“To me, the grounds for hope are simply that we don’t know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and the unimaginable transpire quite regularly.”
—Rebecca Solnit

Hope—do you happen across it, or is it hard work?

Whichever camp you sit in, there are many ways that hope can take shape. Sometimes, it arrives quietly. Sometimes, it surprises us altogether. And sometimes, as Solnit writes, it appears precisely because we don’t know what will happen next, as we simply keep on keeping on, hoping that hope is around the corner.

artED began as a singular artistic vision giving voice to a lived experience that is often isolating, difficult to talk about, and frequently misunderstood. Part of the thinking was to create a space where people come together and, through sharing stories of adversity, find common ground and draw strength from a collective hope.

In this special edition, questions expand beyond one person’s perspective in a collection that is as varied as the people who have contributed photographs, drawings, poems, and reflective interpretations on what hope looks like for them. Some works speak directly to eating distress. Others explore different forms of struggle and resilience. Many consider what it means to hold on to the possibility that tomorrow could be different—a belief that hope is worth returning to, even, and especially, when it feels fragile or out of reach. Each piece offers a perspective on what it means to hold onto hope in small moments or minutiae, in larger transformations, or in the bigger picture.  None of us know what will happen next and that uncertainty can feel daunting. We are living through times that feel overwhelming. War, environmental crisis, and deep political divisions make it easy to believe that nothing can change.

I was thinking about this editorial and Helen on a recent trip to Providence, R. I. The idea of hope—or hopelessness—seemed to be making its present felt. As I walked about downtown early when shift workers were either leaving or starting their day, and queues were forming outside soup kitchens, it was there, imbued in the street names, inscribed in pavement poetry, catching me unaware in the name of the local school ‘Hope High’ and, to my surprise (and great relief) in the visibility of gender-nonconforming people at a time when discrimination and the rolling back of people’s rights is rising. (As Bertolt Brecht wrote, “There will also be singing. About the dark times.”)

It really did seem that ‘hope’ was dogging me. On my return flight, at the end of the book I was reading, there it was again—in the rhythm of the final sentence, written in the future continuous tense. A vision of hope after despair for a family whose seemingly happy domestic life unravels after a chance meeting with an old friend:

                  “… and Athena will play Bach on the piano, in the empty house, and her left hand will keep up the steady rocking beat, and her right hand will run the arpegios, will send then flying, will toss handfuls of notes high into the sparkling air!”

We hope these contributions remind you that the unexpected can bring new possibilities.

Gráinne Sweeney
2025
@grainne_gms
www.gmsealain.com/

Citations:

Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.

Bertolt Brecht, Poems: 1913–1956. Translated by John Willett. London: Methuen, 1976.

Helen Garner, The Children’s Bach. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012.