Birds N’ Bees Box is excited to continue our partnership with local nonprofit organization, Future Front Texas. Future Front was the beneficiary of our launch party in October, and we will be joining them November 20th as a vendor in their annual ATX Front Market.
The Front Market lasts four weekends (starting November 12th!) and highlights over 400 unique brands and creatives in the local ATX community. Located at Ani’s Day and Night and open from 11-5 each day, it is completely free, and both family and dog friendly.
In addition to Birds N’ Bees Box vending on the 20th, from 3-5PM our Front Market booth will become a packing hub for community donations of period and sexual health products. Our goal is set at 100 boxes, which has been made possible by contributions from brand partners like Stix, Jems, De Lune Care, and Champ.
If you or somebody you know is interested in receiving a box, please reach out to us at hello@birdsnbeesbox.com. Boxes will include pads, tampons, emergency contraception, condoms, pregnancy tests, and more.
Future Front is dedicated to nurturing spaces where women and LGBTQ+ creatives, founders, and leaders can grow together. Their mission is so special to us, and we’re excited to work and grow with them as our example of what strong, focused, and empathetic leadership looks like in our community.
Meet Jane Hervey, Future Front’s founder. You can find her @byjaneclaire and Future Front @FutureFrontTexas on Instagram.
Tell us about yourself! Who are you, what do you do, what motivates you each day?
I am a creative director, accidental nonprofit founder and recording artist, living and working in Austin. Currently, I spend my time directing Future Front, a showcase series and learning club I started in 2015, as well as running my own design house, group work.
I'm probably most motivated by my intrinsic curiosity each day. Being alive is perplexing and beautiful and weird all at once. I like trying to make sense of it—and I get really inspired by the way other people make sense of it, too.
Who are the people you connect with through your job? Your key demographic, communities you're passionate about educating or working with…
Through Future Front, I work primarily with women and LGBTQ+ creatives from all over Texas. Think artists, designers, independent small business owners, chefs, community organizers, creative collectives, and the list goes on. All of the events we throw at the org are an experiment in the power of gathering us altogether, and I love it!
At group work, most of my clients are culture- and community-based companies or individual founders. I do foundational brand identity work, using the power of values-based storytelling, and that can actually be pretty exciting. My gw projects are super rewarding, too.
I also collaborate with a lot of musicians, because I make electronic music, so my work puts me in those worlds from time to time. That's my favorite work, actually.
Why are you passionate about reproductive wellness? What about this subject is important to, or speaks to you?
I'm passionate about reproductive wellness, because my small-town Texas community shamed sex and pushed abstinence when I was growing up. That was and continues to be pretty tricky.
There are all kinds of mindsets entangled in the way our communities approach the human body and its organs—for me, the abstinence-only route around sex and health made understanding myself and feeling comfortable in my skin complicated, especially when I got HPV and started to explore my bisexuality. I didn't really have any kind of a shared baseline or sense of community around those concepts, which made something that should be rather simple (or at the very least normal) incredibly difficult.
I believe that talking about reproductive wellness and making space for conversation about reproductive health and sex-ed in our culture is crucial for belonging, empowerment, informed decision-making and autonomy. A lot of the events I throw around these concepts attempt to uplift that belief, too.
Do you have any recent accomplishments you'd like to share? Moments that have been special, have reminded you why you do what you do, or launches we can share?
Coming back into my work after shutdown has been somewhat of a Saturn return for my career. From relaunching Future Front to revitalizing my studio, group work, I've had to learn the art of grounding; the survival of both projects were up in the air for a bit, which led to both an existential crisis and hard examination of my livelihood.
Getting back out there has been a dream, though. Even with all of the exhaustion and confusion and running-up-that-hill energy, our markets and festivals are really inspiring. I meet so many incredible people, and I don't take that for granted anymore. I missed it all.
Beyond that, one thing I'm particularly proud of from a reproductive wellness standpoint is recent work we completed with Plan C Pills — futurefronttexas.org/abortionpillsareheretostay. We worked with more than 20 creatives to design films and educational materials around finding abortion pills and it's been truly meaningful. The project has had more than 100,000 views in the last couple of months.
What's one struggle you've faced working in the reproductive wellness space, and how do you work around or mitigate that problem?
The lack of gender and sex identity education in reproductive wellness can be startling. It's been difficult to rub up against that, while also unlearning the gender binary myself. It's worth the conflict, though, because breaking down the gender constructs around reproductive wellness has helped me connect with my body and better resonate with others and the struggles they may go through. It's also helped me disconnect some of the toxic positivity linking womanhood and fertility and the male gaze—and reframe my womanhood as something more than child-bearing.
In any case, I don't know if I've found a way to work around it, but I think somatic concepts of justice have really helped me navigate the nuance. Just really starting any conversation about reproductive wellness from the viewpoint of my own lived experience and body—and doing all I can not to project my own identity onto others' and their experiences—good or bad. We all have different relationships to our bodies, and those nuances and differences deserve honor.
What's one thing you wish was included in sex education?
Gender identity!
What's one thing you wish you had known before you started having sex or being intimate with partners?
No matter what kind of protection you use, you need to get tested regularly, as well as vaccinated for various STDs / STIs like HPV. You could be asymptomatic and things like PrEP are super helpful.
What's one thing you wish you had known before you got your first period? (if applicable)
It's OK to have sex before you're married!
________________________________________________Thank you so much, Jane, for making time to share your and Future Front’s story with us. Jane’s work inspires us and we are so grateful for the spaces that Future Front has created and sustained throughout its lifetime.
As a reminder, you can find Jane @byjaneclaire and Future Front @FutureFrontTexas on Instagram. More information about the Front Market can be found @thefrontmarket or on the website, thefrontmarket.com
We hope to see you on the 20th at our booth! Stop by to shop, pick up some samples from our product partners, or just chat. We can’t wait!