generate magazine - an artifact of emergence

tim snyder who i met in 08 in austin is staying at the moment, visiting a few communities and coming to resource this weekend. along with paul soupiset and makeesha fisher (and a bundle of others no doubt) they have pulled off creating a new magazine - generate. this may be old news but i have only just seen a copy so forgive me... it's full colour all the way through. the design is brilliant, it's a great size and it's printed on the most eco friendly paper you can get. it has a mix of culture, arts, articles, reviews, even a bit of liturgy and poetry thrown in. there are very few celebrities - it holds up artists and communities and small voices. i really like it - congrats to the team who have pulled it off who produce it totally as volunteers. it's mainly funded through advertising and then of course subscriptions. in these times doing a magazine is foolish! it's expensive, you have to post it to people, will they buy?- but against the odds foolishness has paid off. i think initially there will be a couple of issues a year. you can see sample pages here at the brilliant issu.com

so we were talking about this in the pub - tim, steve, adam and i - and reflecting how magazines have a different edge to books. they often connect with movements. they are cheaper. they are somehow more transient, catching a moment. they can hold a range of perspectives together even opposing opinions, you can dip in and out, you can like some pieces or writers and ignore others, they can hang around on the kitchen table for anyone to pick up. that's not to say that books aren't good. i'm a big fan too - but the genre is different.

i think generate captures the spirit of the emergent conversation as well as anything i have seen come out of the US in recent years. it has a different tone. there's lots of speculation about the movement out there in the blogosphere at the moment - is it dead, is it maturing, is it just beginning?... but this is evidence that there's plenty of energy and good and creative people around honestly working out what it means to follow christ in these times.

the strapline for the magazine or at least this month's is an artifact of the emergence conversation. this led us to an interesting discussion on the difference between artifact and artefact - turns out they both are alternative spellings of something made or given shape by humans. but steve pointed out that artifact is also a term for a glitch in digital media such as a jpg image. this is a wonderful unintentional double meaning in the strapline - see this article for examples of design accidents as sources of inspiration. now there's a feature for a future issue!

go and subscribe to this artifact.

Comments

[becky]

It's amazing how Andrew never said anything "died"
but rather there's a maturing of the movement in a shift from author/speaker shows to seeing life at the grassroots level. I think Generate points to signs of this maturation - as you pointed out, the issue is devoid of celebrities focusing on what's happening in missional communities. Conspire is another magazine launched by the folks from the Simple Way that focuses on contributions from intentional communities. And Geez is kicking it up in Canada.

[jonny]

i love geez too!

[becky]

And as I told you, Geez will be a major presence at the evolving church conference. (http://www.epconference.net) - and they seem to have done their best to keep the cost down. I do think we need to gather in person on occasion (I think most internet fights could be resolved on some level if we met for beers). So we have to take the online personas into the real world. But what excites me here is that on January 11th, their blog will roll out with over 40 people offering their reflections and MP3s are offered of the sessions for those who can't make it. I am looking forward to seeing how this plays out in terms of creating an offline/online synergy.