Angry about sound bites?

Max Hogg tells us all about his website, openfutures.

''Do any of you ever feel like you’re not really being heard?'' ''I believe openfutures can give you the space to say what you think should be done about poverty, politics or whatever else you’re angry about.'' Open Futures - Issue 1

Do any of you ever feel like you’re not really being heard? That there is media space only for laudable but limited sound bites, with no opportunity to discuss the global problems we face in any real complexity? That, as young people, we have little political empowerment despite the fact that the issues that matter to us are the ones, like climate change, that are likely to affect us much more than our parents? That, as Eileen Guo puts it, you’re angry about poverty (or anything else) but that the actions you take in response don’t feel sufficient?

This is how Tom (an ex-university colleague of mine) and I felt. So we decided to do something about it. The result is an online magazine called openfutures. It’s aimed at young writers, with little or no published writing, but with positive, progressive ideas about how the world could and should be in ten, twenty or fifty years’ time.

The magazine is, as the name suggests, open. Anyone can write for it and anything can be written, as long as it is in consideration of a better future and how we might get there. However, as editors we also believe that to produce the solutions of the future we need to challenge people’s ideas, just as much as we hope to promote them. So, our aim is to develop a forum as part of the magazine, in which readers can respond to the articles that are published. These responses can either be in agreement or in the form of a challenge, to which the author must also then respond. This way the reader isn’t passive, but can contribute to the development of the progressive and radical solution being discussed.

Setting up the website was interesting. Neither Tom nor I had any experience in website design, and so we learnt it as we went along! It’s a bit bewildering to decide between the hundreds of website hosts and design programs available (but with our budget we just went for the cheapest). Once that was done, writing the content was easy enough, although very time-consuming. Since then it has pretty much run itself, although this will change as the magazine becomes more interactive.

Easily the biggest challenge is attracting writers. The response to the magazine has been great, with strong interest and support in what we are doing, and a large and growing readership. But because we are deliberately encouraging the debate of fairly complex ideas, it can be daunting to take the plunge and write something. This is where you guys come in! While I promise I don’t want to pinch you from Your Say, I believe openfutures can give you the space to say what you think should be done about poverty, politics or whatever else you’re angry about, in more than just a sound bite.