who we are
Godmothers is an independent editorial platform and biannual magazine at the intersection of feminist economics, ethical AI, philosophy and technology. A five-year project documenting the most consequential shift of our lifetime encompassing a biannual print magazine, a monthly newsletter, a curated podcast series, and a membership community with real-life events starting in London.
“The foundations of a future world are being formed now — this is the moment of opportunity. It's not a future risk that robots will take over the world.”
Laura Bates
HOW IT STARTED
I've always been obsessed with icons. My teenage bedroom walls were covered in posters of musicians, actors, and cultural legends. Like many kids of the ‘80s, I devoured magazines and fanzines, memorised lyrics, interviews, and film credits. I found belonging in the pages of i-D, The Face, Sky, NME, Select, and Empire. An encyclopaedic knowledge of celebrity culture was my early universe. Icons were my cosmology. Long before the internet existed, my best friend called me The Oracle.
Later, I worked for those magazines, before spending a decade making a feature documentary about my grandfather, a major MENA cultural and musical icon. Through that process I got asked many times about the women in my family, who were essentially caged nightingales. It made me fascinated by how culture decides who becomes an icon. And who doesn't.
What is a Godmother
GOD. MOTHER. Two of the most loaded words in the English language.
GOD: masculine, transcendent, singular authority, command from above. MOTHER: feminine, embodied, relational, reciprocal care.
Put the two together and a new meaning is created. In folklore, godmothers arrive at moments of transformation; guiding, protecting, offering what's needed for a new chapter to begin. In modern culture, the word has come to describe women whose influence births entire movements; the godmother of soul, the godmother of punk. In the context of AI, they’re creating intelligence with maternal values and care for the vulnerable.
Yet as is often the case throughout history, these figures are invisible. We’ve created Godmothers to change that.