This issue is a collective call to dream, and a collective call to action.

It’s been a rough year. In times of such uncertainty, censorship, and anxiety, to care and to imagine have seemingly become acts of revolutionary courage. To dream, perhaps an unexpected necessity. As an issue, Loud Hopes centers the vitality and vibrancy of this dreaming, calling for us to do it out loud and calling for us to do it together. After all, what is the role of a student-run literary magazine if not to peel off the veneer, be frank and invite us all to get our act together? Because ultimately, we do not get to have hope without action.

For us, hope is a moment of wild love, the feeling felt just after pulling off a slightly insane scheme. It is alive and always experimental. If nothing else, it is collective. Producing more hope necessitates acting together. LOUDLY. BOLDLY. DAILY. SUBTLY. UTTERLY BRILLIANTLY.

So, to welcome you to this fold, we’d like to share its origins. TMI? Maybe. But if you take away anything from this issue, it’s this: big things begin with small acts.

On a surreal media day, M. met Caroline Tanbee Smith, Ward 9 Alder, at the BP site. They got chatting about the I-91 underpass park project that Caroline had recently received funding for. For the past year she had been working with high-school students to develop the design… Rebecca, who reads Caroline’s weekly newsletter, had reached out about this same project a few weeks earlier. M and Rebecca live together. Ayusha comes over for brunch allll the time. Together we decided to see if we could support the project and the students who were a part of it. Asking the simple question… What if YSoA had a high school mentorship program? We began plotting and quickly realized that we should be asking these “What if…” questions SO much more often.

This issue is the result of inviting our friends and wider community to share what we can all do here and now to create more hopeful futures. Asking what if…? to understand how small acts can be catalysts for joy and maybe even enduring change? Loud Hopes is a big what if.., inscribed in dreams, ideas, and a big agenda of little things.
We’re dreaming out loud, and you’re invited to dream with us.

Love
M., Ayusha, and Rebecca <3