Dear reader,
The past few years have been intense for everyone, and being in the creative industries during a pandemic is more challenging than most of us could have ever foreseen.
Middleground’s first issue came out in December 2019, only a few months before the first lockdown in the UK. Five more issues later, we are honoured to have provided a space — regardless of the pandemic — for our community to gather, flourish, express itself and remain connected.
Finding the energy, inspiration and purpose to create when life itself feels almost unmanageable at times is difficult. Yet more than 80 artists and writers have contributed to our issues over the past three years, adding their voices to our project and helping take the mixed-race narrative back into our own hands. Through language, family, hair, cuisine, and many more symbolic ways, they have contributed to building a community of multiracial people centred around the arts.
In that same amount of time, we’ve been lucky to reach over 7000 readers from around the world, and we hope the content they found within our pages helped them feel understood, heard and seen. We hope it has brought you a sense of belonging.
The Middleground team has seen many changes since its creation. After launching the magazine on her own, our founder Pauline Jeremie was quickly joined by our poetry editor, Mina Moriarty. The team now has an additional six fantastic members, ranging from editorial to community engagement — we’ve been lucky to be joined by the fantastic Phoebe Broadfoot, Caitlin Clancy, Sumaya Kassim, Carinya Sharples, Natalie Charles and Melissa Batcharj. We are all committed to reaching more people every day, across platforms, and always through our communal love for art, writing and our community.
And finally, Middleground wouldn’t have been this successful without the support of the wider community. We have been absolutely floored by the love we have received from you, our readers. You have supported us in so many ways, including by contributing your work, by sharing our posts on social media, and by helping us raise money that has allowed us to keep paying our contributors. It is no exaggeration to say that we would not be here today without you.
This growth fills us with joy, pride and excitement for what is coming next. But they also show that now is a good time for us to take a breath. Putting together issues packed with content that is sometimes as beautiful to read as it is difficult, in the midst of a pandemic, alongside the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements and while all managing full-time work or studies is hard. And, if we want to keep serving the mixed-race community the way we have been, we need a minute to take stock of the work we’ve done and determine what we need to do next.
For this reason, Middleground Magazine will be going on a short hiatus until the start of 2023. This means we will not publish issue 7 this Winter, but next June instead. However, this doesn’t mean we will be remaining idle. Here’s what’s on our roadmap for the rest of the year:
Open submissions
While there will be no issue this Winter, we will shortly be opening a rolling call for submissions! We will be looking for similar work (that is poetry, prose and creative non-fiction) but will also provide a new and exciting space for work we haven’t published before. These will include journalistic pieces, interviews and film/book/art reviews, but you will be able to pitch other content types to us.
You can already see our pitching guidelines and submission window dates here!
Team expansion
Every successful project needs a strong team! While our existing team has been doing incredible work, in order to take Middleground to the next level, we will need a few extra pairs of hands.
First off, we are looking for a Features Editor to work with writers on content that will be featured on the website. We will also be needing a Graphic Designer for our future issues and any additional visual projects.
Head to our vacancies page to see the full role descriptions.
Content from the Middleground team
Throughout the past three years, the team have been showcasing the work of other multiracial creatives. This time, we will take to our own keyboards and share content with our readers through interviews, art or literary reviews and other non-creative content. After all, the purpose of Middleground is still to showcase the works of others.
These publications will be another way for us to give a voice to members of our community, the many mixed-race creatives that we’ve been lucky to meet along the way and to share our thoughts on exhibitions, films and books by other mixed-race people. We’ve already got an interview with Jo Hamya, the author of Three Rooms and issue 3 contributor, and a review of Mixed Rage Collective’s latest exhibition lined up that we can’t wait to share with you!
Thank you for your support
As always, all the work we do is for our community. We are forever grateful to all our contributors, readers and supporters, and can’t wait for this next chapter with you all! If you are looking for a way to keep supporting us throughout this new chapter, our GoFundMe page remains open for donations.
If you want to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the content we’ll be putting out, make sure to sign up for our newsletter here!
Thank you always,
The Middleground Team