Last week you may have seen a post on the Guardian Leeds website about the UK Observing Diary. Here we will give a little more information on the project, it's background, future and how it is helping to raise awareness of Leeds in the Far East.
Background
Last year our very own Shang Ting Peng arrived in England after studying in Barcelona for three years. During her early days here in the UK she began to photograph and document interesting places, products or projects. This led to her creating the Facebook Page: England Observing Diary. Since then, a friend in London also contributes to the page giving a unique insight into both the North and South of England. The page now focuses on two cities: Leeds and London.
Having studied Fashion Communication at the European Institute of Design in Barcelona, Shang Ting already had a considerable amount of experience in blogging, cool-hunting and trend research. She already had a blog that attracted 1000s of monthly visitors, but this project had a different setting:
"I arrived in England an year ago from Barcelona, and I never been to this country before. I thought it’ll be interesting to document the stage of what I feel about being in a total new country. So I ask my friend in London which she lives there for quite a few years to observe England’s life with me, and putting on facebook fanpage. We always trying to make it relaxing, fun, visual, and most important, we try to keep a heart of a tourist, to be curious about every little thing in England, I think with all these elements, the readers can relate to the content."
The Page
The page has gone from strength to strength and now has more then 6000 members. Every week there are hundreds of comments and interactions with people in the far east asking questions and giving their response to the content created, Shang Ting expands further:
"Our fans are mostly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. At the moment we have daily pictures, of things we find interesting that day. We also have cool-hunting, interviews, local knowledge guides and event reports. Me and my partner’s backgrounds are both in fashion, so we love to post fashion related things. Because of The Guardian’s post and other attention, we have started to have more English fans, so now we try have both Chinese and English language posts. I guess it’s interesting for English people to see what foreigners think of their country too"
The Future
There are exciting developments happening behind the scenes at the page at the moment and discussions with international news agencies are taking place. Shang Ting has a clear aim of what she wants to achieve with page:
"I think it’s important to establish Leeds as a city outside of Europe. I’m not saying I know what Leeds represents yet, but while I observe the city’s life style, fashion, and culture, I invite England Observing Diary’s fans to get to know Leeds with me"
We will keep you up to date with developments on this project and Shang Ting's work on this blog. There are really interesting potential projects and collaborations talks taking place at the moment and we are sure that this is just the start for Shang Ting and England Observing Diary.
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 9:29AM 
