Welcome Home
Loam x Weaving Earth
PHOTO BY AERAN SQUIRES
WHAT IS LOAM?
Loam is a community-powered publishing project.
Since 2014, we have published more than 20 books on climate justice and community care, and have facilitated workshops on collective resilience and disaster preparedness across the country. More recently, we launched the Loam Library, a mobile library and reading room that works to bring the power of print to the people. From curating a multimedia art exhibit on herbal allies for wildfire season to facilitating a podcast on creative climate action with Amirio Freeman, Loam is passionate about nourishing new narratives in person and in print.
In 2023, we merged with Weaving Earth. Weaving Earth is a Center for Relational Education that provides nature-based education for action at the confluence of ecological, social and personal systems change.
When we reflect on this shift, the language of “merger” feels insufficient. Nesting Loam within Weaving Earth is more like a homecoming. We’re hopeful about what might grow from our shared garden, and humbled to be in community with you.
We want to name that Loam will still be Loam! Same name, same vibe, same vision. But as the educational media branch of the Weaving Earth ecosystem, our upcoming projects and programming will be an expression of Weaving Earth’s guiding organization values, too. We have been in close collaboration with Weaving Earth for years, and to ally our visions with theirs truly is a dream!
WHY A NEWSLETTER?
In December of 2022, we took a sabbatical from Loam. As cultural workers in the climate movement, we were tired. After many months of rest and reflection, we’re coming home to Loam reenergized and recommitted to this work that we love so much. Our sabbatical affirmed for us that publishing is our praxis!
As we nourish the next iteration of Loam, we will be focusing on creating community off of social media. This means tending to our mobile library, facilitating IRL events, launching V2 of the Down to Earth Deck in collaboration with Amirio Freeman, dreaming up new print projects (we have a few in the works!), curating collaborations with Weaving Earth, and growing this newsletter.
We want this newsletter to be a source of inspiration and affirmation for our readers. You’ll find nuanced essays on current events; archives of past articles; recommended resources; guides to disaster preparedness; primers on community organizing; herbal remedies for navigating crises; and conversations with creatives in our constellation. The right book at the right time can be a revolution, and so we’ll also be sharing updates on what we’re reading with you all! If you know Loam, you know that books are our love language.
As part of the Weaving Earth ecosystem, we also hope this newsletter can be a space to critically engage inherited stories of separation and domination as well as responsibly recollect a deeper human inheritance of stories of interrelationship, belonging, dignity and respect.
HOW TO READ
Although we aim to publish several times throughout each month, our intention with this newsletter is to move at the pace of our capacity. In the midst of a media landscape that fosters continual content creation, we want to be more mindful with what we share (and why). Your attention is precious, so if we are going to share something in this newsletter, we want to make sure it really respects your attention!
We are always so moved when Loam readers send us snapshots of our publications sunning on picnic blankets on the beach or sitting pretty next to a stack of succulent stone fruit. With time, we’d like this newsletter to be in print—it would be sweet to send each of you a monthly missive in the mail! But for now, we hope that this offering can be an invitation for you to create a beautiful space to read. Maybe you open this newsletter on its own page so that you aren’t distracted by so many tabs, or take a deep breath before and after reading. Maybe you savor a mug of tea (we have some recipes for nourishing blends coming your way in the next few weeks!) or share with a friend. Reading can be a ceremony, and we would love if this newsletter can be one of many bridges into reorienting.
WHAT’S NEXT
We have big visions for Loam. As the educational media branch of Weaving Earth, we’re devoted to creating print materials and audio programming that nourishes stories of interrelationship, belonging, dignity and respect. We are working on transforming our disaster preparedness guide “Compassion In Crisis” into a dynamic and interdisciplinary workbook; growing our mobile library’s capacity to serve our community; tending to several audio education series; curating community art exhibits; and nourishing new print projects on issues such as disposability culture and wealth reclamation. Every paid subscription to this Substack will help this vital work flourish in the world.
Loam is an indie magazine, publisher, and mobile library. But we’re also a regenerative and relational movement that considers print a conduit for exploring juicier questions about accountability, care, reciprocity, and justice in conversation with our community.
We want to thank you for being here with us.
In love and solidarity,
Loam x Weaving Earth