The Rainbow Collective

A collective of young LGBT+ people with the goal of bringing visibility, relatability, and support to other young LGBT+ artists and creative people. Follow us to keep updated and leave us a message if you wish to be a part of our supportive group.

[therainbowcollective]

Here’s some more detailed info about our book project. Shortly, our goal is to publish content by lgbtqia+ creators as an e-book on Amazon, free of charge so it is accessible to anyone. 

The content can be anything from photos, drawings/visual art, poetry, to short stories or anything else you can think of. The content doesn’t have to be about LGBT+ issues or themes - our idea is just to post content, regardless of what it is, by lgbtqia+ creators. Saying that, if we did happen to get an enormous amount of submissions, we probably would favor works with those themes since it is the uniting factor of the project.

Our further guidelines on the kind of content we are looking for can be found here, and pretty much everything else you can find on our blog. If you’d like to contribute but are unsure of what to do/how to do it, leave us an ask on our blog and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. 

Since we’ve already gotten a couple of inquiries, here’s our info on the project so far (1.8.2017): we’d like to be able to finish the book by the end of the year, so we’ll be taking submissions until the end of November. Our email address is [email protected]. That’s where you can leave whatever you want to send in for the project. If you have any questions, you can either contact us through that email or by leaving an ask on our blog.

When sending in your file/s, please attach this info: 

1. Which name/nickname do you wish your works to be signed with in the book? Anonymity won’t be an issue - if you don’t want to give your real name, you can make up any nickname you want or just go by ‘anonymous’.

2. We will have a short section at the end of the book with a list of all the contributors. You can also choose to have a few sentences about your identity/art/description about yourself if you wish. What would you like to say (if anything)?

That’s a lot of info for now, if you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to ask! Have a great week, thank you for reading 🌷

[therainbowcollective]

All of this is correct but we’ve bumped the submission deadlines to April 2018!

[therainbowcollective]

Hi again!

Hi! It’s been a while. Life really took us by surprise this fall with lots of stuff we don’t want to bore you with, but we’d like to let you know that the project is still happening! For those of you that don’t know, our project is to put together a free e-book of art by and for young lgbtq+ people. 

Because we’ve been super swamped these past few months and haven’t really been here to remind everyone about submissions, we’re extending our deadline for submissions until April 2018. We want to thank everyone for their patience, we still want to make the book happen and we’re thankful for all the interest people have shown in it. There’s also a couple of asks in our inbox that we’ll get to as soon as we possibly can! We’re still working on our own pieces for the book and submissions are always welcome, you’ll find more details here on this blog ❤️

- Auri and Joona

[therainbowcollective]

I have an art piece that I would like to submit. How would I send it to you ?

Our email address is [email protected]. That’s where you can send all your art pieces to participate in the project. We will make sure that each participant gets to show off their art pieces in the book.

When sending in your file/s, please attach this info:

1. Which name/nickname do you wish your works to be signed with in the book? Anonymity won’t be an issue - if you don’t want to give your real name, you can make up any nickname you want or just go by ‘anonymous’.

2. We will have a short section at the end of the book with a list of all the contributors. You can also choose to have a few sentences about your identity/art/description about yourself if you wish. What would you like to say (if anything)?

[therainbowcollective]

Hi, I plan on submitting some of my writing and I just have a few question. Are short stories allowed/Is there a max word limit? Also, what age group is the book going to be geared towards? In an earlier post, you mentioned you're both 19. So, is it intended for teens/young adults?

That’s so great! We can’t wait to get to read your writing.

Short stories are allowed and there’s no max word limit. We’ve kept a vague rule of limiting short stories that are over 10 pages long. If you have longer texts, you can still submit those too and we’ll see if there’s enough space for them in the book.

We’re including art pieces for different target groups. There’s definitely going to be stuff geared towards teens/young adults but also older lgbtqia+ people. The only rule we have concerning this is that we won’t be able to include any R rated or explicit content due to most of our followers being minors.

[therainbowcollective]

Interested in making new friends?

We're thinking about setting up a group chat for us all at the Rainbow Collective to get to know each other better. Would you be interested in making new friends?

Like this post if you would so we can see how many of you would like to participate. The group chat will be a safe place for all LGBTQIA+ teens and young adults to get to know other people around the world. It also goes without saying that you can join and leave the group freely as you please. We could go forward with this even with just a couple of people if anyone is interested.

As tumblr doesn't offer a group chat option, we'll have to choose a different platform. For those interested: Would you prefer Whatsapp, Instagram or something else?

[therainbowcollective]

Could you help me spread word about my LGBT+ book, Jam Jars?

Sure, sounds interesting! If you want to leave more info about it, you can add them to this ask with a reblog? We'll make sure to share that too, everyone should go check it out! 💕

[therainbowcollective]

Hi you sound like really cool community but im not out and my friends are very very homophobic so i don't know if i can participate sorry. And also a random question but do you have instagram? I tried to search for you guys there so are you @rainbowcollective or @therainbowcollective?

We're really sorry to hear about your friends. You deserve to be surrounded by people who appreciate you for who you are 💜However you can still participate if you wish to. When being a part of the Rainbow Collective, you can stay completely anonymous for the whole process. The only time you need to be in contact with us is when sending your art pieces to our email ([email protected]). We will go through the emails confidentially and no one except the two of us will ever get to see which email addresses were involved. If you wish to stay even more secure, you can always set up an anonymous email address just for sending the pieces and delete it afterwards. We'd love to see you as an contributor but remember to stay safe!As for the instagram account, as of today (23.8.2017), the Rainbow Collective doesn't have an instagram. If we decide to create one, we'll tell about it here. Both of us do have personal accounts so if you're interested in following them, just ask 😌

[therainbowcollective]

We just recieved an ask from someone saying that they hate that most of lgbt+ art is super erotic and r rated. When I was done replying and clicked post, everything disappeared, the ask, my answer, everything. It’s not in our inbox but not posted anywhere, either (has this happened to anyone else?).

Anyways in reply to that, i feel you and im frustrated with it too. We know that a lot of people feel that way and we wanted our book to be safe for younger lgbt+ people too so that’s why we’re not including any super explicit material in it 🌻 - A

[therainbowcollective]

Full disclosure

Joona and I were talking about this earlier and we want to bring it up here on the blog. We’re both white and we know that white voices are overrepresented in the lgbtqia+ community. We know how important it is to give space for everyone else, too. We’d just like to explicitly state that works by and about people of color are welcomed and encouraged, and that if we use insensitive terms or say ignorant things because we are white, you don’t have to hesitate in correcting us (we try our best and don’t want our project to feel unsafe for anyone). Our art and material come from our perspectives, but we want this book to be a place for you to share yours, too. Considering what the world is like right now, we thought it’d be best to talk about this here in case it’s something you’re wondering about or hoped we would address ♥️

- A

[therainbowcollective]

It's also probably good to mention that this applies to all religions too

[therainbowcollective]

I actually realized I was non-binary through a poem I wrote. I was about halfway through when i realized that the person I was writing about was me. It was a weird but amazing thing. As always thank you for your blog and collecting all the art, it's a wonderful thing to do!

Wow that’s awesome having art help you better understand yourself! Thanks for sharing :)

-J

[therainbowcollective]

Full disclosure

Joona and I were talking about this earlier and we want to bring it up here on the blog. We're both white and we know that white voices are overrepresented in the lgbtqia+ community. We know how important it is to give space for everyone else, too. We'd just like to explicitly state that works by and about people of color are welcomed and encouraged, and that if we use insensitive terms or say ignorant things because we are white, you don't have to hesitate in correcting us (we try our best and don't want our project to feel unsafe for anyone). Our art and material come from our perspectives, but we want this book to be a place for you to share yours, too. Considering what the world is like right now, we thought it'd be best to talk about this here in case it's something you're wondering about or hoped we would address ♥️

- A

[therainbowcollective]

The first lgbt art exhibit i visited was The Gay Museum in Berlin. According to their site it's "one of the world's largest institutions focusing on the broad range of human sexual identities and gender concepts." In fact it was a smallish museum, and a disappointment. I remember my gf crying outside the museum because we had been waiting to visit the place for so long and the collection was in no way what we'd been hoping for after visiting dozens of museums filled with straight cis art 🙁

That sucks! I wish there was more representation available.-J

[therainbowcollective]

For the art stories thing: i mean probably most wlw know her but the music of Hayley Kiyoko gives me life. If you're a girl who likes girls it's so relatable and catchy and it gives me so many feelings every time 😭💕 also even if you're not a gay girl it's just good music so 👸🏽

♥️

[therainbowcollective]

i don't know if this counts as an art experience but i remember watching the film laurence anyways and crying for hours. that's probs the first time i realized how uneasy i felt with my assigned gender.

Xavier Dolan's one of my fave directors. It's a beautiful film!-J

[therainbowcollective]

Before i knew i was a lesbian i found out that one of my favorite artists, Tove Jansson, spent her life with a woman which i thought was so cool at the time (still do). She was a painter but also created the Moomins which are super loved in Finland (where I live) and well know in other places too. Fast forward some years, i now know why it made me so happy then and some of my favorite photos ever are of her and Tuulikki Pietilä as old women, living their life on an island in southern Finland ❤

Oh my god we both love her! If you haven’t seen her stuff go check it out ♥️♥️

[therainbowcollective]

Share your story

Hi everyone! This week we want to celebrate all of us and our differences and uniqueness. The thing that unites us in this collective is an interest towards art. That's why we'd like to hear abour your lgbtqia+ related art experiences. Send us an ask to share your stories 🎨

[therainbowcollective]

Hello. We thought we'd update you on what's going on with the project. We've already recieved some submissions, but even more messages about people wanting to participate. Our submissions are open until the end of November (2017), so it's definitely not too late to get involved! You can find info on requirements and such on our blog, and any material you already have can be sent to our email, [email protected]. We'll be posting more regularly towards the end of the project to let everyone know where we're at, so in the meantime keep spreading the word and sending in your work! At the moment we're just waiting for you guys and working on our own submissions for the book. For everyone who's already messaged us about wanting to get involved - if you have any problems or have trouble finding inspiration, message us! We'd love to know where everyone is at. You're not in any hurry yet so don't worry 👌🏽