This post was originally published on our Medium blog.
How do I begin this post without sounding like a cliché about this most “challenging and unprecedented” time? By telling you instead that Living Hyphen’s second year has been bursting with unexpected opportunities and once unimaginable possibilities.
In the backdrop of a global pandemic that has brought so much chaos, anguish, and loss, we have been immensely fortunate to carve out a safe and tender pocket for ourselves to find new ways to thrive, create, and continue to connect.
It always feels uncomfortable writing “success” or “milestone” posts. I often worry that it comes off as arrogant and immodest––even more so now knowing that so many are struggling.
But as I repeatedly tell myself: we live in a world where there is always something more to chase, more to achieve, more to give and it is so crucial that we pause and recognize our efforts and all the fruits that they bear. And I guess it’s precisely because this year has been so full of grief that I want to take a moment to take stock of the good, to express gratitude for all we’ve been able to accomplish despite the messiness of 2020. To speak it out loud feels so much more crucial now more than ever.
And so, for our second rotation around the sun, I happily share all the meaningful, powerful, and significant things that Living Hyphen has manifested!
Broadening Accessibility through Virtual Workshops
We had partnerships lined up with local libraries and other cultural organizations for every month of this year but almost all of that was put on pause, postponed, or cancelled indefinitely because of, well, you already know.
And so began our inevitable pivot to virtual! Like everyone else, we have had to explore new ways of delivering our programming and connecting with our community. After feeling lost and disoriented for much of the spring, we decided to experiment with virtual and hosted our first online writing workshops in June.
31 workshops, 61 hours, and over 160 participants later, I am proud to say that this pivot has been an unbelievably successful and fruitful one. Not only have we been able to replicate that same magic from our in-person events, but we’ve also broadened our reach. We’ve sold out nearly every single workshop over the summer and had attendees join us from New Brunswick, British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan…and even across the border in various states of the USA!
The pivot to virtual has allowed us to reach a goal we had set for ourselves but never quite knew how to achieve: wider accessibility for our programs across the country! Admittedly, this outcome was entirely accidental on our part, but it has now expanded our horizons and challenged us to approach our program delivery with accessibility top of mind.
We are just beginning to recognize all that is possible with virtual and hope to continue carving out new ways to reduce the barriers to our programming — physical and financial.
Deepening Old Partnerships and Forging New Ones
After solidifying our virtual programming over the summer, we then switched our focus on finding relevant partnerships that would help us reach new communities of hyphenated Canadians with whom we haven’t yet connected. How do we plan on doing that? By deepening old partnerships and forging new ones with local libraries, media platforms, and other cultural institutions with access to networks all across North America!
We’re so proud to partner with Atlas Obscura, Toronto Public Library, Culture Days, Markham Public Library, Wanderful, Operation Groundswell, Rising Youth at TakingITGlobal, and many more in the works.
These partnerships are so important to us as it makes the load of this work so much lighter. Being able to deliver our work to existing like-minded communities and bring them into our own community makes us all so much stronger.
Circulation in Library Systems
This year, we reached the significant milestone of having our publication available in libraries from coast to coast! From Nova Scotia all the way to British Columbia, our small but mighty magazine is touching lives across the nation.
Libraries have been a particularly significant achievement for us because it symbolizes the kind of equitable distribution that we aspire towards. Libraries pay full retail price for the publications they shelve, giving us an opportunity to recover production costs while also offering the magazine for free to those who might not otherwise have the financial access to purchase one themselves.
Our magazine is not cheap and will likely never be. At a retail price of $30, our magazine is definitely on the high end of publications. This means that the cost of Living Hyphen is prohibitive for many, especially for the very communities we aim to serve. There is no skirting around this issue.
But in this (flawed and exploitative) capitalist system we live in, the voices and stories of marginalized communities have all too often been undervalued and cheapened. And in this (flawed and exploitative) capitalist system, value is recognized through price.
Our price point is a stand and a statement to recognize the worth of our voices and our stories.
Libraries have given us the chance to do all the things we aim to do — signal our worth, achieve accessibility, and strive towards financial sustainability.
**If you’re interested in helping us get into more libraries, please get in touch and I can tell you how to request a purchase at your local library system!
Creating Issue 2: Across Generations
That’s right! We are currently in the process of curating and creating Issue 2: Across Generations! The deadline to submit was all the way back in late February (what seems like an eternity ago!) just weeks before the world went into lockdown and turned our daily routines entirely upside down.
We received over 600 submissions from artists and writers all across the country! We’ve taken our time reviewing each and every single story giving them the time and attention they deserve.
We’re now back in the studio and in the process of curating all the stories to produce what will be a powerful homage to intergenerational storytelling!
Reaffirming Our Solidarity
Last but not least, the events of this year have cemented our commitment to stand in solidarity with oppressed groups. From the inequities that COVID-19 has so ruthlessly revealed to the most recent wave of the BLM movement, we simply cannot ignore the fact that we––each and every single one of us–– have a role and responsibility to dismantle systems of oppression and fight for justice.
This year has confirmed and clarified in no uncertain terms our commitment to using our publication and platform as a vehicle to uplift the voices and stories of those who have historically been and currently are underrepresented. This year has forced us to expand our solidarity statement to express not only a commitment to and call to action for reconciliation but for anti-racism too:
Living Hyphen strives to work in solidarity with the struggles of Indigenous nations for sovereignty, land, and freedom. We strive to work in solidarity across racial lines to dismantle white supremacy and towards our shared liberation.
As Angela Davis so poignantly articulated, “you have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” And so we act.
All of the Possibilities We Could Not See
It’s strange to think that this pandemic has brought light into our lives at Living Hyphen. And yet it has. It has illuminated new paths for us, clarified our direction, and reinvigorated us in our mission to reshape the mainstream and to turn up the volume on voices that often go unheard.
On our second birthday, we sit and celebrate all the possibilities we once could not see but are our reality now!
