Last month, we promised an update on our team building session trialing a zine-making workshop. Read on for all things archive zine related!
Above: 3 zines created by the team on Zandra Rhodes, Hidden Histories and personal growth.
While traditional uses for archives focus on research, such as finding information on a movement, a date, or a person for scholarly or geneaological research, there are other possibilities. The last year has seen student cohorts visiting the archives for more creative purposes, from Creative Writing to Performing Arts. Both of these visits resulted in student-focused outputs, such as a Student Feature and the publication of Fonds, a creative writing anthology featuring responses to archives. This inspired Special Collections Manager, Katharine Short to trial a zine-making workshop for a staff team-building day with the idea that it could be the basis for a workshop for students from a range of subjects.
Above: The cover of Fonds with quotation by Traci Kelly: 'How one language can reside or be seeded within another'.
What Are Zines?
Historically zines were created by individuals or small groups who wanted to share a message that was typically viewed as being outside of mainstream culture. In this respect, content could be considered too niche, too subversive or too risqué by big publishing outlets. Similarly, if professional printing was also too expensive to fund, zines offered a hand-made Do-It-Yourself method of disseminating uncensored, grassroots ideas. For more on the history of zines see: The Bindery
Often a mix of collaged words and images, zines offer a way of re-purposing and re-structuring narratives in a new and exciting way. As such, we all enjoyed thinking about what story we wanted to tell before getting down to cutting and sticking our selected copies and scans of text and images taken from the archival collections.
Above: images of the team zine-making: Tanya, Jenn and Rhi.
Rhianne, Archives Trainee
"I am inspired a lot by Japanese culture and I noticed a book about Noh costume (see the back of the Zine for reference). I came across several prints of plants and I enjoyed the colours and shapes on each costume, I also knew that Noh theatre was about telling a story. One particular costume design inspired me and it made me think of my plant Boris. I wanted to tell his story of growth and realised how closely it related to mine. The story is conceptual, about responsibility, change and growth. The zine is in the shape of the kimono and most of the collages use the fabric designs from the book."
Above: When laid flat Rhi's zine forms the shape of a kimono.
Transcription:
An Ode to Boris
I picked Boris from the reduced and discounted section at the garden centre. He was slightly damaged and a bit tired.
I wanted him to be comfortable but I lived in an attic so there was hardly any natural light. I placed him in the centre of my only window and hoped he would grow.
He grew slowly amongst other herbs and houseplants who couldn’t cope with the conditions I put them in. Boris persevered.
He grew with me moving to different locations, sharing the space with other people and plants and hungry animals, slowly making more leaves.
At one location he became too large. I had to find him a new space to grow.
And then I forgot about him and he stopped growing.
Until one day another change occurred and I realised he deserved centre stage in my home. He was and is huge and still growing to this day.
Like me he has adapted and grown. Thank you Boris. Boris has lived through (so far) 4 homes, 8 different locations, 5 relationships, 12 jobs.
Boris is a Ficus Elastica tricolour. This zine’s shape and colours were inspired by Noh costume using materials from DMU special collections: Japan Dying and Textile Museum Costumes of No Play: patterns and colour and New and Beautiful Leaved Plants by S. Hibberd.
Tanya, DMU Student and ACE Intern
During her internship, Tanya worked predominantly on the collection of Fashion Designer, Dame Zandra Rhodes. Inspired by her textiles and vibrant prints, Tanya created a beautiful zine from printed scans and copies of photographs, garments and fabrics.
Transcription:
Life in colour: Zandra Rhodes.
Meet Zandra, the princess of punk.
Starting out Zandra studied art and design in London. She began by creating unique textiles and then soon creating her own fashion label in 1969. Fun Fact: she donated over 50 years’ worth of archives to DMU.
Nature styles: Zandra is known for her vibrant prints and dramatic shapes. Her punk inspired conceptual chic from the 1970s made a huge impact. Celebrities wearing Zandra: Freddie Mercury, HRH Princess Diana and Zandra fitting Diana Ross.
Quotes from Zandra: ‘To me colour gives confidence it makes a strong statement: here I am love me or hate me.’ ‘We all have to face the world and colour gives you a bright start to the day.’
My favourite ZR runway looks. Discover more: visit the Fashion and Textile Museum or explore her collection online to learn more about Zandra’s work: ftmLondon.Org. Reverse page: 50 Years of Fashion.
Archives Word Search
Tanya also created a second smaller interactive zine that featured a word search where all the words are associated with archives. How many can you spot?
Above: Archives Word Search collaged from archival images and then written by hand..
Jennifer Hague, Support Worker
"Having recently worked with Olympic-related items, such as medals from the Papers of England Boxing, Papers of the Special Olympics 2009, and sports magazines—I was inspired to create a zine that captures the joy and inspiration my daughter (a gymnast) and I feel when watching the Games. The accompanying quotations are from Olympians, offering their insights on navigating life’s joys, challenges, and adversities."
The zine features inspirational quotes from Olympians taken from Beyond the Sport: the Victory Within by Michael Belk, 1992.
Transcription:
The Olympic Games
‘Your thoughts create your world.’
‘There will always be events in our lives that we will have no control over. We just have to learn from them and go on.’
‘You must make peace with all the events of your life. Failing this, life will control you instead of you controlling it.’
‘Teamwork demands that you look for the positive in everyone, for if you look for the negative you will find that too.’
Natalie Hayton, Assistant Archivist
"This zine is inspired by the collection I am currently cataloguing: the Papers of Oronto Douglas, Human and Environmental Rights Lawyer. It aims to weave together two narratives: my reflections on the value of inclusive archiving, and the urgency of raising awareness about climate change and environmental destruction. Both narratives share a common goal in terms of wanting to preserve both archives and the Earth for future generations.
The images from the Douglas collection starkly depict the environmental devastation and human suffering in the Niger Delta caused by oil corporations. In contrast, the nature illustrations, drawn from our 19th-century rare book collections, hold a dual significance. They symbolize both the potential for renewal and the resilience of nature, while also highlighting the hypocrisy of imperialism. Created during the peak of colonial expansion, with a focus on European flora and fauna, these illustrations suggest that one environment is worth protecting, while another is disregarded."
The format of this zine allows the reader to unfold it and lay it flat, revealing the entire narrative at once.
A colour zine reflecting on climate change and the value of archiving.
Transcription:
Heading for Extinction?
Memory, gold
Is fleeting.
The archive, the earth is…
…heading for extinction?
…Eternal?
But we can protect, to share forever, for future generations.
References: Leicester College of Art Diaries, 1936-1951. Papers of Oronto Douglas. Adams, Isobel. Wild Flowers of the British Isles, 19O7. Bacon, Mary Ann. Winged Thoughts, 1851. Bewick, Thomas. A History of British Birds, 1885. Ingram, John. Flora Symbolica. 1870. Morris, F. O. A Natural History of British Moths, 1891. Warner, Robert. The Orchid Album, 1882.
Katharine Short, Special Collections Manager
"I was inspired to write a short piece 'Hidden Histories', about the use of this phrase in archives sector discourse. 'Hidden histories' is used to refer to the gaps in archive collections where marginalised communities are either not represented, or their stories have to be searched for or implied from the context of wider records. For example, telling LGBTQ+ stories by scouring individual court records for relevant cases.
My zine considers why these histories are 'hidden' and confronts the passiveness of the phrase. In fact, many archivists were complicit in not keeping records of communities that were not considered 'suitable', as archives were (and are) tools of the ruling hierarchy and thus tend to reflect their values. I end the zine with an image of my own hand in a direct challenge to myself to undo the neglect of previous archivists in my work.
The images in the zine are drawn from a range of collections. They include images from our fashion collections to represent wealth and power; activist cartoons from the feminist magazines of the Suzanne Davies collection, LGBTQ+ images from the Andrew Logan collection and images of disability from the Special Olympics collection."
A black and white zine reflecting on archival complicity in supporting elitist narratives. Transcription of Poem:
Hidden Histories
They say you're hidden
You minorities
You black and brown people
You women
You queers
You disabled
You working class
They say you're hidden, shut away, buried, forgotten, lost
Who hid you? It's so passive - you're hidden - as if by a mysterious unseen hand - as if you went up to the attic of history during a game of hide and seek and got trapped in a trunk, withering away in your bridal trousseau
You're hidden because we can't see you, not because you aren't there
You're hidden because you aren't shining white and shining with the glitter of wealth and the shining power of authority and shining with masculinity
And we can only see what our eyes have been conditioned to see
But you are there. Your bright bold lives shine out once we open our eyes and our minds
You never played hide and seek
You were hidden
By hands like mine, choosing the shape of the stories we keep.
Colourful Archives
Katharine also created a 2nd myth-busting zine focused on subverting the idea that archives are dusty and staid when in reality they are full of colourful stories. She says 'I used a duplicate copy of the Leicester Polytechnic articles and associations as the backing for this zine, contrasting the stereotypical dry and boring archive document with the brightly coloured and exciting selections from elsewhere in the collection making an archives rainbow'.
A colourful zine featuring colourful stories. Transcription:
Zine text: Colour. Archives can be stereotyped as boring dry, documents but they are full of colour.
Collaged text: Management and Organisation of Polytechnic. 1974. Spring and summer 1979 The Family Shopping Centre. Graduation ceremonies.
Creative Potential
From this one-off session, you can see the zines produced were all incredibly unique and interesting, created using an array of styles and formats. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the zine-making session, from the artists of the group to those who consider themselves 'not very creative or visual', and from those who came with a fully developed idea to those who cooked up a concept on the spot! Suitable for a range of subjects, from Fashion and sport to creative writing, from marketing and life sciences to fine art, a workshop on zine making could be just the session you or your class needs to:
Engage with archives
View a topic from a fresh perspective
Discover new ways of being creative
Gain a sense of achievement in a small space of time
Create a feeling of well-being
Help develop a bond/sense of freedom to create and share ideas among a new cohort
This blog will soon be added to our permanent 'Introduction to Archives' course module as a model for a workshop.
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