Toronto Metropolitan University's Independent Student Newspaper Since 1967

All Arts & Culture Editorial

The arts issue: more than just a ‘Top 10’

By Sean Wetselaar

In 2010, The Eyeopener decided to try something different with our annual assembly of special issues.

In addition to the generally successful Sports Top 10 issue, we branched out, producing a special, three-page pullout called “Springing Forward” — a look at a group of artists on campus and the work they’d done.

That first arts issue appeared on stands the year before I started at the paper — but by the time I did we were still having a lot of the same discussions.

Those were the early days of not just our arts special issue, but also of our communities section in general. And both were created as part of a bigger push from the masthead — to try to tell the stories of students on campus as widely as possible.

Because, without communities, without the arts issue, some of the only profiles on students we would write covered student athletes, once per year. And though those stories are important, they are not the only ones we can tell.

As I’ve written in these pages before, The Eyeopener wants to be the voice of students on campus. And our annual attempt to highlight some of the most creative members of campus is just a part of that.

It hasn’t always looked the same. In 2013, we ran a paper focused on innovators on campus, with more emphasis on business students and inventors — rather than simply artists.

But the overall goal of the issue has always been to tell you stories that you haven’t already heard.

Perhaps more than any other section in the paper, our arts and life, and communities sections exist to represent you — our readers. And we’re always trying to do better on that front.

You’ll be hearing from our arts and life editor Al Downham about the vision and the message for this year’s special issue, but we’ve done our best to keep up the with the spirit of that first, three-page pullout.

We hope you enjoy it.

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