Innovation

According to Belt Publishing founder, when considering representing a writer or their work, “publishers ask two main questions, and they’re the same two questions any capitalist or gambler asks: how much should we stake, and how much might we profit” (Trukek, 2023).

What sets HARP apart from most publishers is that they are mission driven, and satisfying their mission comes before all other considerations.

Co-founder Dr. John Graham-Pole says, “we're very opposed to the capitalist corporate mentality. We are a for-profit organization – the business, we can’t discard it – but that’s not our primary purpose. The mission undoubtedly outweighs the business – maybe excessively perhaps – but I think that's what we're about.”

Making decisions based on fulfilling their social mission changes many aspects of this business, from what artists or works they choose to represent, to where the proceeds go, to their approach of working collaboratively with writers, artists, and community supporters.

Through their primary operations, HARP addresses SDGs (3) health and well-being and (4) quality education. They do this primarily by publishing works associated with health and well-being, and by focusing on non-academic works – making information on these topics more accessible to the general public, not just those working or studying healthcare fields.

HARP identifies their key subject areas as: resilience, truth and reconciliation, healing arts, health equity, longing and belonging, art for community health, social determinants of health, and cooperative arts.

Many of the works in HARP’s library address SDGs in their individual themes and content, such as (16) peace, justice, and strong institutions, (10) reduced inequalities and (5) gender equality as intersecting themes to the primary focus areas.

With a recent focus on the climate emergency, which the founders call “the most urgent public health issue,” HARP’s prioritization of climate-related works plus their philanthropic efforts support (13) climate action.

The organization’s unique approach to working collaboratively to amplify voices and stories of social change supports (17) partnerships for the goals.

Sources:

Trubek, A. (2023, July 18). How do publishers decide which books to bet on? Jane Friedman. https://janefriedman.com/how-do-publishers-decide/

Dr. Dorothy Lander and Dr. John Graham-Pole showcase their publications at the Antigonish Farmers' Market.

Inspiration

Dr. John Graham-Pole refers to himself as a ‘recovering academic’. He is a retired medical doctor specializing in pediatric cancer. In 2018 he released a memoir titled, ‘Journeys with a Thousand Heroes: A Child Oncologist’s Story’, which he says, “doesn’t highlight any heroic journey of my own, but rather that the countless children I served … the heroism, resilience, and joyfulness of those ‘thousand heroes.’”

Dr. Dorothy Lander defines her career as ‘service work.’ After 22 years managing operations for students at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX), including residences, custodial services, dining services and more, she joined the Department of Adult Education as faculty. During her PhD studies, she used appreciative inquiry research methods to document the often-underappreciated contributions of service workers.

“We call them service workers; we don’t call them knowledge keepers - but their knowledge is immense.”

Lander and Graham-Pole say they have brought both of their storied careers together to create HARP Publishing.

“We see them as coming together and really shaping our value as a whole, and all of the values that form our social enterprise.”

While publishing their own books about care and the healing arts, they realized that there was an entire world of other authors writing about the same kinds of things. To aid these works in reaching a broader audience they created HARP Publishing.

"We started out with our own books, and then we found out that all sorts of people out there were [also] writing in the healing arts."

Lander and Graham-Pole are driven by values of social justice and aim to contribute to positive social change. In addition to publishing works around these themes, they donate portions of their proceeds to Coady Institute’s Circle of Abundance in support of Indigenous women leaders in Canada, and to the David Suzuki Foundation in support of climate justice.

This mindset of ‘giving back’ is intrinsic to their work in the healing arts. They didn’t start giving back to the community so that they would be considered a social enterprise, but through their desire to contribute and give back, they realized they had become one.

“You know, the healing arts are almost always what the Indigenous people call ‘a covenant of reciprocity’ where people give to us, and we want to give back.”

“I think the covenant of reciprocity is the best way to explain how we realized, in retrospect, that we are a social enterprise.”

Overall impact

Through a unique business model as a mission-driven social enterprise, HARP serves as an amplifier for the values of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In ‘Storytelling for sustainable development in rural communities: An alternative approach’, Lowery et al. (2020) write that storytelling is an important tool for contextualizing sustainable development in local, namely rural, communities.

“Many mainstream social development (SD) agendas focus primarily on the national scale of implementation, in which local visions for change may be suppressed by grand agendas. The meanings and perspectives of local residents are central for articulating SD goals and strategies that consider local contexts while aligning with global imperatives like climate action and gender equity.” (Lowery et al., 2020)

Though it’s hard to quantifiably measure the impact of HARP’s work, Lander and Graham-Pole offer several anecdotes. In one example, the HARP publication, ‘Mi’kmaw Fiddler Joe Marble Plays to St. Anne: A Etuaptmumk Two-Eyed Seeing Pilgrimage’ by Elder John R. Prosper and Settler Dorothy A. Lander helped propel fundraising efforts that led to the restoration of St. Anne’s church, a Mi’kmaq parish and historical site in Paqntkek Mi’kmaw Nation.

Publications such as ‘Hope Unleashed’, a comic book about climate action, help to not only educate but to make accessible to young readers information about climate change, climate anxiety, and actions for climate justice.

Meanwhile, publications such as ‘This will happen to you’, a memoir about healing from traumatic brain injury, ‘I’ve Been There: Poems from a Breast Cancer Survivor’, and ‘The Choreography of Care’ provide creative resources for healing and care work that may help readers who are either facing health issues or providing care work find belonging and solidarity and process the emotional and mental health components of their particular journey.

“We wanted to publish books for caregivers and care receivers in the popular press, and not just for professional healthcare, but really for everybody - because we are all caregivers and care receivers throughout our life, and sometimes more intensely than others.” - Dorothy Lander

Sources:

Lowery, B., Dagevos, J., Chuenpagdee, R., & Vodden, K. (2020). Storytelling for sustainable development in rural communities: An alternative approach. Sustainable Development (Bradford, West Yorkshire, England), 28(6), 1813–1826. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2124

Business benefit

HARP is a young business, and in many ways, the founders are still exploring what that business could look like.

“We are a publishing house, though we’re told that we're way more than a publishing house – we're a movement.”

Shortly after this interview, HARP launched a new website. The previous iteration was a fairly traditional e-commerce store where shoppers could purchase HARP publications, and also espoused the values of the business. Though the new site still contains a digital shop, it has become only one part of a broader community-building effort including events and workshops where members can learn and practice healing arts activities, a journal-style blog that highlights personal reflections from the founders, a learning portal connected to health and medical centres with arts-based health initiatives such as The University of Florida’s Centre for Arts Medicine (CAM) and The World Health Organization (WHO), and a waitlist to join HARP’s pending “interactive wellness community.”

HARP’s mission-driven and collaborative approach has opened doors to grow the social enterprise into these new areas and is creating opportunities to not only diversify revenue streams as they solidify their financial footing, but also create new opportunities for social impact.

Although Lander and Graham-Pole acknowledge that the long-term growth and sustainability of the business cannot be ignored, they tend to measure their success in what they have been able to accomplish for the benefit of others. When asked about HARP’s impact, Lander emphasizes that they have been able to support the livelihoods of independent writers and artists. In addition to creating revenue streams for writers through the publication and sale of their works, HARP often commissions work from local visual artists for book covers.

Lander also explains that many of the works they choose to publish would often be turned down by mainstream publishers. She cites several examples including ‘Singing to the Darkness’, a book by Dr. Patricia June Vickers which explores healing from intergenerational trauma as a result of sexual trauma, family pain, and the Indian residential school legacy.

“She couldn’t find a publisher. It was too edgy," Lander explains. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful book. It’s about her triumph overall, her transformation, and her compassion for people who have abused her. [If HARP didn’t publish it], we may not ever see it in our lifetime.”

Social and environmental benefit

HARP’s unique approach to publishing for social change, and their growing efforts to provide hands-on opportunities for arts-based healing, help to build community networks of like-minded people working toward similar goals.

As Lowery et al. (2020) describe, storytelling is an important tool for localizing sustainable development, and local perspectives help to translate sustainable development goals from lofty, heady, ideas to accessible notions that can be practiced in our daily lives. By sharing personal narratives, and building communities of care and support, HARP is able to showcase that change is possible both individually and collectively.

Sources:

Lowery, B., Dagevos, J., Chuenpagdee, R., & Vodden, K. (2020). Storytelling for sustainable development in rural communities: An alternative approach. Sustainable Development (Bradford, West Yorkshire, England), 28(6), 1813–1826. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2124

Interviews

John Graham-Pole, Co-Founder

Dorothy Lander, Co-Founder