We joined forces at a gig back in March 2020 called “Better together, a night of amazing live music showcasing up and coming talent. Here we catch up with founder Toni to chat about ‘the social society’ and her amazing campaign ‘Shows on the road’ a six month project to support the uk’s musicians and performance artists.

This project is so important right now as times are really tough for musicians and creatives across the UK.

“After the first lockdown we hosted a socially distanced picnic to bring people together and it was a huge success.”

What’s bubbling?
There’s lots bubbling at the moment, there’s always lot’s bubbling! 

I have launched my #showsontheroad tour, a six month project to support the arts in the UK, where I will be live streaming over 100 artists from my humble campervan whilst traveling the country. I am undertaking a national roll out of the social societies volunteering model from February and am super excited to reach more charities in need as a result. This year has been a really tough one and I am proud to be able to lead the way with a new and innovative approach to volunteering. 

Tell us in a nutshell what The Social Society is?
We are ‘The Social Club 4 Social Good’ our paid volunteers provide highly skilled support to charities inside our three month skill sharing programmes. We also run events to reduce isolation and loneliness and raise funds for local projects with our membership fees.

How do we support charities in these tricky times?
I honestly think this is one of the easiest questions I have had to answer. I would say, keep doing what you are doing! I have been overwhelmed with the amount of support I have witnessed locally following COVID19 and continue to see kindness both inside and outside our community. Kindness is cool folks!

“I have launched my #showsontheroad tour, a six month project to support the arts in the UK.”

What’s great about volunteering?
The feel good factor, helping others in need and making a difference. I am a champion for long term sustainable methods of support rather than quick wins. Government structures no longer work and this has been apparent for some time now. If you want to volunteer make sure your support packs a punch not just now but way into the future! 

How has c-19 affected you this year?
We usually run a number of events each month to connect people and generally have a great time. We had to cancel our event schedule almost overnight and unfortunately were not eligible for any financial support as an organisation. Whilst this has been really difficult, especially as a small business trying to grow, we are lucky compared to most. We have ploughed our energy into supporting those that need it most and cooked up quirky and innovative projects throughout lockdown that sit outside the box and make an impact! 

Why did you set up The Social Society?
For many many reasons, some of which we don’t have time to go into now but in a nutshell, the charitable giving model in this country doesn’t work. Businesses painting the community shed or digging allotments for team days to fulfil their corporate social responsibility needs isn’t sufficient. Charities prop up core community services where government support is lacking and do so without any additional help financially or in the form of additional resources.

The Social Society is a way of giving back both financially with our fees, offering long term sustainable methods of volunteering through skills development and connecting communities through fun and unique events. We have a great time, our community has fun and our charities get the support they need and in our eyes that’s a win win!

“Be kind, look out for one another and take one day at a time.”

Your new project campaign “Shows on the road” sounds amazing .. How did you come up with the idea?
After the first lockdown we hosted a socially distanced picnic to bring people together and it was a huge success. Shortly after, Boris changed the rules again around gatherings, live music and events in general. Musicians, artists and performers were contacting me asking for help and I wanted a way to do this safely alongside supporting local charity. My mind is always full of bonkers ideas, I’ve always wanted to do a roadtrip and after the year we have all had I figured I could bring the two together. 

Living in and live streaming events from a van, what could possibly go wrong!

How can people help the campaign “shows on the road’?
Donate, share and tell all your creative friends. We are running a crowdfunding campaign to pay the artists that apply to perform and are without work and really need your help. People power, let’s spread the word far and wide!

What’s your dream for the campaign?
We get to showcase 100 artists in 15 cities, support 30 charities over six months exactly like the plan!

What do you think is the most important thing to get us all through these hard times?
Each other. Be kind, look out for one another and take one day at a time. Noone thought we would be in the position we are in now back in January and every person’s journey has been so very different. Be kind, be compassionate and look out for those around you and in need 

How smelly will your van be after the road trip?
It’s going to smell of roses of course

Who’s your dream musician to work with?
ED SHEERAN, ED SHEERAN, ED SHEERAN

Any questions for HEY GIRL?
Fancy joining us for another on the road collab!

Big thanks to Toni for taking time out of her busy time table, please if you have time and money go to her crowdfunder campaign and support her as its such a great and needed project for these times.

Here’s the links to her websites…

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/shows-on-the-road

https://www.thesocialsociety.org.uk

***Warning Lustery.com is an Adult, over 18 website and definitely NSFW!!
(Not Safe for Work)

Lustery.com is a creator-centred platform focused on providing a sex-celebrating and shame-free space for couples to share their love and lust with the world. The home of real-life partners filming their sex lives behind closed doors, Lustery allows these lovers to open those doors to a like-minded community of people who value real intimacy and emotion in porn.

“I’m a film director and producer interested in sex, sexuality and body politics…”

Founded in 2016 by Spanish filmmaker Paulita Pappel, Lustery started small but with game-changing ambitions. Lustery germinated within Berlin’s sex-positive community with the goal of capturing the candid intimacy and raw passion of people’s sex lives.

Paulita Pappel is a Spanish filmmaker and feminist pornographer. After studying comparative literature in Berlin, she worked both in front and behind the camera. She is the founder of Lustery, a platform dedicated to the sex lives of real-life couples from around the world. She also co-organizes and curates the Pornfilmfestival Berlin. Paulita works as a producer, performer, director, screenwriter and podcaster, and is an advocate for a sex-positive, consent-based culture.

“Don’t be ashamed, everyone is different, take your time to explore and discover what you like, it will change over time. “

How would you describe what you do?
I’m a film director and producer interested in sex, sexuality and body politics. The representation and visibility of diverse bodies, desires and sexual practices are key to promoting a sexpositive culture based on consent. I consider porn an entertainment format with the potential of liberating people sexually and opening up a much needed conversation in society about sexuality.

Why did you start lustery.com?
The motivation for creating Lustery was a fascination for showcasing the real sex lives of people. The main challenge: there’s always a performance factor in sex, especially when a camera is pointing at you. We thought that in order to come as close as possible to capturing genuine intimacy, we would take people that already have a sexual relationship with each other, leave them alone in the comfort of their own homes, and entrust the shooting to them, meaning that they can focus on what they most like and even make the camera part of their game.

What’s wrong with the big porn sites?
What’s wrong with the big porn sites is the same as what is wrong with any major corporation. Society has a porn problem! and the problem is that people don’t talk openly about porn and sex, and that as a result, porn becomes an easy scapegoat, publicly demonized and blamed for all societal problems. Porn is not the cause for misogyny or racism. Instead, it often reproduces sexism and racism as it mirrors society. By blaming porn as the source of these systemic issues, we take away the focus from many other areas of society where this scrutiny is really needed. This prejudice against porn also adds to the stigmatization of porn performers and, indeed, all sex workers. When we make statements such as “mainstream porn is bad”, we’re only reinforcing stigma and spreading shame and guilt. Diversity in porn is essential for myriad reasons, among them promoting healthy porn consumption –access to diverse porn allows viewers options and to make more proactive and informed decisions.

How can porn be more empowering for women?
Porn can be more empowering for everyone when we stop shaming people about their sexuality and porn preferences. Having negative feelings like guilt and shame around sex creates a culture of silence, where there is a lack of communication and information. We must stop seeing porn as a “special case”, as this leads to governments and businesses creating barriers for porn companies and making it harder for smaller and divers business to flourish. Porn should be eligible to receive state funding. Then more diverse people would create porn.

“I want Lustery to be a great archive of documentary porn, and a platform that educates around the topics of sex..”

What do porn audiences need to learn to become aware customers?
Porn is not for free. What you can be doing for encouraging high ethical standards in production, and diversity, and high production value, is pay for your porn. You will not only get better quality free of boner-killing ads, you will be supporting the porn you want to see.

What’s your dream for the future?
My dream is a society that offers plenty of resources for inclusive, sexpositive sex education. Where people learn how to communicate about their wishes and boundaries in order to live out a healthy sexuality, respecting each other. And where porn is not stigmatized anymore, but used both as entertainment and educative medium.

Whats the biggest thing you would like to teach young people about sex?
Don’t be ashamed, everyone is different, take your time to explore and discover what you like, it will change over time. 

What do you want Lustery.com to achieve?
I want Lustery to be a great archive of documentary porn, and a platform that educates around the topics of sex, sexuality and relationship and creates space for sexual exploration.

Big thanks to Paulita for giving us an interview and sharing her story.

***Warning this is an Adult over 18 website and definitely NSFW!! (Not Safe for Work)

Here’s her website www.lustery.com  

Stay safe and love each other …

Big Love HG x

With the feeling of  ‘Spirit and Adventure’ our new issue 5 out soon.
We are showcasing her amazing work when she travelled to the Arctic to document the changing polar regions using the technic of cyanotypes.

Get to know photographer FANNY ZAMBAZ, by using the magnificent process of cyanotype she captured the stunning power and fragility of this region.

She talks about her process and the emotions felt for this project.

“This is a project of creation of Arctic giant cyanotypes:

To bring a different, more subjective look to these changing polar regions

To looze my gaze over the days of the endless polar summer, to capture the ambiances that the eye, too sharp, lets escape

To fill my eyelids with nothing but silence, to forget the human noise”

“Because of the difficult terrain (wind, cold, humidity) I could only make two images per day. Prioritizing quality over quantity”

‘Where I want an image to appear, I brush.

Once the paper has dried, I wait for a sunny day to expose it.

To do this, I need a giant negative, which I place on my emulsified paper.

I put a thick glass plate on top, to keep the negative on the paper and leave my sandwich glass-negative-paper in the sun for several minutes. Over an hour in winter

The final result depends on the emulsion, the brush stroke, the drying, but also on the sun which reveals my painting into photography

I then clean the image with clear water and the contours of the photo are revealed in cyan blue.

At this moment, I know if I have managed to capture the magic of nature, which seemed to have been painted with the sun’s approval and the respect of time

A respectful nod to J.Herschel who developed in 1842 the magnificent process of cyanotype.’

“Where I want an image to appear, I brush.”

All my cyanotypes are unique in the sense that the emulsion is applied by hand with a brush and the paint effects remain visible.

Then, my choice of the sun as a light source allows me to work only in certain weather conditions, with multiple variables.

This choice is an interesting part of my artistic approach, which does not find its place in the fast and virtual world that seems to be our century.

I feel, I wait, I touch, I prepare….

In the Arctic, I had to keep the exposed negatives in a light-tight box until I returned home a month later. I then processed them one by one, by hand, in absolute darkens.

It took me weeks,

As these special negatives require a delicate handling in full darkness  difficult to obtain in Arctic summer light on a tiny sailing boat  and because of the difficult terrain (wind, cold, humidity) I could only make two images per day.

Prioritizing quality over quantity FZ

Big thanks to Fanny for allowing us to bring you her amazing work and a truly capturing “Spirit and Adventure” of this beautiful but fragile region.

Get to know fanny zambaz photographer more, please go to her website https://www.fannyzambaz.ch

Hopefully you can feel the sense of travel and adventure in her images to take you away in these tricky times.

For other photographers check out https://heygirlmagazine.com/get-to-know-diana-gomez/

Big Love HG x

Mya’s Letter to herself. A beautiful touching piece of writing she wrote to herself as if she were sitting at her hospital bedside, just after her life changing accident.

Hey all!
My name is Mya Lynn, I’m 20 years old, I live in Chicago USA and for the past 17 months I have lived with a cervical level spinal cord injury. My injury was sustained through unwarranted violence, but I have been blessed with the ability to have a positive attitude. With that being said, in honor of spinal cord injury awareness month (September) I wrote a letter to my newly injured self. This letter isn’t just for me, it’s for anyone out there who is struggling to stay positive.
It gets better!

“A Letter to my Newly Injured Self”

Dear girl on the left,

You can’t talk right now , you can’t move right now and I know that you’re scared. I know you’re replaying the violence that put you here and over in your head. I know you understand what’s going on right now but you can barely think, you’re in a lot of pain and just wish that you could breathe. There are people praying over you, but you fall in and out of sleep.
They say there is 10% chance that you will ever move a thing,but I’ve had a glance into your future and let me tell you what I’ve seen.
In just 9 days you will relearn how to breathe, you’ll start to move your arms a bit and smiles will break free. You’ll be here for the next two months, it will fly by you’ll see. Then you’ll move on to a rehab hospital to focus on therapy. Every day you get stronger and learn new skills to thrive. You’ll talk about what happened and be grateful to be alive. You’ll lose a lot of people that you thought were your friends. In the end you’ll be okay cause you learn what friendship truly is .
Fast Forward sixteen months and you’re writing this to you, you’ve made amazing accomplishments you won’t believe its true. You can feed yourself with those arms that they said you’ll never move. You can even move your legs Mya you’re doing really good. You’ve now learned to adapt things that you never thought you could. Sitting balance by yourself without worry of a fall. You have an amazing attitude and you can conquer it all. You’re currently in college working on a degree, you have so many goals and you’re strength inspires many. You’re close with your family and have great people in your life. You’re becoming your best self and people wonder why.
I will tell you… The victim on the left has become the SURVIVOR on the right.

A big thanks to Mya for sharing her story with us and this amazing piece of honest powerful writing.

At only 20 years old .. watch this space theres more of our creative collaboration to come, this is just the start :)

Go follow Mya on instagram @rollwithmee