30/10/2012
We're still in the process of applying for new funding - something that will directly determine the fate of the magazine. Here's a statement from our EIC:
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -Aritsotle
As Editor-in-Chief for The Undercroft since 2006, I've seen a lot of people come, and a lot of people go. I've also seen people come back, leave again, and return once more. Individual members of our youth editorial team have had various reasons of their own for their decisions to participate, but when they have been involved with our project, their influence has always been passionate and positive.
The dedication of our changing editorial team has been reflected in the growing collection of magazines we've produced – to date, seven multi-issue volumes. I always look forward to our editorial meetings (be they monthly or bi-monthly, depending on what's been required in terms of meeting deadlines and/or appeasing the demands of our funding) because they mean immersing myself in a dynamic group of youth that are doing positive and exciting things.
To say that the frequently changing faces seen around The Undercroft's editorial table is a negative reflection on youth commitment to our project would be horribly misguided. The tendency for older generations or even the freshest generations to refer to the youth of today as an apathetic lot has a long tradition, and it is an argument that I and other people connected to The Undercroft hear frequently. The reality is that the youth I see involved with The Undercroft and its parent organization, POSSE Project, are more impassioned, hardworking, and dedicated to making change than many of the youth that surrounded me when I attended high school, or – as far as I know – the youth that graced its halls before I did. I can directly cite their involvement with things like POSSE and The Undercroft as proof of that. To those of you reading this testimony in a funding application, I would like you to consider how many youth you knew growing up that were working to de-stigmatize things like HIV/AIDS, drug use, s*x, or s*xual orientations? How many youth did you know that were posing challenging questions about gender norms and identities (or lack thereof), race, ethnicity, food production, and the environment. Put together, these issues are only a small sample of what POSSE/Undercroft youth concern themselves with on a daily basis.
The youth involved with POSSE and The Undercroft are dedicated to learning and communicating the information that they encounter, educating the communities around them – from their tightly-knit groups of friends to their general townships. In doing so, these initiatives have helped make progress in the battles to eliminate the stigmas associated with important issues like those mentioned above, effectively drawing focus to the more systemic issues that contribute to the problems. POSSE Project has done this with its outreach and Fall trainings, while The Undercroft fills its pages with related content.
Even before I became involved with The Undercroft, POSSE was one of the greatest things I had ever had involvement with. However, the reality is that youth are busy: many youth are forced to juggle combinations of jobs, homework, family life, housing issues, emotional stresses, and a heap of other things, and not all can commit to attending weekly meetings. This is where The Undercroft picks up where POSSE leaves off and can reach an even broader audience, transporting knowledge and ideas that POSSE trainings might focus on to youth that might never step foot into the training environments (it could also work as an access point to this). When youth are too busy to come to a scheduled POSSE meeting, the involved but low commitment offering of a magazine can be picked up at any time to be read, studied, and pondered over. In fact, I can make the case that for some youth, The Undercroft offers better opportunities for learning than POSSE trainings might – not because POSSE is inadequate (it's not), but because some youth excel at learning more in the quiet, private company of the written word than in a speaker-facilitated training session or a group discussion. With written media, youth have the power to take learning into their own hands: they can read at their own pace, spending more time in some places than others, rereading points of interest and perhaps making notes in the margins or even penning rebuttals and submitting them for publication, contributing to the debate. For me, POSSE has always been about encouraging discussion, and The Undercroft has been an asset in helping them succeed at this since its inception. The magazine's demise would be a great loss to POSSE as well as to the community.
In terms of content and format, The Undercroft has been something of a chameleon, but the focus around our editorial meeting tables has always been the same: provide youth and their surrounding communities with a publication that is at once a positive venue to voice opinions in and pursue self-efficacy.
As someone that has claimed an older "youth" status than most of the people I've worked with in POSSE for some time, when I've circulated copies of our magazine, I've heard concerned comments from friends, family, and peers alike saying that we've published some pretty dark stuff. There's even been criticism against that. While a consistent feature of our magazine is a collection of articles matching a specific theme chosen for the issues in advance, we also regularly receive creative submissions that we publish regardless of their relation to that theme. Theme-specific articles have always been a part of The Undercroft formula. We strive to provide positive, empowering, informing content from unique perspectives conveyed in fresh and creative ways. We also accept creative submissions that comes in the form of artwork, short stories, and poetry. The criticism I have brought up has always been related to what can be lumped into the "creative submissions" category.
We have received poetry that has taken rejection, loss, and depression as its subject matter. Sometimes, these pieces will recount personal experiences like su***de attempts or things like inflicting self harm. We have an unwritten publishing policy surrounding these pieces that honours the strength exhibited on the part of their authors in their willingness to approach us with such personal stories, and we print these pieces, often under pseudonyms to protect the safety of the author(s). It is our policy that if a youth is experiencing these things or even just contemplating them, if they are given an avenue to write about these feelings, they can continue to write about such actions rather than take them. It also lets other youth experiencing similar things know that they aren't alone. For POSSE and The Undercroft, these submissions obviously also alert us of youth that are at risk and it allows us to conduct outreach accordingly. I believe that what we do has the strength to save lives, and I think to be stripped of the ability to do that in this venue because of a lack of funding would be a damn shame. It's ironic: The Undercroft is so much bigger than money, but it's simultaneously controlled by money's availability.
For possible funders: no matter what the group, our editorial team and our contributors have always been youth with unique and encouraging perspectives. We've been up for consideration as a project worth funding a couple of times, and that is once again where we are now. Please consider helping The Undercroft.
Sincerely,
Tom Beedham
Editor-in-Chief
The Undercroft
