Blackbird Presents The Orchard

Blackbird, a literary arts magazine, will present its new online branch, The Orchard, on Friday, Nov. 22, in tandem with the release of Blackbird’s biannual publication. The magazine’s Editing Board, which includes editors of both publications, will host a launch party at The Mill on Friday night, featuring live music and readings, to celebrate the first website dedicated to all forms of art on campus. The Orchard aims to uncover art created with little or no recognition – from intro classes to thesis work to free-time experimentation – which Blackbird cannot accomplish with a page limit.

“We think that a large portion of this campus is creating great work that hasn’t been tapped into, and these people and their art get little recognition,” said Elli Itin ’16, one of The Orchard’s online editors. “We’re really hoping to expand both the audience and the people who identify themselves as artists.”

Such is the aim of the online forum, which represents a collaborative effort by Blackbird Editor-in-Chief Jack George ’16, and new Online Editors Wendy Walcoff ’16, Elli Itin ’16 and Isabelle Stillman ’16.

“It’s a partnership that came from a convergence of ideas,” Stillman said. “Wendy, Elli and I had this idea in the spring and Blackbird was having it at the same time. When we realized we were trying to do the same thing, we thought we might as well partner.”

Though Blackbird provides an exemplary literary outlet, the team is taking on this new endeavor in order to broaden the stage for student art beyond the pages of a literary magazine, by including more mediums and welcoming more submissions.

All content featured in Blackbird will appear on The Orchard, but because of the space that the online format provides, the website will feature additional content, branching out into a wider variety of mediums including music, film and dance.

For Walcoff, Itin and Stillman the idea was born out of the notable lack of such an online publication on campus.

“It was shocking to us that there was no online forum for art at Midd,” said Walcoff, who has spearheaded the graphic design of the site in collaboration with other Blackbird staff. “Making the website was not hard to do, it just hadn’t been done. I think some of the reluctance comes from the attachment to the print edition, which is great and important to continue, but there are so many more forms of art that it was just crazy there was no place for that.”

The magazine’s team sees the new online component as a natural extension of Blackbird.

“The key difference is that the online section will be updated regularly,” George said. “We’re looking to do the same thing online that the literary magazines does here, which is to source and promote the best creative content on campus.”

The Orchard will function much as Blackbird does: as a student run organization with a reading board that reviews submissions. The content deemed the best will be printed in one of Blackbird’s biannual publications, and the rest will be handed over to The Orchard for review.

The Orchard is outlined to function as a blog of a myriad of creative work, rather than a selective handful of pieces.

“It should be more accessible, celebratory and inclusive rather than elite,” Itin said. “We think there’s tons of wonderful work being produced and we want there to be a more inclusive forum for it to be published.”

The Orchard and Blackbird editors erased the boundary between the two groups as their ideas merged, and the two Boards have worked in tandem to bring this new branch of the arts publication to life.

Both Walcoff and Stillman served on the Blackbird reading board last spring, and from their experience, hoped to create a publication that served a different role on campus than the print magazine.

“I felt the board was quick to judge in a way that disrespected the artists’ work,” Stillman said. “We decided to diverge with this a bit because we felt that anyone who makes art deserves more attention than a brief glance and a quick judgment.”

Walcoff agreed, pointing out that the majority of student work gets overlooked by the subjective eyes of a literary magazine reading and art board.

The mission to expand the body of work that can be published and appreciated on campus embodies the online publication’s vision to expand what it means to be an artist at the College.

“A large portion of this campus is creating great work that hasn’t been tapped into, and these people aren’t really seen as artists,” Itin said. “We’re really hoping to expand both the audience and the people who identify themselves as artists.”

As of now, the editors have rounded up enough creative content to go live on Friday, and hope the site will develop overtime with the help of the student body.

“We think once it’s up and running, it will be more or less self-propelled,” Walcoff said.

Everyone involved in the project shares an overarching goal of broadening the reach and scope of creative content at the College.

“We are united in this process because there is a lot of creative content on this campus,” George said. “There are a lot of incredible people here; they just need a uniform platform on which they can express themselves. The Orchard will be more accessible, more open to everyone.”

“Blackbird’s goal of highlighting great art is something that we share,” Stillman added. “The Orchard will be a platform for the student body, not for a select group of people. Even though we will filter and organize things so that it is conducive to having it on a website, it is a site for students to see each other’s work, share their work and be inspired by each other.”