By now, you may have read the news that gal-dem is closing. It would be remiss for us to spend eight years of boundary-breaking work, affirming collaborations, and of creating our own mini eco-system of underrepresented talent without paying homage to those who made it all possible.
When the news broke of gal-dem’s closure, we read every single message of people who had their first commissions here, or received early coverage of their work on our site, or brought our events to life. It has always been our mission to platform the work and stories of people of colour from marginalised genders, and we are so thankful to every single person who has contributed to or collaborated with gal-dem in any capacity to make this possible over the last eight years.
In today’s landscape, the existence of platforms like gal-dem is precious (see here for our list of 17 independent media platforms and organisations to follow and support). The experiences of people of colour from marginalised communities are still suffering from underrepresentation in the creative industries. The NCTJ’s 2022 Diversity in Journalism report showed that 87% of journalists come from white ethnic backgrounds. Reuters Institute’s Race and Leadership in the News Media 2022 report shared that in the UK, there are fewer non-white top editors than there are non-white journalists.
Without us in these spaces, our stories are often flattened or ignored completely. Rich perspectives from within our communities are lost, and the culture-defining creativity gets watered down and miscredited.
To combat this, and as our final thank you here on the site, we would like to share our gal-dem contributors directory with you soon. Full of brilliant writers, illustrators, activists, creatives and more that we have worked with over the last eight years, this directory is our final way of platforming our contributors’ work. We hope it will be a site of connection, discovery and a pathway to new opportunities for a roster of unbelievably talented people of colour from marginalised genders – just as gal-dem was. The directory is available to view and share at the link here – if you wish to submit, withdraw or change any information after submitting, please email info@gal-dem.com before 28 April 2023, as we will not be able to amend this spreadsheet beyond this date.
To every editor and team member past and present, every contributor, every collaborator – we will always be so deeply grateful to have worked with you, and that you entrusted us with the stories you had to tell. Simply put, gal-dem would not have existed or grown as much as it did without you. Thank you x