I am writing this from my small office at home, with a feeling of great accomplishment over our first ever issue of ASLI magazine which has already been a success and is being viewed all over the world. All of this, from my little hive in Portsmouth, UK, with the help from our small but mighty team we have given a voice to some breathtaking artists who have tremendous spirit to convey their messages through their chosen art form.
This magazine is an extension from our non-profit Art Saves Lives International and was an idea myself and my husband ( ASLI Chairman and a feature writer for this publication ) had when deciding how we would feature and give a platform to artists globally. So on the 8th of March ( International Women’s Day ) we put a call out for artists from all disciplines and within hours we were overwhelmed by the response. We had 33 spaces for our ASLI magazine and we had over 4,000 submissions by the the cut off date and beyond. So we quickly put our thinking caps on and decided to feature another 33 artists on our ASLI Blog on our main website and attempt to reply and engage with all other artists who had submitted, something we are still in the process of doing. Every artist who entered means the world to us and we hope eventually we will be able to work with them all. 
It took myself, Mohammed Farhan, Lisa Reeve, Anna Bispham and Becky Saunders to decide on our final artists for the magazine, we split the artists into categories: Visual Artists, Photography/Film/dance, poetry, creative writing and music. I had the visual artists and I was blown away by the talent and quality of all the submission, which of course made the job even harder when deciding who to feature. As a visual artist myself I found the process a pleasure and inspiring, seeing other women like myself using art in the way I do, communicating their thoughts, experiences and overall messages to the world made me feel confident that ASLI as a whole was important and necessary. I am proud to be a female artist.
These female artists were asked to submit a piece of art/creative expression with a few things in mind, the piece had to be on the following subjects (click on the subject to see the artists work):
Here are all the female artists who were in issue 1
And here is my contribution:
My art is female centric because I am a woman and my purpose is to express and inspire expression
So I am now starting to work on issue 2 of our magazine and I can tell you all, it will be out in July and will be on Mental Health, Mental Illness and Recovery, so if you are an artist of any kind reading this I suggest you subscribe to our magazine and our blog so you can get the call out when it goes live this upcoming week in May.
This issue is to be launched in aid of Mental Health Awareness Month throughout May.
In the UK it is a week long campaign and in the U.S. it is a month so we thought when better to launch our next call out. Mental health is particularly important to ASLI, I myself suffer from mental illness an have done since I was 11 years old. As well as myself the majority of our team suffers from mental health problems from sever to manageable. One of the reasons I work from home is due to the fact I have agoraphobia and can not leave my home alone and have not done so for over 8 years. So for us it is more than just a month, it is for some of us our life, something we can not just simply end after a week or a month.
As a visual artist who deals with mental illness in my art I am aware how important the ability to express myself and my inner world is through art. Here are two posts I have written on the subject:
ART SAVED MY LIFE – MY ONGOING STRUGGLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS
THE AGORAPHOBIC ARTIST – MY STORY
Here are some examples of my art on mental illness
We will be doing call for artists every 3 months in alignment with our campaign topic, projects, on-line magazine and blog.
Our next 3 planned topics/campaigns are:
- May – July: Mental Health, Mental Illness and Recovery
- August – October: LGBTQ: Community, prejudice and Stereotypes
- November – January: Capitalism: Greed and Poverty
So how can you get involved?
Subscribe to our Blog http://artsaveslivesinternational.com/category/stop-press/
Subscribe to our On-line Magazine https://artsaveslivesintmagazine.com/
This way you will get our call for artists directly to your email and also can see what we are up to.
We also have lots of social media you can get involved in, we love it when artists share their stuff with us and we often share your work or even add it to our gallery on our website.
So why not get involved by using our hash-tag #artsaveslivesintenational or tag us in your post.
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ArtSavesLivesInternationalNPO
Instagram https://instagram.com/artsaveslivesint/
Twitter https://twitter.com/ASLInonprofit
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/artslint/
Google plus page https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Artsaveslivesinternational
If you feel you have an idea for one of our upcoming campaigns or have a fab idea about something else you think we would like to get involved in, please feel free to message us.
We are always looking for artists, art projects and ways to make the world a better place.
Remember we view art as a massive spectrum of creative disciplines, this includes: Visual Arts, photography, film, performing arts, dance, creative writing, poetry, craft, journalism, essay writing, blogging, culinary arts, environmental arts, gardening…….
Collins English Dictionary defines ‘the arts’ as “imaginative, creative, and non-scientific branches of knowledge considered collectively”
So it is the 1st of May and we will be putting together all our info this weekend to launch the new campaign over the next few days. Keep a look out for how to get involved and remember art can create change and you can be part of that mission.
Thank you for reading our first ASLI Magazine issue xxx
From Charlotte Farhan
ASLI MAGAZINE - creating change 
[…] Editors Letter – Issue 1 – Celebration of Women. […]
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Art is a tacit acceptance of weakness. Unless we acknowledge it and work on it no art can fully flower. Our mortality, gender issues as well as physical, mental torment are all grist to the mill of creating a world that we could not conquer otherwise. Van Gogh, Lautrec are all fine examples in art,Beethoven in music. Art is refined through suffering as Toulouse Lautrec crippled would find: though reduced to feel at home among ‘performers’ whose status was a little higher than women walking the street he felt at home and was one kindred spirit trying to beat the boredom of living as the women would while away before the gentlemen callers would drop in. Even there he created a world where they held a certain dignity and outlived their time and circumstances.
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Thank you for your comment Benny Thomas. A very interesting point. Your engagement is always welcome.
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