Offerings is a free monthly music magazine distributed through Toronto’s record stores, bookshops, and cafés. The Varsity sat down with editor-in-chief Deirdre O’Sullivan and layout designer Andrew Zukerman to discuss their philosophy and their process.
THE VARSITY
What are you doing and how is it unique in Toronto?
DEIRDRE O’SULLIVAN
What we’re doing is trying to create a catalogue or archive of all the experimental music and arts that go on in Toronto.
THE VARSITY
You do lots of interviews too, right? How do you choose who to interview?
ANDREW ZUKERMAN
I guess if someone has something going on that month.
DEIRDRE O’SULLIVAN
It’s largely based on promoting events in the city. So often times things like electroacoustic music or even folk music, or anything that would be considered experimental or avant garde. There’s a pretty thriving experimental jazz scene in the city that we feel is pretty underlooked by media so our goal is to cover those events, and the aspiration is to get people to go out to the shows by informing them about what’s going on.
THE VARSITY
How do you feel that having your magazine in print affects what you’re doing, and why do you feel that print is a necessary platform as opposed to online?
DEIRDRE O’SULLIVAN
For me, I feel that that’s more reflective of our personalities and the people working on this paper. We’re generally very object-focused people — collectors. The idea of something being on the Internet makes it kind of ephemeral. With printed paper, the goal would be not just today and tomorrow, but in 20 years people can look back and have a catalogue of what was going on in the city in 2013.
ANDREW ZUKERMAN
We both come from a background of having our own record labels so I kind of felt like it was an extension of that. It was kind of a resistance to the digital side of things. We have all kinds of art.
THE VARSITY
Is there an audience that you particularly look to get in the city, or are you really just trying to get a huge number of artists out to a huge number of people and have people find their audiences?
DEIRDRE O’SULLIVAN
Have people find their audiences, for sure. As many people as we can reach is our audience for sure. When we were kids, if we had known about all of the amazing things that were going on in secret clubs all over the city we would have been there and we would have been supportive, but because there was no access to that information, it was lost to us. Our goal is to make that information more accessible.
THE VARSITY
How do you think the music community in Toronto can be improved?
DEIRDRE O’SULLIVAN
I think that improvement comes from closer networks. In places like New York and London there are large groups of people who think that what they are doing is the best thing in the universe, and so I think there are a lot of people who look to those cities to try to find out what to enjoy and where to be, but in every metropolis and every small town people can look inside themselves to find what they seek.
THE VARSITY
What are some current goals for Offerings?
DEIRDRE O’SULLIVAN
Our initiatives are subscriptions and once we get those in order we’ll see where things go, but there are a lot of challenges because it’s all volunteer-run. We’ve got lots and lots of people involved. February will be our twenty-first issue. The whole point of the paper is to promote a dialogue between potential audiences and artists, and the artists themselves trying to find their community for collaborations or connections that come as a result of a paper. That’s what would make us feel successful.
