LIMBO Magazine: a cultural time capsule born under lockdown launches to support out-of-work artists with a radical new publishing model

Frustrated by a lack of government support for the arts and creative industries, the ​LIMBO team have created a community-driven model for supporting out-of-work creative minds.

Launched by Nick Chapin (Frieze, Vice), LIMBO upends the traditional publishing model with a not-for-profit approach, distributing all profits from advertising and issue sales directly to the contributors featured in the magazine and the staff who produce it.

A long list of A-list artists and creatives—​including Vivienne Westwood, Wolfgang Tillmans, Miranda July, Tom Sachs, Andrea Arnold, Tyler Mitchell, Collier Schorr, and many more​—have contributed work and waived their fees, allowing funds to go to the contributors most in need.

The inaugural issue features art, ideas, and humour born out of the global lockdown but looking beyond it. The result is perhaps the ultimate time capsule of the 2020 crisis, as seen through the eyes of some of the most creative people in the world. It offers hope, laughs, and a vision for the way forward.

Holly Fraser, WePresent Editor in Chief & LIMBO Publishing Partner shares her perspective on the project, “We can probably all agree that the world is quite a weird place right now. Months have passed while we’ve been forced to stand still. And at a moment like this, when we’re in a constant state of flux, creativity and expression really, really matter. For so many of us, creating is how we make sense of what’s going on around us, how we actualise what we’re feeling. It’s a sense of freedom.

At WePresent we’ve always believed that creativity - in whatever form it may take - can help to change the world. And because of these beliefs it felt like a very natural decision for us to partner with LIMBO to help play a small part in making sure that creativity continues to find its way, even in a time when we might struggle to find ours.”

Download the full media kit here.

About WeTransfer

WeTransfer makes tools to move ideas. Founded in 2009 in Amsterdam as a simple, well-designed file sharing service for the creative community, WeTransfer has grown to include tools that scale across the creative spectrum, including editorial platform WePresent (with 2M monthly readers), mobile app ’Collect by WeTransfer’ (with 4M monthly users), quick slide-making tool Paste® (with 40,000 active teams), immersive sketching tool Paper® (with more than 25M downloads), and the original web platform with 50M monthly users and over a billion files sent each month.

From the beginning, WeTransfer has prioritized bringing “offline” values - trust, transparency, and ethics - online. This means having a responsible data policy and tools that don’t distract people from their creative flow. WeTransfer has pioneered a new means of online advertising, resulting in the platform’s full-page wallpapers, designed by our award-winning in-house creative studio. Advertisers include industry-leading brands like Apple, Saint Laurent, Google, Balenciaga, Samsung, Netflix, Adidas, and Squarespace.

Since its founding, WeTransfer has proudly supported the creative communities and given up to 30% of advertising space to support the arts, donating over 5 billion impressions in 2017. Through our ongoing advertising grant program and content platform, WePresent, we have partnered with hundreds of groundbreaking artists and organizations, including Björk, King Krule, FKA twigs, Ryan McGinley, Ami Vitale, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the UN Development Program, the World Wildlife Foundation and the Prince Estate. In 2016, WeTransfer launched the world’s first free Masters of the Arts in design thinking with the University of the Underground and Worldwide FM, the global radio station run by legendary BBC DJ Gilles Peterson.

Following a $25 million investment from Highland Europe in 2015, WeTransfer opened a US office in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, to add to the Amsterdam headquarters. In 2018, WeTransfer acquired popular creative apps Paper® and Paste® and expanded its US presence to New York City.