Founder's Letter #1: Falling Down, What Do I Do?
On May 30, my then-boyfriend broke up with me. But, it wasn't because we had a really bad fight. In fact, our relationship was quite healthy. We talked through our issues and never really had a "terrible fight". The break up went in a similar fashion: he said he didn't want to be in a relationship, so I said we should break up then. It was a couple of lines, but it caused a lot of damage.
On September 29, millions of Americans watched the first presidential "debate". I live in the United States, and, in November, Americans will find out who becomes the next leader of the country. It's always a fight between Democrats and Republicans, and as of recently, the losing side has never taken it well, and that has permanently damaged America's system of government and American politics.
Conflict surrounds us. It's a key part of story-telling and a key part of our lives. So, for the month of November, Astral Cognition has decided to explore the nature of conflicts and how they affect us.
November's Theme: The Great Divide
The name for this month's theme might sound a bit familiar to you, and it should. The Great Divide is the name of an episode in Avatar: The Last Airbender (2008). In the episode, we follow two tribes that absolutely despise each other. The tribes have their own assumptions about the other and only see the negative traits from the other side.
Though the episode is hailed by fans as one of the worst episodes in the series, it does a pretty good job of showing just how much we're willing to ignore for the sake of opposition.
Throughout November, we will be taking a look into how conflict affects creativity. We'll explore the divides that run through our society and that plague our world. Discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes will all be at the forefront, and we'll delve into how these shape creators across the globe.
We'll be accepting blog submissions under this theme as well! If you're interested in submitting under this theme, click here to submit your work to our blog! We are accepting submissions of all forms and media, so feel free to send music, art, or writing!
Important Updates
Besides this month's theme, I also wanted to share some of the new changes that Astral Cognition is going through! We've done a lot over the course of October, so it's probably easier for all of us if I list out some of the major changes that you might see and address some of your questions!
1. What's up with our YouTube videos?
Ah yes, that. Well, you see, it takes so much time and effort, even with the size of our entire video team, to make those animated videos we want to make.
During our first few months of school, we realized pretty quickly that we don't have the time to work on videos like that anymore. It's a bummer for all of us, but it's something that we had to realize sooner rather than later.
So, we've opened up what we call collaboration opportunities, and it's exactly like it sounds. You and I would work together to try to make a product that showcases our creativity!
2. What collaboration opportunities are there?
At the moment, we have the following opportunities available:
Create a video: We want to hear you talk about something that you are passionate about! We bring the experience required, you bring the ideas! We will guide you through our process for making videos and the research that goes into it and, at the end of it all, we can have a beautiful video that will go up on YouTube, IGTV, and Facebook!
Create a blog post: Are you a little shy and prefer not to be on camera or have your voice heard? That's totally understandable and we have another opportunity for you: blog posts! You would collaborate with Astral Cognition's blog writers and content creators to create a blog post on one particular topic. That post will be featured for the week on our blog, The Creator's Hub! At the end of the month, we will compile all the blog posts that we collaborated on and showcase them on our social media!
Create social media posts: Not much of a writer either? Well, we have one final opportunity for you: social media post creation! Graphic design is such an important skill to learn, and what better way to learn than to practice? We can work together on posts for social media that will go up on either our Instagram or our Facebook page! We will tag you in the post as well and we hope to make this an experience for everyone!
3. How do I sign up?
If you are interested in signing up for an opportunity, please fill out this Google form and we will get back to you as soon as we can!
4. Sharing your voices
We are so excited to release our own podcast in a few short weeks: the Creative Mind. We know that many of you, myself included, feel like we don't have a way to express our own opinions, thoughts, and issues that we feel are important to us. There aren't many opportunities for young adults to talk about what matters to them out there besides large magazines that receive thousands of submissions a month.
However, we wanted to fix that. Young adults should always have a say in what is happening across the globe, and there is no better way to start that change than through an informal podcast! We want to start the discussion on a variety of issues with everyone, not just adults!
If you're interested in this opportunity, feel free to sign up using this Google form! We'll get back to you to schedule the recording as soon as we can!
Final Thoughts
Since this is the first "Founder's Letter", I wanted to ask you, the reader, how you liked it. I know that there was a lot of information in this post, but you can always come back and read it over again at any time under the "News and Updates" tab!
As always, I'll see you in the next one!
Stay safe,
Sheeks Bhattacharjee
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