One Year of Circling🌀
Updates! Events! We love you!
It’s June and the summer solstice is approaching, which means we are celebrating one year of Circling!
On the occasion, we wanted to share some upcoming events, some changes to our format, and what to expect from us moving forward.
This constellation of ideas for a newsletter, artist interviews focused on logistics and materiality, and intimate in-person events started for us in early 2023 as a series of recorded zoom calls and Google Docs, and now — thanks to all of you — it is REAL. We feel so lucky, and we’re just beginning. ❤️
Moving into this summer, we have some news!
So far, we have been producing two interviews and one essay or original piece each month. We launched with this idea of interviews through snapshots of material objects, mostly because this is the type of content we wanted to see! We decided to lean hard into this one simple format, which means we’ve now amassed an archive of these, and we LOVE them. We’ve spoken to dancers and designers, painters and photographers, actors and authors, musicians and makers, and so many more. We feel so tender toward this entire cohort. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Starting in July, this balance will flip a little — you’ll get one interview per month and 2-3 pieces from us. We want to be able to give you more, we’re finding our footing in our own point of view, and in exchange we’re scaling back for now on the administration and cost required to produce multiple interview features each month.
Along with this, we are slightly changing our subscription model. So far, free subscribers have had access to everything we send out, and paid subscribers just have the bonus of access to the past archives. Starting in July, interviews will still be free for all, but our other essays and content will go behind the paywall.
We have been transparent from the start about our commitment to paying the artists we feature a small honorarium. Artists should be paid for their time!
However, it turns out that this also includes us. We also, perhaps, deserve to be paid for our time, and with our current model we are . . . not. We are, rather, throwing our money at the noble cause of supporting other artists we love. And we’ll keep doing it! But, if you have enjoyed the first tender green shoots of our original content (like this essay from Lynnette on desire and day jobs, or this one from Krystiana on stealth wealth and clothes-buying), we invite you to join us on our new endeavor of hopefully not bleeding so much money. 😉
Our new tiers are as follows, effective July 1:
💌 Free Subscription: Read one artist interview per month. We are thrilled to collaborate with the artists we feature and share their work with you, so these will always be free. We love talking to artists (we MIGHT just be running a scam to get fun people we admire to be our friends) and we have some really special ones coming soon.
🔒Paid Subscription ($5/month or $50/year): Receive one artist interview and 2-3 original pieces per month, plus access to the growing archive of past posts. In addition, receive a discount on tickets to our in-person events when we come to your city! Your contribution helps us chip away at administrative costs like web hosting, event space rentals, and travel.
✨Sponsor Subscription ($100+/year): Same as above. Your extra contribution will sponsor one artist honorarium during the year. OR, if we reach the point where all honorariums are sponsored, your sponsorship will do the hitherto unimagined and pay us for our labor!
Now, on to our next order of business — EVENTS!
June 11th: FREE VIRTUAL EVENT! Sustaining Art in the Home Zine Workshop in partnership with CreativeMornings. This is our second CreativeMornings Field Trip, and we’d love to see you there! Details at the link below.
July 2nd (Evening): Circling IRL, Indianapolis, IN. Join us for our zine-making workshop alongside local artists. Never made (or heard of) a zine before? No worries! This event is cozy and accessible and we want you there. Location details to follow, but it’s happening — we promise.
July 5th (Morning): Circling IRL, Indianapolis IN. Same deal! We are thrilled to be spending time in our hometown, the place where our friendship began when we were little baby college students circa 2011. Please join us!
Plus, stay tuned for our next round of in-person events coming this fall in Brooklyn, NY. We’ll be sure to share announcements in upcoming newsletters, and you can always check out our events tab on Substack.
If you made it all this way . . . thank you! See you in Circling’s sophomore year!
xoxo
Lynnette and Krystiana 4ever
Discount code for our Indianapolis events, especially for paid subscribers: