The prospect of a semester one ScratchThat magazine was all but a pipe dream at the end of last year—budget cuts and sweeping course changes had plunged its future into uncertainty.
But miraculously, ScratchThat weathered the storm, and has now been integrated into one of the new, half-sized 12 credit point SCPs (Situated Creative Practices).
I sat down with Tori Brown and Sailor Rose, two members of the new editorial team for ScratchThat magazine, to see what they’ve been cooking up for us this semester. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Alex: ScratchThat lives after all! Were you two aware of how close ScratchThat came to being cancelled?
Tori: Yeah, it’s crazy. Rohan really brought it back from the dead.
Alex: It was close. So, what’s your vision for this semester’s edition? What’s the thing?
Sailor: Well, to go along with the theme of ScratchThat being revived, we’re trying to revive things from the past as well. So, you’ll notice our logo is made up of all the past logos of ScratchThat and we’re really going to do a deep dive into nostalgia, different eras, mainly looking into the tangible, and just steering clear of the digital, and bringing back physical things, physical touch.
Alex: Can you talk a little about the theme?
Tori: It’s called Timestamp and so it really is just like nostalgia, it could be 2016, it could be 1916, etc. Whatever era you want to explore.
Alex: That’s awesome. How’s the team coming together so far?
Tori: Good! Everyone kind of just fell into place. It is very much a team based on passion. So, everyone picked their roles, we didn’t nominate anything. It was really volunteer-led, and everyone is going for it. It’s exciting!
Sailor: And we’re lucky enough to have a group that are really happy to work across different teams; a lot of people are working in at least two or three teams. And heaps of people are happy to step up and just take on different roles as they come up, which is super helpful for us as well.
Alex: How many teams do you have now?
Tori: There are eight teams in total.
Sailor: Yeah, and then kind of some mini departments as well.
Alex: That’s great! What do you think you’re bringing to the magazine this semester?
Tori: We’re hoping to foster a community. I want to say since COVID—but that’s so long ago now—we’ve really become a lot more online. We have a lot of ideas in the pipeline, we’re trying to create more events, we’re trying to be more than just an email, or a website, or an Instagram account—but to actually be a community again.
Alex: So not just a single magazine launch but a whole slew of things across the semester?
Sailor: We’re really trying to make things a bit more personalised as well. We want to make our events more interactive and make sure everyone’s not getting the same generic handout. And that’s kind of the idea we’re going for in our magazine as well. It’s something authentic.
Alex: There’s one note I have from the previous ScratchThat launch. It was really good, but they had a live band that played quite loudly; people were either doing readings, or the band was playing, so you couldn’t talk or socialise with anyone.
Sailor: I think the band that we’ve got lined up said that they’re very happy to do background music, mixed in with some more “pay attention” sets.
Tori: Yeah, we’ve got an indie band to play covers, and they’ll have their own concert at the end.
Alex: Yeah, that sounds perfect.
Tori: We’re focusing more on connection this time.
Alex: Community is such an important part of it, 100%. Have you looked back to past editions for inspiration at all?
Tori: Well, our logo is made from snippings of every edition from before, and I really love it.
Sailor: Yeah, it’s really cool. And we’ve even looked back at the past ways teams have set up the website to draw a little bit of inspiration. We’ve taken the idea from Laneway to have that cool retro cursor, just to add something a little bit fun to the website.
Tori: The website’s so fun.
Alex: What do you want to tell people about ScratchThat this semester?
Tori: Get involved. Email us, pitch stuff, we want to do handwritten poetry and have a movie screening potentially with student films. So just keep an ear out and come to things, please, and we definitely want to keep it affordable too. There’s not going to be an overly expensive ticket; hopefully we’ll keep everything student-budget-friendly.
Sailor: We want to get together lots of little ideas that are going to make the launch night really fun too, we want to bring some digicams, for some great photos too. And I think social media is cooking up some interesting things for people to see on there, so if people want to give us a follow there, we promise to keep it interesting.
Tori: We’d also like to remind people that our social media team volunteered, no one’s been held, um, against their own will. They definitely wanted to do it and—
Sailor: No one’s being kidnapped.
Tori: —no one’s been kidnapped or forced to do anything.
Alex: Well, that’s good! So, are there any dates we should keep free in our calendar?
Tori: April 16th is when submissions for Timestamp close—check out the link in our Instagram bio for more details—and people should keep an eye out in Week 13 for our launch event. You won’t want to miss it!
