Time’s Ticking

Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far with our appeal, we’ve now reached over £8000.

We’ve only got one week to go and we’re asking for your support (go here to add your support).

Here’s an update on the appeal and some more detail on what we’d do with the funds. First, we get whatever you give. We don’t need to reach our ultimate target to receive all the funds. Second we’re already well under way but we really need your help to push this campaign in the last few days.

There’s three main things we hope to achieve:

A Full Time Editor – with your help we can have one person full time in the run up to the referendum. This could mean the time to put in place other revenue streams so that the project is more stable and will greatly increase the output and quality of what we can do.

New Writing – as well as writers like George Rosie, Irvine Welsh, Lesley Riddoch, Andy Wightman, Alan Bissett, we’ve also published new less well known writers. Take a look at our list of contributors here.

Outreach – we know we need to reach beyond the already committed Yes voters. We’ll be producing thousands of high quality posters and distributing them around the country. See an example here.

Closer – tomorrow we’ll publish the whole first issue of our print project ‘Closer’. With your help the series will produce an issue each season with winter out in the New Year, a Spring issue, then a pre-referendum one in late Summer and a post-referendum one in October.

This is at the heart of what we do that’s different. While some blogs are great at instant (constant) rebuttal (and that’s vital), and others are doing Och Aye the News, or real dry wit, and some are doing a fine job at feeding the cultural revival – we’re trying to explore ideas for the new Scotland. In the beginning we called it (maybe a WEE bit pompously) ‘fresh thinking for the new republic’. We think there’s a role for a project that explores difficult issues beyond just the referendum campaign, and looks at ideas with a deeper historical and cultural eye.

So we hope you can support us by donating here whatever you can – no matter how big or small. Go here to donate. Thanks.