AUREA's Past and Future
Written by the AUREA Team
Word count: 739
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
2019
Everything has a beginning, and AUREA is no exception. Ours began with a website launch, something you’ve undoubtedly noticed by now. What you probably didn’t catch was all the hard work that went into making the website what it is. It was/is a worthwhile task, of course, but by no means an easy one.
Our work can be read in eleven different languages and translations are being done all the time - as we speak even! - to expand our reach and accessibility as much as possible.
The FAQ we put together can be used by both questioning aros and people looking to learn about aromanticism.
We created a glossary of terms for the aromantic community and our allies to refer to. This serves a double purpose as a record of language, both new and old.
A selection of informational pamphlets have been put together for various events or organisations looking to share information on aromanticism.
We have organized a compilation of academic research done both specifically on aromantics, and more generally on a-specs, all covering an array of interesting topics.
Quite a lot of what we have done is the collection of all the information we could find related to aromanticism. The goal is a showcase of the information created by you, compiled together in one location. Our task has been to make this aro knowledge easily accessible to all, complete with creator credit where possible to facilitate easier citing.
We’ve partnered up with quite a few aro groups, including Apocalypse and @robase. Building connections with aro and queer groups has been a priority of ours, and it feels good to have friends.
As a part of this outreach we have established social media across multiple platforms to share our articles and chat with our wonderful audience.
One such project was our collection of aro stories. The exercise was titled ‘My Aromanticism’ and we received around 80 submissions from aros happy to talk about their aromanticism. It was incredibly moving to hear so many personal aromantic narratives, and we look forward to similar projects in the future.
2020
Connecting with aromantics has been our greatest priority right from the beginning and will continue to be so as long as AUREA exists.
We intend to launch an Aro Census that will study and investigate the community demographics. We’re looking forward to getting to know you better.
While the logistics are still a little fuzzy, we hope to attend some conferences this year. Our aim is to educate the wider public, and/or assist anyone hoping to do the same.
Aromantic-spectrum Awareness Week is on the horizon and we have many plans in the works! These plans include setting up a Wikipedia page of aromanticism, connecting with big name news outlets to take advantage of their reach, and hearing from you again about your aro experiences!
Soon we will be tackling our first yearly clean of the glossaries. There has been much discussion since we started the project as to what criteria a word should fit to be promoted within the community. The main focus of this clean up will be: is the term being used? Whether old or new, we want a glossary of relevant vocabulary.
If you have any comments for us, we’re ready to listen. At some point in the near future we will be holding a feedback session, where you can come and let us know what we can add and/or how to improve on the site.
Recruitment for translating, web development, and social media (among other volunteers too) is as always an interest of ours. At the top of our list is another web developer to help with language implementation.
It’s impossible to miss a pop up so you already know about our soon-to-be newsletter! The general plan for this is to email the newsletter out monthly with our new articles, updates on the aro community and updates on AUREA.
There is plenty going on behind the scenes and through the newsletter you can hear about it. Our most immediate plans are to clean up the backend CSS and optimise the website design based on your traffic.
All of these plans are evidence of our plans to grow. AUREA was started with the intention to take root and from there the only way is up. You’ll be hearing from us plenty more in the year to come, hopefully with lots of new and exciting endeavours.