Launching Currant Collective

Letter from the Editor — August 3, 2021

Birthing something new into the world is a messy act. It holds discomfort, unknowing, and danger. Yet we keep subjecting ourselves to the process, in hopes of producing an artifact that adds something—anything!—of good to the strange and fascinating world it emerges in.

Before I bury the lede too far, I'll start with the reason for this letter: We're relaunching Currant! Previously labeling us as a "media publication and community" felt limiting, not to mention clunky. We now commission a new descriptor to capture that spirit of multitudes: the collective. As such,

Currant is a global media collective paving a better food future.

Or, for SEO and explanatory purposes: Currant is a global media collective—think artsy, techy publication and community—paving a better food future.

When we say collective, we don't imagine a group of technologically conventional media publications banding together. Media is no longer restricted to news on static paper or crowded website, securely gated by legacy institutions and networks. Media is social and amorphous, its locking mechanisms breaking down through fire and plague.

Media is social, and social connotes people: the individual humans who collectively make up the media networks we organize in. And what are humans? Humans are squishy and gelatinous, spicy and sweet, raw and ripe (I'll stop at moist). We're more complicated than the historically drawn—and often hurtfully biased—popular narratives that frame our thinking and being.

At Currant, we're rethinking the way we organize around these narratives, writing new ones in the process, and paying right tribute to the people involved. Here's a taste of how we envision the human components of our collective—or as we like to imagine, the blazing planets in our orbit:

This could manifest in a variety of ways—partnerships with organizations, fellowships and exhibits—but at our heart, we're a collective invested in media, art, tech, and community, through the lens of food and equity. We tell stories that seek to redeem our relationships with food. Our work pulls apart the complex threads of food—tracing its delicious and jagged contours through culture and history, chefs and hospitality, agriculture and environment, fashion and entertainment, big food business and technology.

We believe in this trajectory for Currant because of what we’ve seen since our beginnings in 2018: a growing hunger for narratives and experiences rooted in thoughtful curiosity. We all start somewhere—and we believe, too, in the power of growing beyond that initial point. From the number of homemade cakes shared in our Discord’s kitchen channel (traversing four continents!) to conversations about publishing on the margins and refusing to romanticize pain, Currant wants to be your place where connection moves us out of complacency and towards change, for the better.

We believe our work is good, even if it doesn’t always track with conventional measures of impact. That's the freedom of bootstrapping: we must be ruthlessly honest with what we make and how we make it. It must provide value to you, friend and reader, or else why would it be worth the gamble of our time? Yet if we lose a bet—no harm, we fiddle with our ideas and play another round.

But change at scale is hard. As much as technology has democratized speech, building the platforms for speech is still...laborious. Cultivating more equitable systems takes networks of resources across stakeholders, access to capital and proximity to need. It asks us to participate in unfamiliar spaces and communities not just as volunteers or observers, but as beneficiaries and peers. It takes labor to modernize the infrastructure, from non-rage-quit-inducing content management systems to more diversified funding pipelines. Through it all, it requires trust.

We’re working on larger strategic projects to make ground on change, though operational bandwidth limits our pace. Thus far, much of our efforts have been spent crafting our publishing tech stack and developing our internal production capabilities. This is where you come in:

If you want to see more of Currant, share it! One of our biggest areas for growth right now is visibility. Nobody's googling "food media collective," but everyone's following voices whom they respect. If you'd like to join in what we’re doing, tell your audience about us.

Here’s the tweet and insta post. Share them (or this page) to your social channels, online communities, groupchats, wherever you gather—you know the drill.

And of course, to the brilliant team that's made this all possible: Editor Sarah Cooke, Graphic Designer Clare Lagomarsino, and Research & Community contributor Liza Pittard. Human knives and whetstones.

Interested in helping us build this? Check out our working ethos and open opportunities here. For any other questions or to chat about joining our advisory board, say hi@staycurrant.com.

Stay hungry,

Vicky Gu
Founder & Managing Editor
August 3, 2021

Edits by Sarah Cooke & graphics by Clare Lagomarsino.

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