Eclectic's Mission:
Provide a published, vetted forum for UWG student artistic work.
Publish a literary magazine, which features a wide range of genres, included but not limited to, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, art, music, film and translations.
Provide the UWG student body at large with complimentary copies of Eclectic.
Provide hands-on editing and managing experience for undergraduate students, which translates into internships for the staff of Eclectic.
Support the student body of UWG in cultural education through partnering with departments and programs across campus in order to support their efforts to diversify campus culture. Eclectic supports other departments' and programs' efforts to provide outside speakers and performers by purchasing books, or other appropriate media from the invited speakers/performers and providing said materials to student attendees for free.
Showcase and feature exemplary student work through the magazine's spring launch event through student performances and through a series of contests for writing and art.
Eclectic offers a public forum for students, a safe environment in which to display their artistic endeavors, which may or may not have started in the classroom, but which ultimately have lives beyond the classroom, and which, therefore, receive a wider audience. The audience does not only include other students, and others in the UWG population, but also includes a community outside of the university environment. The magazine promotes and fosters an artistic community on campus, and it offers students a chance to professionalize as staff members and as artists. Producing art and writing for public consumption provides another layer for young artists. It encourages a further level of attention and revision from the artist, a layer of consciousness that’s required for art that has a life beyond the self or even beyond the classroom setting.
Those students who read or look at, or listen to, or watch content included in the issues see what’s possible, what their fellow students produce. That audience is entertained or enlightened or challenged by their peers’ work.
Eclectic offers a type of encounter with other students which does not happen, generally speaking, at the university. It is an unusual encounter across disciplines and allows Student A who has never met Student B to be introduced to what happens in another part of campus, and it happens in a venue that is outside of the classroom. The work in the magazine is not “graded” and has an existence beyond the teacher/student relationship. Eclectic is a way for students to connect with other students in an intimate and unusual way. It builds not only a community of artists, but because of the wide range of disciplines and majors represented in one document, demonstrates the breadth of the community available at UWG.
The magazine demonstrates the zeitgeist on campus—there are filmmakers, screenplay writers, poets, story writers, painters, graphic artists, saxophonists, flautists, musicians, cartoonists (and the list goes on) represented. Eclectic is the artistic history of UWG.
Additionally, the spring release event is a live opportunity for students to share their work, and the event has student readings, music performances and an art show. The event also features a poet or writer from the national literary scene. This event allows mingling of all artistic disciplines, and allows students to network with one another and with faculty as well as with community members and partners.