168 Magazine packed with youthful perspective on historical neighbourhood.
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The youth that Abbie mentions is the backbone of the content created for the second edition of 168 Magazine.
“I think it is really about engaging youth to create change, and that’s sort of like our tag line, a youth board magazine by the community for the community,” said Felicia Jiang, the publication’s managing editor.
“It’s everyday people who truly bring in the biggest changes. You bring in your friends and your family into establishments, into Chinatown, and then they are bringing their friends and their networks into the space, that’s what creates long, lasting and sustainable change, and that’s something that I’ve really been trying to get people to understand, and I think that it really has been working.”
The magazine’s content is wide-ranging. Everything from drawings from children, photographs from established photographers, creative writing from youth contributors and letters from community members fill the publication’s pages.
“We placed recipe cards in different cafes across the neighbourhood and just invited people with kind of just a little call to action sign to write or draw their memories around food and a recipe … That was a really kind of fun project, because you kind of have a really broad range of ideas,” said Abbie explaining some of the unique content.
While it has included a wide range of people, the magazine is centred on Chinese youth and giving them a space to speak their minds and learn about creating a magazine.
“It was really just like, ‘How you invite people … to like a dinner table? Or to any type of community (event)?’ You invite, through friends of friends, through word of mouth, but then also through their network,” said Jiang, explaining the outreach to youth in the community.
“I think the biggest part was having a lot of great contributors and a lot of great resources when we first started out, great organizations, great people to work with and just knowing youth who were passionate about Chinatown and passionate about wanting to do something more, wanting to put their artistic skills somewhere, and the magazine being a place for that, being an outlet for that.”
The magazine began last year when Abbie was an artist in residence at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre. A Chinese Scottish Canadian artist and editor in chief of A Magazine Curated By based in Vancouver and New York, Abbie wanted to engage youth with and in the neighbourhood.
The first edition that came out last year asked youth to look to the future as the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chinese Immigration Act prohibited most Chinese immigration to Canada between 1923 and 1947) was approaching.
“The idea was like, ‘Oh, how do we … mark this occasion, but also look to the future and see what does inclusion mean within the community?’ ” said Abbie. “It could be quite interesting to somehow work with a young group of people who might be interested in engaging in the community in a different way.”
The name 168 Magazine offers a direct link to the location where the idea was spawned.
“168 in Mandarin and Cantonese is a homophone for yi/lu/fa 一 路发, which means the road to prosperity. When I was an artist in residence at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, the address (168 E. Pender St.) happened to be those digits; the youth team decided that was a sign it should be the title,” said Abbie.
So far, the magazine is a print-only offering, with the hope of having a digital version by the spring. Out now, it’s available for purchase at Massy Books, the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, Vancouver Chinese Gardens, Nooroonji, and Upstart & Crow.
Through 168 Magazine, Abbie and Jiang hope people pick it up and experience through its pages stories about real people and real places within the unique and historical neighbourhood that is Vancouver’s Chinatown.
“I would love for people just to feel a bit more comfortable … and just to enjoy and explore and support the community in the ways that they can,” said Abbie. “The magazine is not (just) for the Chinese community. The magazine is really for Vancouver, and really the legacy of what Vancouver is. So much history of it was built in this neighbourhood. And, to kind of turn a blind eye to it, I think would be really detrimental to our greater cultural city.”