The hardest thing to do sometimes is to evolve when things are comfortable. It’s also the most exciting.

As we look forward, all of us at Cultural Daily have been asking ourselves one incredibly simple yet dense question:

Why do we matter?

In trying to come up with a reply, we looked in our archives and realized the answer was right there in our own history.

Over the years, Cultural Daily has published hundreds of student writers—early teens to graduate students to people returning to school for adult education—from across the country, sometimes even beyond our borders. For most, Cultural Daily was the first place they had their writing published, the first place they received a byline, the first place they sent in their work, dealt with an editor, put themselves out there.

If we are going to continue to exist and take up precious resources, we are determined to make an impact on the future.

With this in mind, going forward Cultural Daily will be doubling (tripling) down on our focus on student writers. We will work with educators in all levels to help their students experience publishing—from writing to submitting to editing to promoting. We will work together to develop projects that educators can incorporate into their curriculum.

We don’t think of this as a complete shift in focus. We see it more as a logical progression in our years long work and Cultural Daily is excited to become an essential resource and platform for student writers and editors.

We will continue publishing the wonderful film, theatre, dance and art reviews by the likes of David Sheward, Ann Haskins, R Daniel Foster and Elisa Leonelli alongside the fresh new writings from young writers all over the country.

We hope that you will not only continue supporting Cultural Daily, but all of these writers that we will all get to watch grow up in front of us and contribute their unique beautiful voices into a better world.

If you are an educator whose students we’ve published before, you’ll be hearing from us soon (if not already) about how to best work together. And if you are an educator we haven’t worked with before and want to start, contact us.

(Featured image by Micah Esguerra; used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)

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