Shreveport is a great place to be right now, and its getting better. There’s a lot going on and so much our city has to offer these days. While not yet the city we hope to be, our community has come a long way from being a place filled only with big box stores and national brands. We have gained, with great effort, quite a lot in recent years. Entrepreneurs, organizations, and community groups are building new retail and service businesses or providing hobbies or creative outlets for a variety of different interests.You can also see here to know more about building restoration.Step back and you will see a city which is drastically different than it was just ten years ago.
This new community and the city it occupies didn’t happen on its own. The inception of greatness stems from new ideas. Ideas breed innovation of the new and renovation of the old. The “creative class,” as one friend pointed out late last year, is the bedrock of our newfound identity. But, a decade ago, people didn’t demand the things we now take for granted – a growing music scene, filmmaking/exhibition, traditional/performing arts, green spaces, local food, new small businesses. Hell, most people living in the city limits still don’t even know about these offerings when they did exist. The truth is, prior to this revolution, the city and its citizens didn’t know what we wanted. The collective “we” of the city knew what we had wasn’t working. For a long time, some tried to do fancier versions things they had always done, akin to building a faster horse when what we needed was a car. What Shreveport needed was something fresh, a new set of ideas.
In the early early days, some were ready for a truly new city – not just a Dave and Busters. An intrepid few decided to stop waiting and decided manifest this change on their own. If you’re reading this, you probably know of someone in the community that fits squarely in this category. We at Heliopolis know more than a few because we love being around them. These individuals ventured into the unknown to find that, not only was there nothing impossible about implementing their idea, though often challenging, there were others who also liked what they were doing and who supported them. Instantly, a revolution was born which is still rising today. Every day, new people are realizing that making change isn’t the insurmountable feat that they may have had in their head, and that good ideas really do attract creative and enterprising minds. Someone provides a soup stone, and everyone else brings the ingredients. “Shreveport shows up,” as we say.
Ideas that set out to create something new are ones we need so desperately and some work so hard to implement in order to change the culture of our city. Citizens are coming to see, in greater numbers, that change is the decision to simply do things the way they should be regardless of what the status quo says works, or what the law books say is legal. Changes to city code for Great Raft Brewing, or the new ordinances for Little Free Libraries, or our leadership’s vigor in upholding the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality by issuing some of the first same-sex marriage licenses in the state of Louisiana are banner examples of our ability to shape our city by deciding to tackle arcane ideas and replace them with new ones. Whatever change is desired, it takes a soup stone and a supporting community willing to take things to the next level. Shreveport has that spirit.
When Heliopolis began, it too was born from the ashes of older ideas – the previous publication called The Catalyst. Our first print edition with a new name and mission was released in October 2013. New leadership had stepped in, and a new course was set. We aimed to tackle things no one was covering. Stories and ideas that others had neglected. And you, our loyal readers, brought the spice to our soup stone. You picked up our papers, were the subject of our pictures. Your interests were ours, and our passion to serve you was overflowing. From there, a meteoric rise in readership culminated from August 2014 to February 2015. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a place where others were chasing the kinds of stories we prided on bringing to the city, edging into our coverage. The community had unequivocally told the bigger papers that the kind of content you wanted was local-focused, energetic, different, and full of bigger thinking. We couldn’t have been more excited that this was the way forward for the city – more coverage on arts and happenings than ever before. Things were genuinely starting to shift and it was exhilarating.
But with the success of 2014 and early 2015, we battled to stay on top by releasing things faster than the other guys. Frankly, as a small paper with volunteer staff, we couldn’t compete with the full time staff and the advertising dollars behind some of the bigger papers that, for various reasons, were now hitting the beats they weren’t before. We realized we were racing for readers in an area of coverage on which we had once focused but has since been taken on by other publications – which was awesome. We were no longer on the bleeding edge of content creation, but rather battling for superiority over ground we had previously been the sole claimants of.
Over the next few months we sat somewhat overwhelmed. We were upset that we had lost our edge. We were beaten down, tired, and unsure of what to do – what to focus on. At the same time we were happy that culture and community were being covered more by a newly-restructured staff at The Times, and new staff and directives at other publications. It’s a beautiful thing to see change happen right before your eyes. The community had demanded, alongside as well as independently of our efforts, that they wanted something better. But we wondered how we would we fill the void of bringing fresh content to our readers, and continue to say the things no one else would say or that weren’t getting an alternative perspective. You could say that the soup was cooked and that everyone gobbled it up. And since the soup that everyone contributed to has been eaten, it’s time to start a new pot.
Today we announce that we are relaunching Heliopolis. We have taken note of the way you consume your news and information (also check out Algeria TV and News US News from here), and are going to set down a new path while refining the spirit of the last iteration, tailoring it to the new needs of the city by cleaving off old ideas and making room for new ones. The purpose of the relaunched Heliopolis will be to inspire, to question authority, and to inform the citizens of Shreveport in order to build a better city. To do this, we will work to clear a new trail in local news and opinion. What is the soup we are brewing? Take a look. We will be, with gusto:
– Focusing on sharing the stories of people who are bringing change to our city.
– Bringing in more contributors to write for communities who need a voice.
– Critiquing and working with the municipal and parish governments to promote transparency.
– Writing unique features on local business, music, film, theater, performing arts, and other artists.
– Exploring new methods of exhibition with unique special events.
– Challenging readers to participate in making Shreveport a better place to live.
The pot is set, and we’re ready to begin adding your ingredients. Some will be new, some will be the same but better. We aren’t starting over, just starting again. We look forward to evolving our voice as our community changes, focusing on quality telling of unique stories and perspectives.
We are also planning restarting a new print run, and first issue of a new volume will be released this summer. A new distribution network will be announced in the coming months. If you are interested in contributing as a writer, photographer, or videographer and bringing your flavor to Heliopolis, please email us at chris@heliopolis.la to open a conversation with us.