The Regional Assembly of Text // Update
We revisited one of the first places that we featured in our guide to see how they are sustaining a creative enterprise in the current pandemic.
Recently we reached out to Brandy and Rebecca, founders of Canada’s Regional Assembly of Text and one of the first places that we wrote about in our guide to ask how they are navigating the impacts of the global pandemic. Our conversation hopefully offers some insight into how one creative business is responding to the current situation and how you can continue to support their work and each other in the coming months.
How has the coronavirus impacted your business / space / you?
We closed both our storefronts in the hope of helping keep our staff, customers and communities healthy. We feel privileged to have been able to make this decision. We thank our staff for their support and we thank all the essential workers in our communities who continue to do their jobs amidst risk and uncertainty.
What are you doing now?
We are both sticking close to home... having meetings on the interweb, trying not to panic too many times in one day and finding solace in the simple fact that we are all in this together.
How have you shifted your business / space?
Because we just launched a brand new website with an online shop featuring our products, we are still shipping orders twice a week from our Vancouver location.
How can people still engage with you from home?
We are loving our Instagram community more now than ever and invite people to join us @assemblyoftext. We are posting letter writing prompts for people to do at home with the hashtag #staystationarysendstationery
How can people best support you?
By engaging with us on Instagram, by telling their friends about us or by supporting us with online orders.
We love your products. Are there that you'd like to highlight?
We just posted a collection of Stay Stationary, Send Stationery goods on our website... including an Activity Book, Off the Grid Stationery, Missing You Card and more.
In the coming weeks, we’re going to try to feature more places that are pivoting at the moment to offer support, creativity and wisdom for our stay-at-home lives. Follow along on social media for updates.
Regional Assembly of Text
When faced with the possibility of a blank page and a typewriter, what would you say, and to whom would you write. An apology, a confession, a declaration of affection?
“A lovely little stationery shop.”
On a trip to Vancouver, I found myself in The Regional Assembly of Text thinking of sending a letter home. Established by the artists and Emily Carr graduates Brandy Fedoruk and Rebecca Ann Dolen to explore “text as a theme”, this is a store/ printing press/ design studio that offers quirky cards, tiny books, papers and printed materials. It also contains the Lowercase Reading Room, a cosy reading library of self-published books and Zines housed in a former storage closet. The Vancouver store has its duplicate in beautiful downtown Victoria, British Colombia, in a second store which has been open since March 2013.
The Regional Assembly of Text is gorgeous, with witty and heartfelt messages in abundance. It just feels good to be in it. But the reason I was really drawn to this space is that once a month they also offer The Letter Writing Club. Since September 2005, out have come the Remingtons and Coronas, with the invitation for people to type, or handwrite, letters to whomever they want, about whatever they want, whether letters to governors or girlfriends. No drafts on Word first, no time to mull over. There’s just the page and a postage stamp, old school style. The Regional Assembly of Text provides supplies, snacks and the space to compose.
As I won’t be here for their next session in a week, I chose a sheet to take away, titled “Heartfelt Letter to Follow”. The last (paper) letter I had written was to a friend when I was in High School. We were separated for the summer and pre-email, so we shared cute teenage girl letters of missing each other even though she lived a short car journey away.
This being Vancouver, I have a rainy day ahead of me, a coffee on the table, and now a pencil in hand, composing a note, but to whom? When faced with the possibility of a blank page and a typewriter, what would you say, and to whom would you write. An apology, a confession, a declaration of affection?
People talk about letter-writing as a lost art form, but perhaps the key part of that sentence is that which is lost. And maybe that’s what letters inevitably connect us back to, and why these sessions at The Regional Assembly of Text are so popular; we get to reach out again to those people, that feel like home, but aren’t where we are at the moment.
As it has rained every day the week that I was in Vancouver, we’ll end with the message on one of their greeting cards:
“Things to do:
In order to increase your level of accomplishment on a rainy day of your choice:
Answer the phone using only verbs beginning with M
Count all the books you own that have one word titles
Choose between elbows and knees
Practice drawing polar bears (mail the best one to your oldest friend, ask for one in return)
Squint every time you hear the word tomorrow
Feel accomplished.”
To find out more: www.assemblyoftext.com / Instagram @assemblyoftext