But fear not faithful Twenty-one and Invincible followers, I am back and I have plenty going on this month to keep you interested - and hopefully make up for lacking in the quick witted and humorous story department as of late!
I thought I'd use this post to share with you a little bit about the magazine that is currently taking over my life, in the hope that you will see why I have had to neglect blogging on here recently in favour of pushing myself forward in my budding career as an established Birmingham journalist.
Arcane Magazine has been up and running since the end of February this year, and what started as a print publication with a blog to run alongside as an extra bit of content for the magazine, has now become a full-blown online magazine, updated almost every day with news bites, previews, reviews, interviews, exclusives and features - as well as video and image content and interactive maps to support my written work.
The team consists of myself as Editor, Clare Evans as a freelance writer, and Rachel Powell (from The Life Of A Pee-Pod) as Press Officer. Being that we are a small team, I write a good 90% of the content myself, I have produced all the video/image slideshows and other interactive content myself so far, I designed and maintain the website itself, I manage the email account and liaisons with interviewees/event hosts, as well as producing and maintaining the online marketing of the site (through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr accounts).
Clare writes a handful of prearranged previews for me every month, as well as contributing her own ideas and articles as and when she stumbles across them. I have recently upped Rachel's input into the magazine by bringing her in on more of the marketing and promotion for the business. She has started by helping with online marketing campaigns, and hopefully over the next few weeks she will be producing press releases and contact lists for event companies and venues in Birmingham which we could work with and report upon.
Arcane covers a vast range of local and hyper local events happening in and around Birmingham, including club nights, drinks promotions, sporting events, dance and comedy shows, music performances, fashion events...and so much more in between that I'd struggle to list it all here.
Arcane also prides itself on the special retrospect events which we cover, which involve any event which could be seen as being a blast from the past; a forgotten pastime, which once thrilled and delighted our predecessors and has become a mere memory as time has moved on. We at Arcane want to bring these great events back to the forefront, and in doing so we hope to bring back the sense of community in the area of Birmingham which, again, over time has been lost.
As part of our strive to help bring back the sense of community in Birmingham, myself and Rachel ran a week-long "I Love Brum" campaign, where we asked people to post and tweet about why they loved Birmingham. The response was great, and Rachel managed to triple the amount of people who followed Arcane online in less then three days!
We had so many great comments about Birmingham, and the campaign really seemed to get people engaged and thinking about why they enjoyed being a Brummie - so I think we achieved exactly what we set out to do, which brought people to the site and created that sense of community that we had been looking for.
As the magazine has evolved and developed, I have already begun to see more interest in Arcane and what we have to offer, as recently I have had people contacting me asking me to write about their events and help to promote them - and people have been more than willing to conduct interviews with me and send me any info and pictures I might need to accompany my articles. This morning I even got up to find an email off a freelance graphic designer asking if Arcane would like to work with him on upcoming projects. To top it all, Arcane is now being promoted on another long-established Birmingham website/blog called Created in Birmingham, which has been running since 2006 and has a vast following online.
I feel like Arcane is fast becoming a legitimate Birmingham magazine, and our popularity and online community is growing daily. For three students who are essentially running this out of their own homes, we don't seem to be doing to bad with Arcane at all. I can't speak for the other members of the team, but this is more than just a final year project for me. This is a chance for me to showcase what I'm made of and show people in the industry what I can produce. But most of all, I feel a real tie to Arcane because I am passionate about Birmingham as a place, and passionate about the great people within it who make these awesome events a reality.
I have met some really interesting and inspiring people since I have been running Arcane, and by helping to promote the great things that they are doing I feel like I'm a part of all the great things that are happening in my local area - a fact which really cements my beliefs about why I'm training to be a journalist, and why I feel I'm in the right profession. Hopefully Arcane will continue to grow and progress over the next few months, and I do hope all who read this will support me in my work. You can visit the site at http://whatsonarcane.com/, so please feel free to stop by and be involved in Arcane.
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