This is a worthy cause if you have a few £sss to spare.
You’re probably reading this because you were a fan of fRoots magazine: maybe your life was improved by it in some way. You’ll have heard that the company publishing it was finally forced to close down this past summer. My final hurdle is to keep the bank at bay – hence this fundraiser.
I have been persuaded by many of our supporters to create this GoFundMe campaign – not to help me gain personally, but so that the fRoots story can finish without much further cost to me.
The closure of fRoots was the end of a huge contribution to and catalyst for the folk, roots and world music community over the past 40 years. Founded by myself and a small group of friends in 1979 and edited by me throughout, I began looking towards retirement about a decade ago, but continued because I wanted and needed to explore every avenue to place the magazine into good hands beyond my tenure. Sadly, it was not to be.
The years since the beginning of this century have been challenging for all publishers, especially independent specialist ones. Technological changes, international events and the economic environment all conspired against the hard working team behind fRoots. But we kept going because, as many people told us, we were unique and invaluable for publicising and encouraging artists, events, new music, audiences, diversity and much more – a platform for musics which get very little other mainstream media support.