Thank you for your interest in submitting your creative works to our online gallery!
creative Gallery Guidelines –
the nitty gritty
GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery is a space for survivors to share their stories and healing journey. Therefore its content can range from graphic images and writings about extreme abuse, to more lighthearted creations that may not mention the abuse at all. What and how much you want to share is completely up to you.
If you are a survivor of RA/MC and/or child sex trafficking, we welcome your submission(s)!
1. If a creative work can be read or viewed online, we are open to considering it for inclusion in GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery. By creative work we mean everything from poetry and prose to videos and graphic art. We encourage you to browse through our Creative Gallery to see what other survivors have submitted.
2. When you submit a creative work to our Creative Gallery, you are giving us permission to publish it online in GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery. We will not publish it anywhere else without getting your written permission first. You retain the copyright to all your submitted works.
3. GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery is a free resource that anyone can view. You will not be compensated in any way for any of your submissions. Rather, it’s a chance to showcase some of your work and share your voice with our website audience. You can share the link to your page (or “wall”) in GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery with whomever you like.
4. Our aim is to include the creative works of as many survivors as possible in GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery. We recognize it takes courage to submit something you created. In the rare case we have any concerns regarding your submission(s), we will be in touch with you.
We are a volunteer run organization and will do our best to get back to you regarding your submission(s) within 10 days. If you haven’t heard back from us by then, please Contact Us to follow up.
ready to submit to our Creative gallery? here’s how!
Please make sure you read, understand, and are comfortable with the above Guidelines before you submit your work. By submitting your creative works to us, you are indicating that you have read and agree to these Guidelines.
save your submission(s) IN the following file formats:
Images (photos, paintings, illustrations, etc.) – .jpg or .jpeg
Poetry and prose –
Preferred format – Word document.
This makes it easy for us to copy and paste the text into a webpage.
If a Word document isn’t possible – PDF.
Special note regarding “shape poems”:
Poems where the lines visually form a shape, like a curve or a heart, for example, are too difficult for us to replicate online. We will keep all of your words, and the line breaks to the best of our ability, but the special shape of your poem will be lost.
If you like, you can take a photo of your shape poem and submit it as a .jpg file, along with your Word document or PDF containing the text of the your poem. We will put a small version of your image above the text of your poem, so people can still get a sense of how your poem is supposed to look.
We are unable to post PDF files on our website, so unfortunately sending us your “shape poem” as a PDF alone isn’t a viable workaround for this issue.
Videos – Upload your video to a video-sharing platform such as YouTube or Vimeo and email us the link to your video. Please ensure that the link is set to allow anyone with the link to view your video (do not set it to “private”).
It is also okay to set the link to “public,” but only if you want your video to be found by search engines and visible to anyone.
Note: To help keep things manageable for the volunteer managing our website, we request you send a maximum of five (5) of each kind of work in your submission. (So 5 images and 5 pieces of poetry or prose would be okay, for example. 10 poems would not, even if they are in different styles – please choose up to 5 of them!)
There is no minimum submission requirement – submitting just one creative work of your choosing is perfectly fine.
Next…
Write a short bio
If you are new to our Creative Gallery and don’t already have your own Creative Gallery page, the next step is to write a short biographical statement to go with your work.
Use whatever name you want to have on your Creative Gallery webpage (real or a pseudonym), and include a bit about yourself and your submitted work(s).
Please keep your biography to a maximum of 400 words – you can easily check the word count in your word processing program. We strictly enforce this word limit.
To give yourself a better sense of what we’re looking for, we suggest you browse our Creative Gallery to see the kinds of biographies other contributors have written.
If you already have a Creative Gallery page with your biography on it, you can skip this step. It’s not necessary to write a new biography, as we will simply add your submission(s) to your current page.
Send us an email
The final step is to send us an email at grassrootsramccollective@gmail.com.
Please be sure to:
- Put Creative Gallery Submission in your email’s Subject Line.
- Attach the files you would like to submit to GrassRoots’ Creative Gallery.
- First time contributors:
Include your bio as an attached Word document. Or copy and paste the text into the body of your email. - Previous contributors:
Include the name you use on your existing Creative Gallery page in your email, so we know where to put your submission(s).
We are a volunteer-run organization so please allow up to 10 days for us to get back to you about your submission and/or any questions you may have. If you haven’t heard from us by then, please Contact Us.
Thank you! We look forward to hearing from you and receiving your submissions!
BY OURSELVES | ABOUT OURSELVES | FOR OURSELVES | FOR EACH OTHER | 