in the cinemas like oh, Chinese people start seeing this is cringe. Oh my God, it’s weird. But then within two minutes I was like, I’m climatized about this is normal to see a bunch of amazing creative like talented Asian people on the screen, you know, doing their things just like everyone else. And that representation has so important. I think that’s first time I realised, OK, the representation is finally like including us now. And that is so liberating.
Ed Lee: That’s crazy.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wow, you actually feel that? I don’t see it in that way.
Alex Han: Because you can’t. You can’t be what you cannot see.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You know that this Chinese movie with all the Chinese there.
Alex Han: Exactly. So exactly. Yes,
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, don’t you feel that? Oh, if I am a white man and I see a Chinese, how come I’m not that? Yeah, You don’t see that. Yeah.
Ed Lee: Well, let me give you some stats, right? Yeah. You know, our first event was our music mixer. We did it. It’s one of our first series with Soho House that we do and it’s like a long-term journey we have with them. And we wanted to do that because if you look at the music industry, it was around the time of the Brits, the Brit Awards where which is like a UK recognising, you know, British art music artists. You look at music charts, how many Asians are you seeing in the UK music charts?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): There’s not enough Asians to participate.
Ed Lee: There are so many Asians. There are so many Asians. You walk, you said. You see so many. What do
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You mean and you mean Asian singers, Asian performers?
Ed Lee: Well, firstly, Asian singers, performers in the charts of true lack of Brit Awards. There was no nominations last year apart from Peggy Goo in the international category. And then you look into the industry, 4% of Asians are entry level roles in the music industry. You know, that is tiny. You think about the population that is not, that’s not comparable to the actual ESEA population in the country. And so, you know, I’m purely just talking about the music industry right there.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You have to be 10 times better than the other in order to fly.
Ed Lee: Yeah, absolutely. But I think also part of it is just people feeling like it’s not an industry for them because they don’t see themselves there. And so that’s our role is to make sure we do boost representation and we’re, you know, giving people the tools to feel confident and.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think confidence is the most important.
Ed Lee: We talked about that as well before.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because without confidence, you don’t have a voice, yes.
Ed Lee: If you want.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): If you want to be seen, you must have a voice. If you want to have a voice, you must have confidence and.
Ed Lee: That’s what we try to do is we’re trying to empower people, right? We’re trying to give them, yeah.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Empower is very important.
Ed Lee: We’re trying to give them the tools to learn and, and meet and network and, you know, figure out what they want to do in terms of their their industries. We did the art mixer to join freeze thanks to you being one of those experts and all the kids are just queuing up desperate to meet you. But you know, you instilled such confidence and enablement in them, right? You gave them advice, one-on-one advice and they felt so much more comfortable and confident. I think also in our culture there’s something about us feeling like shy, like we can’t be loud, like, you know, you are obviously a very confident, amazing woman, but not everyone is that. You know. And it’s, I think it’s, it’s our role to try and make 50,000 Pearls out running around in London.
Alex Han: Exactly. Like Pearl you yourself is a representation. You don’t know it. It’s like the way the power you have that inspired us, you know, it’s like, I want to be Pearl. Who doesn’t want to be Pearl. And all the other artists out there, they look at you like, Oh my God, literally this, this light, this Northern light that you’re guiding them. So you are representation. So representation is so important. Even you know it or not, you may see it or not. Is is is there or not there?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): How about mental health? I read that that one of the functions that one of the missions that you’re helping people is by mental health. So are there a lot of mental health problem with Asians? Because a lot of them won’t even say because being Asians, you put everything inside, you don’t go and and share all your problems with people. That’s what Asians is about. We only show our strength. Yeah, absolutely. We don’t show our vulnerability.
Alex Han: Yes, I mean where do I begin in term like mental health problem and Asian is almost like synonymous. It’s, I think that our parents didn’t just like equipped us with a tool to like deal with anything that’s emotional.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, you’re not supposed to.
Alex Han: Have you seen this TikTok videos? I’m sure you’ve seen it like.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I don’t watch TikTok.
Alex Han: Video. It’s so funny. It’s.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I will learn how to watch.
Ed Lee:. We’ll send them to you. Yeah.
Alex Han: We’ll send them to you. You need to see. It’s really funny. Basically it’s this Asian kid said to his mother. He’s like, Oh my God, I’m depressed. And the mother said, you’re not depressed, you’re just hungry. I’ll make you some dumplings. And then the kids said to the mother, Oh my God, I think I’m overwhelmed. And the mother said, you’re not overwhelmed. You just need to find a wife. So this this sums up so well of you know, Asian and mental health and my experience like you know.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Your parents asked you to get married. Why aren’t you not married?
Alex Han: Of course, Yeah. All the time did.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You tell your parents that you’re gay, you’re queer.
Alex Han: I did tell. Well, I didn’t tell them. I think they found out through, you know, somehow, miraculously and.
Ed Lee: Yeah, his is like a drama.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Did you have a big drama; did you start crying?
Alex Han: Oh my God, there was not. Yeah, there was a lot of tears at the end, but I think basically my brother’s ex-girlfriend who outed me, they broke up and I think she want to get back to my mom. You know, she’s very like Crazy Rich Asian, because my mom, she is like take a mom like she always have something to say, always have a point of view. It’s her way in the way. And then they broke up and mom’s like, OK, she was out of family and she called my mom one day saying, Oh my God, it’s a shame. I can’t be your, you know, like your daughter-in-law, because that was your only chance to have a grand. She didn’t even have to finish the word yet my mom hung the phone because she knows exactly what she was talking about.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, you’re a queer, you’re gay. You can still have babies.
Alex Han: Yeah, yeah. But my mom, like I have respect to her because she’s very she she knows deep down. And I was like, OK, of course she’s my mother. And that that for me, it means a lot. And so she confronted me one day and I was, she asked me. She literally asked me, are you gay? And by just listen to her verbalising that word, it’s kind of almost like, I don’t know, I didn’t expect that from her. So I usually close my eyes the longest 2 seconds in my life like. And I said yes and we fight over it. She was crying, she was blaming me. But after two days we had same episode, same thing again, crying, tears, blaming. But then at the end she told me that you’re my son, I love you no matter what. And for someone who’s like 70 years old, you know, from mainland China, not very educated, very emotional, for her to come around in two days…
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It’s a big deal.
Alex Han: A lot of people, Western people, Western mother, they couldn’t do it. Yeah, it’s a lot because for me, nothing changed in my life. But for my mother, like her whole life probably, you know, upside down. She she always won’t have, you know, a grandchild.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You can still get a grandchild.
Ed Lee: I know, right?
Alex Han: What do you know? Mother’s expectations, right?
Ed Lee: They want it tradition, they want it obviously in a traditional way. And that’s actually one of the most popular topics in our mental health platform. We call it AA Asians Anonymous. Yeah. And it’s basically a monthly therapy session we have at Queer Britain, which is the first queer UK museum. And it’s down in the basement. They’re amazing partners of ours. And we have a queer Asian therapist giving a group therapy session to queer Asians. And it’s stories like this that Alex, you know, could could share that really instils so much, you know, hope and like they just relate to the story so much and family issues is probably like the number one reoccurring thing that comes up.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So Asian! Family issues happens everywhere. Yeah, Asian.
Alex Han: Their trauma is passing down through generations to generations to generations. You.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Never. There’s no stopping. You never have peace.
Ed Lee: No, no, I mean their way of feeling.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): If there is peace, it is not Asian.
Ed Lee: I mean, it’s cute how they show love though, right? You know, the dumplings, the cut apples, the, you know, whatever. But it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s not like there’s so much more for us to address. And I think when it comes to our demographic or the community that we have, predominantly, they feel double marginalised because it’s like they’re Asian here in the UK and they’re queer. So there’s complexities and layers between being queer and Asian.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So when you first started, how did you market RED FLAGGED in order to get your community? How do you build? How do you build your community? It’s only one year old, but but how do you all start it? Yeah
Alex Han: It was quite miraculously actually, because we, we’ve been talking about talking about it for a long time and you know, you know that after that time we were together on holiday in Ibiza. We just like.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): We’re having a wild time. Exactly.
Ed Lee: Ibiza is the magical place.
Alex Han: Well, too many margaritas, but it helps, you know, like help people to get up. So we, yeah, I think that’s, that’s the moment we’re really connected and we realised that we need to do something about it because, Oh my God, we’ve been talking about for years now. So it was last year, literally the the I think it was the Lunar new year last year, 18th of February.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You went to Lunar New Year to Ibiza.
Alex Han: No, June, July. I mean the start of RED FLAGGED.
Ed Lee: Yeah, Ibiza was the summer before.
Alex Han: So we start we had our first activation and that when we had what almost 300,000 views like beyond our wildest dream.
Ed Lee: In like 5 days, we just did a video, yeah, we worked with our friend who’s like a designer and we did a manifesto video, which was basically what we stand for, you know, some of the hate kind of crime comments that we get. Just things that we heard from our community and things that we feel like we face in real life.
Alex Han: Like a representation, all of their lack of it, you know, people really resonated with it.
Ed Lee: Yeah. So the stats.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Resonated.
Ed Lee: Yeah, yeah. And then everyone started sharing it. We had so much support. We’re quite lucky. You know, some of our friends are public figures who have a massive following. They were sharing it, too, and it went viral. I mean, 3 / 300,000 views in five days was like, mental. And yeah, it kind of started from there, yeah.
Alex Han: It propelled us basically from there.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wow. And then did you do any advertising then?
Ed Lee: No, we need some money for that.
Alex Han: Not paid, but you know, our community is up there promoting for us literally in a most people coming back literally bring their friends and their colleagues and the work got spread because we are at capacity. To be honest, we are. We’re having about 15 peoples every day, every every month. The nature of it, you can’t have it too big
Pearl Lam (林明珠): How do you raise raise funds?
Alex Han: We have put our own money sometimes and effort and time into it for the last.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So audience donate to RED FLAGGED
Alex Han: Yes, thanks.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Please donate to them.
Alex Han: Please get in touch, we really need it. If you, you know, think something, this is something you’re passionate about. You know any queer Asian philanthropy out there? If you know any, please let us know.
Ed Lee: We also have like brand sponsorship too. So obviously, my experience is through brand partnerships and we’ve been able to kind of almost sell our kind of activations to brands so that we can get funding to actually make those activations happen.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So how many brands did you collaborate with?
Ed Lee: So far we’ve probably done like a handful, probably like 5 or so.
Alex Han: Even more than that, actually.
Ed Lee: Probably more with more to come.
Alex Han: Yeah, we have Soho House, Ciroc.
Ed Lee: Yes like a bunch of brands but Ciroc in particular actually sponsored a Fashion Week dinner we did. We bought together Asians and fashion all together which was amazing. Was Co-hosted with Chet lo, Izzy Du and a Asaitakeaway 3 amazing Asian designers in the city and they all brought together the Asians that they knew in in the field because there’s never a moment where we all just get together and talk about being Asian and fashion because they have similarities being in the field. And there’s, you know, it was so great to have them all connect, sit down, have dinner. Ciroc sponsored that for Fashion Week. We had photographers, models, nail artists, designers, videographers, like a whole bunch of people in the creative field and that was just amazing. So yeah, that was really exciting.
Alex Han: It’s amazing to see like all these Asian people in one room, you know, all these Asian faces like, you know, you can have a top designer to the grassroot, all of the one place. And you know, it’s all like, because we were talking about representation. You know, representation is everything for us because how can you, how can we change that? How can we change that? It’s a long game, right? It’s been going on for years and years, yes, but I think by creating safe space like the, the fashion event we have, the art event, you know, in itself is a representation. So it’s like this tiny, tiny, tiny, small, all these tiny, small wings that accumulate into hopefully a societal change one day. And that’s what we’re trying to do here.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So how many how many times do you have a community gathering?
Ed Lee: We try like monthly pretty much.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Monthly. Wow, that’s not bad.
Alex Han: Yeah, we had more than that last. Well, actually.
Ed Lee: I mean, we definitely have monthly because our therapy is absolutely monthly. And then on top of that, we typically have maybe 1.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you say a monthly gathering, how many people will be there?
Ed Lee: Oh, it it varies. So sometimes you want it to be intimate because sometimes intimacy is power. And then sometimes we want to bring as many people as possible. So the Lunar New Year one was like over 100 people, which is really special, so.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So how much time do you both have in order to invest in RED FLAGGED? Because you’re very busy. You’re very busy, right? So how are you going to to put your time to invest in?
Ed Lee: We it just means so much to us and it means so much to everyone we talk to.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So it’s your passion.
Ed Lee: It’s our passion.
Alex Han: It doesn’t feel like working. It’s like something we both very not, I wouldn’t say even enjoy. We’re just passionate about it. It’s, it’s what we do is like, you know, enrich our life in all the ways I, I can imagine, you know, since.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And through that, you must have met many friends as well.
Alex Han: Absolutely
Ed Lee: So many, so many like special people as well, amazingly talented Asians to when we had this idea in Ibiza because we’re Leos, both of us. So we’re just.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Me too.
Alex Han: Oh, no way!
Ed Lee: Trifecta Leos. And so we just connected like crazy. And I said to him, I want to help other people meet their Alex’s. And he’s like, I want to help other people meet their heads. And we’ve managed to do that. You know, I want in the music mixer, we had a journalist from Enemy be there. And then we also had a music artist, Jason Kwan, and they met after the music mixer that we created and she interviewed him for an editorial, an enemy. And you know, we were in the Trans March a few weeks ago and someone that came to our Lunar New Year event came up to us like, Oh my God. Hey, good to see you. Like I’m having lunch with Elaine, who I met at your Lunar New Year party next week. And it’s that is proof of formula, like they’re meeting their Alex’s and it’s happening.
Alex Han: It came a full circle. You know, when you see that the fruit of your labour, like, wow, it still is kind of surreal because it’s so weird that we just want to do something we didn’t expect to see, you know, people coming up to me so.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you when we said that the community, so does the community register with RED FLAGGED or you just made made announcement and people just come and get it?
Alex Han: Yeah, yeah. And.
Ed Lee: That right now.
Alex Han: Yeah, just like, you know, there are actual people and there’s also these invisible ones that you probably reach through social media. And so, yeah, the community we built slowly over time, but.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you have no discrimination, whoever called you, whoever come in.
Ed Lee: No, as, as you know, I mean by, by the way it’s advertised and when they see our community, they pretty much are allies. Like it doesn’t reach people who are going to be racist. It just doesn’t.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): What is what are you thinking about the future? How are you going to developed RED FLAGGED? Are you going to make it an international thing or what is your global thing? What’s your plan? What’s your plan?
Alex Han: What is our plan, first of all, the funding so potential investor out there?
Ed Lee: Get out your wallet.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Get out your wallet!
Alex Han: If we are, you know, have some funding so we can really do amazing things with it. First of all, amplify the things we do with a a we want to take into.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But a a must be very interesting that and that you just you even supply psychiatry psychologist to deal with people’s mental health. It’s like it’s like the AA that you have a group talk and all that. That’s really amazing.
Alex Han: It’s we can’t take all the credit we have to say because we have working with amazing partners like, you know, Queer Britain, which is first ever queer museum in, in, in London. I’m sure you know I.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I don’t know. Where is it?
Ed Lee: King’s Cross. We will take you.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Please. I love to, yeah.
Ed Lee: You would love it.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): What is the museum talking about? Queer Museuem?
Ed Lee: Alll queer history, Yeah, it’s incredible.
Alex Han: And queer culture, which is the first?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): We should do a podcast on queer.
Alex Han: Oh, you should definitely you should do one with Dan Vo maybe he’s, yeah, he’s a trustee for Queer Britain. And also he’s Asian, the director for Sesame Institution of Art, and he’s actually one of our experts at Art Mixer. So. So if we have funding, we can amplify AA because AA now we can only take on 15 people at a time. And that there’s something I want more people to benefit from it.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, too limited.
Alex Han: Yeah, it’s too limited. We we’ve been in talk with university, you know, all the universities across London, they have so many international Asian students. If we manage to put size into university, have collaboration that can benefit so much for international students who come to London at such a young age to be away from the family, and I think that’ll be really, you know, it’s a change for the society for good.
Ed Lee: Scaling that would be incredible because we can do more sessions. You can offer one on free, one-on-one sessions remotely. You can you know, we can really expand AA to be so powerful, like we literally change lives in these sessions. Of course it’s confidential. We’re going to talk about what happens in the sessions, but people are. It means so much to these people that can’t. It’s incredible.
Alex Han: But it’s changed my life, you know, personally, because you know, before AA me and Ed, we, we attended every single sessions, we at AA and it’s confrontational, it’s sensitive as it may, but I’m so glad we did it because I, I addressed. That’s one of the challenges from May for myself personally, because I addressed those, you know, repressed the sensitive emotion. He’s been there for so long and I just never had the courage to do it because first of all, reduce the cost for AA is zero cost for for anyone who are attending it. We make absolute safe space at Queer Britain and we over therapy are Asian and queer because talking about, you know, difficulty of AA, you know, finding a therapist, mental health. It’s impossible to find a queer Asian therapist. So we all of this and when each each time when we organise event me and Ed, we are working together with a therapist. So make sure it’s a safe space. It’s a topic that is not too aggressive on the nose but still encourage people to join and open up.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So this is only one plan.
Alex Han: There’s only one.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, what is the other ones?
Ed Lee: Well, I think we can offer so much to brands actually and that’s something that we really want to.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Brands once associated with Trump is now lifted diversity.
Ed Lee: I know it is that’s that’s a real challenge we’re facing is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. But also on top of that, it’s brands are hurting because the economy is in shift of course. And so their budgets are all going towards things that will drive conversion, paid media, things like that. And so community activations are becoming a little bit more, they’re going more on the back, they’re suffering. And but it’s our job to educate them and say, actually, because there’s so many statistics that show that if brands attach themselves to authentic, diverse communities that promote inclusion, they will have better engagement rates on their social. They will have, especially the Gen Z consumer, they will have the more inclined to purchase. There’s so many like benefits to these brands. And we are the authentic. We are by agents for Asians, you know, and for queer by queer. So there’s so much we can offer for them, but and it’s been working. I mean, we did a swap campaign, we know we’ve done a bunch of Soho House, we are talking to other major brands. And so it’s exciting. We just want to keep doing that.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s great. Yeah, it’s such a pleasure to speak to you all because, you know, it’s really important to look into benefits and to help people. I’m so proud of you boys.
Alex Han: Thank you, Pearl.
Ed Lee: Thank you, Pearl.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you for joining me. Thank you.
Ed Lee: Boom. And then you can have your dinner. Oh my God.
