Letter From the Editors: Also Cool Patreon Launch

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Become a patron of Also Cool and support us on Patreon!

We made a Patreon because we want to get to know you better. We’re testing new ways to make our platform more sustainable and interactive. We’re thinking online workshops, snail mail, fun digital goodies, and skill-sharing groups. Most importantly, we want a more concrete and sustainable way to compensate our contributors. 

We are a group of four volunteers: Malaika, Zoë, Maya and Rebecca. We all have day jobs, big dreams, and just really love working on this project in our spare time. Also Cool operates on a not-for-profit model, where all the money coming in goes back out to supporting the creatives who contribute their work to it, in addition to covering operational costs like having a website domain, and a podcast platform, and Canada Post’s astronomical shipping costs for merch. 

We believe in creating for each other and investing in each other. Reinvesting into the community has been our objective since day one, but it’s not a complete circle without your support! We’ve been hesitant to launch a Patreon for a while now, especially during this last year when all of us have encountered financial insecurity at different levels. We’ve put a bunch of our own savings into making this work so far, but we’re at a point where we need to ask for your help to keep the dream alive. 

That being said, we aren’t interested in sourcing our budget from methods that deviate from the ethics at the core of Also Cool. Can you imagine targeted ads on our website? We can’t! We decided Patreon would be the best way for us to go, considering that we will still be able to maintain our focus of sharing resources and highlighting the importance of collaboration and solidarity in creative circles. 

We’re offering all sorts of knowledge-sharing and entertainment goodies at every subscription level, in order to accommodate how much our subscribers are able to spend, from $3 to $25. These Patreon exclusives include things like access to special digital content, fun activities, early registration to our workshop series and events, and special edition merchandise. 

We can’t wait to hang out with you on the interweb. And most of all, we can’t wait to keep building the Also Cool community together with you. 

Check out the breakdown of our subscription exclusives by visiting our Patreon profile!

Thank you for supporting Also Cool!

- Malaika, Zoë, Maya and Rebecca

Keep up with us online!

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

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Happy First Birthday Also Cool!

Today is our first birthday, and we want to invite you to celebrate this milestone with us. Without all of your support from the start, Also Cool wouldn’t have grown to be the community it is today. We thank each and every one of you who has contributed your work to the magazine, read our online content and newsletters, attended one of our events (either IRL or online), bought our merch, listened to our radio show on N10.as, or stuck our sticker on your laptop. 

In its short time around the sun, AC has evolved from an idea between two best friends into a powerful, hardworking team and a little universe of its own; connecting folks from around Montreal (and the world!) through fostering a sense of community by bolstering creativity, learning and activism hand-in-hand. We are so grateful and inspired by you, our community, family and friends, who lift us up and believe in our vision. AC is just as much yours as it is ours, thanks to all of your undeniable support and passion for independent media. We can’t wait to see what year two has in store. 

We’ve been learning as we go, picking up literally everything from web-design to radio broadcasting (sooo many late nights editing on GarageBand) as the magazine brings on new experiences; all while juggling our full-time jobs, academics and the ups and downs of life in general. 

AC has kept us going in times of extreme hardship because it is the friend, creative outlet and support system we’ve always needed. We think that’s pretty cool, and hope that AC can continue to be there to support you too. We want AC to be a platform to share your work, connect with other creatives, and to help you feel seen in the arts and music community.

Though the world is filled with so much uncertainty right now due to the COVID-19 pandemic (yes, we left mentioning this until the bitter end), one thing we can promise is that we are looking ahead here at AC. As always, we have a few special surprises (and memes!) to share with you in the near future, and are always looking for ways to stay connected in these difficult circumstances. 

We love you all so much. Happy 1st Birthday to everyone who’s a part of Also Cool!

XOXO Also Cool

P.S. Of course the mag is a Scorpio

Instagram I Facebook I Spotify

Letter from the Editors January 2020

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Illustration by Malaika Astorga

Well, it’s 2020. It’s kind of weird to think that a whole decade went by, but it happened!

Over the past ten years, we’ve seen the rise and fall of indie zines, online blogs and well-intentioned internet cliques. Also Cool came from the frustration of scrolling endlessly searching online for something with substance. After ignoring article after clickbait article, we knew that we needed to do better. We craved genuine, thoroughly developed content that actually resonated with our identities, values, and those of the people around us. We are an all-femme, racially diverse team, and we are over with having our identities used as buzzwords for clickbait article titles. We want to write from our personal experiences because they are important; not because they’re trendy. Our work is important because we put the time, effort, research and creativity into it; not because we happen to fit someone’s social justice narrative. We’re committed to amplifying marginalized voices through fostering a music and arts platform that emphasizes collaboration and community, instead of competitiveness.

Our team comes from backgrounds of expertise in grassroots community organization, independent journalism, show promotion, social media content curation and media production. Our team is currently made up of Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter, Malaika Astorga and Maya Hassa.

Zoë is a music promoter, radio DJ and musician, who strives to facilitate a platform for marginalized artists through safe-space and community-centred advocacy. Malaika is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist, writer and queer-femme. Her work prioritizes creating and promoting Mexican representation in Canadian media, after growing up with virtually none. Maya is a music journalist from Chicago who fell head-over-heels in love with Montreal’s unique DIY culture. She works to promote underrepresented and underground artists through her writing.

Also, hey, we’re the ones writing this first letter from the editors! We’re still growing our team, and welcome applications of all kinds to get involved.

Also Cool is originally the brain-child of pals Zoë and Malaika. We’ve been best friends since we met at a hardcore show in 2015. Malaika designed a poster for Zoë’s high school band, and the rest is history. Growing up together in our hometown’s music scene, we’ve always had our hearts set on giving back to communities and circles that have given us a space to be ourselves. More importantly, we wanted to inspire change so that others could have that same feeling of belonging within industries that are notorious for gatekeeping. And so, Also Cool is here for anything that is, you know, also cool! No matter where you’re at in your creative career, we want to work with you. We believe in fostering long-term relationships, and in providing resources that aren’t always readily available (like writing an email pitch to a magazine, for example 👀 ) It’s scary to put yourself out there, but we’re here to help and to grow our community online and IRL.

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Illustration by Malaika Astorga

This is our first official hello to the next decade, and we’ve hit the ground running. In the coming January weeks, we’ll have our first rollout of online content. We’ve also got some majorly cool Montreal events on the rise. First, we just hosted a lesbian* dance party in collaboration with BLUSH on January 10th. If you missed it, no sweat! We’ll be co-presenting Age of Aquarius: An Aquastellar Experience with the LUX MAGNA music festival on January 24th. We’re so excited! It means the world to us that you care about the arts and music community just as much as we do. Mark your calendars!

We also want to say a massive thank you to The Diving Bell, Hot Tramp MGMT, Mata Mate, Backxwash, Schwey, Maryze, and La Fièvre for being a part of our first fundraiser in November. Thank you to everyone who came to that event, and thank you to everyone who has messaged us since to get involved with our project, or has shown support. We love you, and we are endlessly grateful for you.

You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or via #alsocoolmag. You can also listen to what we’re loving over on our Spotify. If you’re off social media (honestly, we envy you) you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter here to stay up to date with everything we think is Also Cool.

We can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store, and we hope that it has been kind to all of you so far! Happy New Year!

XO

Also Cool

All photography & illustrations are by Malaika Astorga.

*BLUSH is an event by and for wlw which encompasses lesbian/bisexual/queer women, trans, and non-binary people. We welcome straight allies and male-identified people, encourage them to be aware of the space they are coming into and the space of privilege that they occupy.

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