One year ago, on November 1, 2013, the new nonprofit CFile Foundation began broadcasting CFile Weekly, a free global online magazine for ceramic creatives in art, craft, design, architecture and technology. This is the first phase of CFile’s Knowledge Center. If you remember we first reached out with a sunflower seed to our funding donors (who we thank) so this image, courtesy of Studio BAG for livingthings, is the perfect presentation of future growth. The pots when planted with sunflowers tilt and follow the sun as much as we at CFile follow the future.
CFile Weekly sets out to make sense of an ancient medium during a contemporary moment of radical flux. There are more creative opportunities than ever before. Walls have fallen, new resources are available and the market platform is wider. But this has arrived during a very tough economy with rapid change in education, markets, aesthetics, cultural demands, studio practices and technology. The most potent survival tool is being an informed player and that is why the Knowledge Center has been founded—to provide what curator Cindi Strauss calls a “GPS to the future”.
Has our first phase worked? Have we attracted a new order of creatives? Is there a demand for our content? The answer is an unqualified YES, revealing how starved the community is for current information.
The Weekly is read in 125 countries! Traffic is huge and growing. Subscriptions jumped by 25% last week alone. Close to 75,000 people per week see our content on the website and via social networks. If current growth is maintained, our annual reach in 2015 will be over 1.5 million. This dramatic success is due to a small and resourceful young team, our visionary group of 300 founding donors and the generosity of Sara Morgan, who doubled their gifts in a $100,000 challenge grant. The response of students in higher education is particularly exciting. More than 60 art schools and universities now require their students to read The Weekly. This will grow fast with the creation of partner schools in the next year.
The Knowledge Center is scheduled to open two new segments in 2015: the Media Theater and the CFile Library, our e-book publisher. In 2016 the Symposium Center arrives, making scholarly papers from worldwide conferences freely accessible.
It is ambitious, but as we have proven, doable and urgently needed! The challenge is funding. The next year needs a bigger donor group and $150,000 more in funding for additional staff and other costs. At present, we publish less than a third of the material we receive for The Weekly. At this time of crisis and opportunity, if you want ceramics to enjoy its full, dynamic future in the mainstream, dollar for dollar you cannot make a better investment than by Growing CFile today. Please click the donate button below to contribute via a credit card or Paypal.
Garth Clark | Creative Director
The CFile Foundation Team past and present at our first birthday party for 70 of CFile’s Home Team supporters on November 23, 2104, from left to right: Brian Moe (Development), Bill Rodgers (General Editor), Amy Slater (Communications Director), Mark Del Vecchio (Consultant), Janet Abrams (Writer), Garth Clark (Creative Director and Chief Editor), Christopher Johnson (Book Reviewer), Kristen Carlson (Web Design), Sean Di Ianni (Operations Director, leaving to run Meowwolf Art Center), and Amy Albracht (our much missed founding ex-General Editor). Photograph by Max Wagner.
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