Letter from the Founder—August 2020

Letter from Sarah, Founder of Guide Collective

Bread, A Unifying Theme

Image | Jovan Vasilijevic

Welcome to the inaugural Edition of the Guide Collective Magazine. The Guide Collective was established in May of 2020, in the wake of the Covid crisis, as a way for a rag-tag band of unemployed tour guides to find a new way to teach and share their love of travel and culture, even if travel isn’t always possible.

The Guide Collective represents a diverse set of viewpoints, as our contributors are based in different corners of the world. We view our diversity as our strength, and our intention is to bring to you a broad spectrum of ideas and deepen the dialogue surrounding travel. It is no longer enough to see travel as a series of “Bucket List” items or Instagram backdrops. Through words, photos, video, audio and other kinds of media we can develop, our goal is to communicate, inspire, and connect our readers with the world in a meaningful way.

Each month, we will present a topic. These topics are meant to be conversation starters, universal themes that all cultures share. For our first issue, we’ve chosen a humble staple: Bread.

Bread may be the most common item in households all over the world, but this is what makes it intriguing. It is an object that connects virtually every culture, and one to which we all attach our own sentimentality. We all understand the concept of breaking bread, which invokes images of sharing a meal, sharing time, greeting guests in our homes. The making of bread can be a process about struggle, redemption, connection to our family, echoes of memory in a grandmother’s kitchen. These threads in our own lives are shared in surprising ways with others in parts of the world we haven’t even considered. It is our shared human experience.

Not only does bread cross cultural barriers, but also the expanse of time. From the concept of the “Bread and Circus” used to subdue the ancient Romans, to the petrified loaves found in Herculaneum, to Bible stories of the Loaves and the Fishes, society and lifestyle may change but the humble loaf of bread still appears on tables around the world, 2000 years later.

Each of our contributors has written about bread in their own lives, whether it is figurative or literal. The diversity of types of bread and how those flavors are influenced by local culture is explored, along with the connection that a simple pantry staple brings.

We hope you will enjoy this new approach to travel writing. With this new, collective adventure, we hope to bring you a fresh lens through which to view our beautiful world.

Andiamo!

Sarah