Bang Bang: the nuts and bolts

There are many kids magazines. Most of them are television show or toy related. My boys love Scooby Doo, Buzz Lightyear and Mario Bros and much as any child and I love and laugh at the invigorating worlds and adventures they continually create from these established characters.  The mystery of these characters come with step by step instructions to realise each 'adventure' just as it is on the box cover, one Lego brick at a time. The merchandising and perpetual target marketing at kids from the earliest of ages is phenomenal. But this is not the issue that drove my desire for a new magazine. It was simply because there was no other choice on the shelves. I could not find what I thought would be everywhere; publications and reflections of  kids poetic, unpredictable, brave, imaginative, and generous meanderings. 

BIG will offer a choice. A choice for kids, and a choice for parents. BIG will not be exclusive. It will offer another version of the world, one that has space for interpretation and play. My hope is that BIG will sit alongside the established brands, with the magazine thrown open on the playroom floor, in amongst all of it.  BIG will present 'art' as normal, and bring it into the realms of everyday.  It will rain ideas into the mainstream with words and images that spark responses and conversations between children and artists and people all around the world. We plan to make room to for the magazine to also be accessible to children who cannot afford to buy it.

It will cost money, to make, to curate, to print, to publish, to distribute. We accept that business models are integral to this process of creating an ethical, green, responsible and generous magazine. We grapple with ideas of identity as personal, and global. Indeed, a world much bigger than ours but most deliberately built in real houses, real hearts. We acknowledge the parallels of practice as mother artists, as well as our differences. We fine tune tag lines and collect quotes, shuffle postcard designs and share blogs, websites and endless research. We make decisions on form, structure and future with a new attention.

We in the midst of making a magazine that will be launched in 2011.

BIG Kids Magazine; for all kids living in a moving world.