A Wakening: Why We’ve Decided To Go Into Print

Dear Friends,

When I look back to early spring 2016, the time that I started Lissome Magazine, the world seemed like a different place. Brexit hadn’t happened yet, Donald Trump was not yet in power. The report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change hadn’t been published, Greta Thunberg was not yet standing in front of the Swedish parliament every Friday, striking for the climate instead of going to school. I had just moved to London and onto a houseboat to be with my love, ready to embrace a new adventure.

In summer 2019, things have changed fast and profoundly. We are waking up to the deeply disturbing fact that our beautiful planet is struggling. That indeed, we have been sleep walking for the last thirty years. All at once, we find ourselves in the midst of an emergency that requires us to act with great foresight and courage. 

Reading the news in recent months, listening and learning about the true scale of our current environmental crisis has been overwhelming and often hard for me to bear, and it’s only sinking in slowly. The most cautious estimates of the UN IPCC report give us only 11 years to achieve the largest transformation commonly known on a global scale, reinventing 200 years of a system and mindset of industrialisation. Moving away from fossil fuels, overconsumption, and wastefulness.

Today, our relationship with the natural world is harmed, we are living in a disconnect. In the global North, we are taking so much more than we need in the hope for growth and profits, and forget to give back in return. Yet the essence of life is that everything is deeply interconnected. When we hurt the living world, we hurt ourselves. But when we are in connection, we thrive – as it puts us in touch with the awe of being alive, of being part of the magnificent net of life on planet Earth, of ourselves being Nature.

I see this moment in time as a wake-up call. It’s an immense challenge, and I sometimes wonder if human kind can rise up to the occasion. But I have not an inch of a doubt that we must try, and act now – for life, for love – and embrace this moment as an an enormous opportunity to co-design a better world. By moving towards renewable energies, and new regenerative models of infrastructure and transport, economy, manufacturing, agriculture, and housing, we have a new change to build a compassionate and caring world for all. There is a real beauty in this thought. And this is the reason that I am writing to you now – because I believe that now is the time that we need to come together, and think and dream about the kind of world we want to inhabit and build for future generations.

It’s not a coincidence that the first printed edition of Lissome Magazine will come into being in these turbulent times. Lissome is a passion project, and what started as a one person exploration, has slowly and organically grown into a self-funded, independent publication, created by a dedicated all-women team of volunteers here in Berlin, as well as a wider, international community of writers, photographers, and stylists. Our intention to go into print originated from a strong wish to chronicle this important moment in time, and to be a catalyst for a thoughtful kind of transformation. Crowdfunding via Kickstarter is an incredible opportunity for us to provide seed funding for our print efforts, and to connect with other like-minded souls like you. 

In order to create new ways of living, we need to envision them first. We need to move away from dystopian narratives as well as from a state of denial, and become creative again. What could a world look and feel like that is nourishing and regenerative for people and nature alike, and what are the changes needed that can make it happen? What can we learn from indigenous cultures about our lost connection to nature, and what role does spirituality play? And how will design and fashion fit into this new era and help create it? These are the topics that we want to explore with you in our debut issue, as well as share the inspiring stories of those who are already walking the path.

We believe that printed magazines of high-quality, just like books, will still have an important place in a sustainable world. There is a beautiful slowness and intentionality that comes with creating something that will go into print and materialise in the world, as well as with reading something in print rather than on fleeting online pages. That said, we aspire to creating a printed edition that is both beautiful and long-lasting, that inspires through its physical form as well as through its purposeful content, and that can be referred back to in time and passed on to future readers.

When we wake up, we can act. When we act with intention and heart, others act with us. Transformation becomes tangible. 

With Love,
Dörte 

P. S. Our crowdfunding campaign is now live and you can find more information by following this link to Lissome Magazine’s Kickstarter page. We are eternally grateful for your support – we couldn’t do this without you. A thousand thanks! <3

P. P. S. A big thank you to Paul Cybulska who filmed and edited the Lissome Kickstarter video!

Photo by Anna Rosa Krau