We visited Nottingham Zine Library down at Nottingham Contemporary, to get inspired by the city in a zine workshop put together by Express Yourself...
I spent a good amount of 2012 trying to sell my shitty little monster-of-the-week stories to American fiction magazines, and after a little success, I planned to start my own mag. It was going great in the planning stages, but it fell flat on its face when it came to formatting and printing.
When Express Yourself’s zine workshop Alternative Angles materialised at Nottingham Contemporary, it was exciting after watching the Notts Zine Fest with great interest for a while.
Fine Artist Hannah Whitlow led the session from the Contemporary’s zine library, guiding the group out in Nottingham’s streets in search of photo subjects and observations for material to work from. Naturally, the city has a lot to use in that sense, so the psychogeographical expedition collected piles and piles of cool alleyway shots and mossy pavements. These specimens were taken back to the lab and dissected, with photos cut up and collaged in a way that brought me right back to infant school.
The accumulated Notts collages were collated and arranged for the pages of the zine, which were then scanned in and bound up in collaboration with Dizzy Ink. Then, the final thing was to be distributed to the contributors and to the Nottingham Zine Library.
We put together a handsome little zine, and I’m excited to get my grubby little mitts all over it and force people to look at it next time I have a party. The guidance and hot tips that Hannah suggested, including looking into Dizzy Ink, is invaluable for remedying the problems that I’ve had with my dusty old project, and I’m dead excited to get started on it again.
Express Yourself’s Alternative Angles Zine Workshop took place on Saturday 10 November
Notts Zine Fest takes place on Saturday 24 November at Rough Trade Nottingham
Check out the rest of Express Yourself’s creative workshop programme taking place until March 2019, and email expressyourselfnotts@gmail.com for more information and to book a place
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