Edinburgh to celebrate Asian community at inaugural awards

Leading figures across all areas of the capital’s Asian community are set to be honoured at the first awards of its kind for Edinburgh, as nominations are announced.

Safyaan Sharif who is nominated for the Asian Outstanding Performer 2018 award. Pic: Donald MacLeod

Scotland cricketer Safyaan Sharif, nominated for outstanding performer, and seven-year-old Adwita Choudhury, up for the young talent award are amongst the nominees to be recognised at the Edinburgh Asian Awards on March 10 at Eskmills, Musselburgh.

The event is being organised by Edinburgh’s newly launched – and only – Asian radio station, Sunoh. Sunoh’s founder, Sharjil Naweed, says he decided to launch the awards after realizing how much unrecognised Asian talent there was in the city.

“I see a lot of talent here, but what I see is that they don’t come out in the open. We have people from the Asian community who are contributing a lot to Scotland and we wanted to create role models.

“If you see the nominees that have come up we were quite surprised because those 27 nominees have very solid credentials and people are saying they never knew such people existed.”

From the initial 1000 entries Sunoh received when it opened nominations to the public, judges have now selected 27 of Edinburgh’s stand-out contributors to the Asian community across nine categories crediting the best food, shops, business figures and more.

Three further categories will honour the best Asian event, culture champion and Asian role model. Winners will be determined by a combination of the public’s votes and votes from a specially selected panel of judges.

Vedana Sharma is up for the outstanding performer award, alongside cricketer Safyaan Sharif and comedian and actress Lubna Kerr.

“There are some really inspiring and dedicated individuals on the shortlist and we look forward to recognising their achievements and hard work at the awards dinner next month,” Sharjil said.

As well as pay tribute to the known celebrities from Edinburgh’s Asian community, the awards will commend the everyday people who have helped make a difference. Naina Minhas, nominated in the community worker category, manages Nari Kallyan Shangho Ltd (NKS), who support South Asian women and families in Edinburgh facing isolation and assist them in integrating into the community.

Speaking about the range of inspirational figures who will attend the awards, Sharjil said: “People are saying that ‘we never knew that such people existed within us’, so this is also to bring out to the community more awareness that there are people doing exceptional work within the city.”

Sharjil credits the launch of his radio station with bringing the Capital’s Asian community together; seeing a dramatic increase in his listenership spurred him on to take on the challenge of organising the Edinburgh Asian Awards.

“There was nothing local here and not many people from the Asian community are on social media, but if you mix music, especially Bollywood music with some news and speaking people really like it.

“We started with about 20 listeners and now in Edinburgh alone we have 4,000, with 95,000 listeners around the world last month”.

The Edinburgh Asian Awards will take place on March 10 at Eskmills, Musselburgh. Tickets can be purchased online via www.tickettailor.com/events/sunohedinburgh/221660