The Dizzy Ink duo speak to LeftLion - Photo by Darren Ellis / Serosensa Creative
For those of you who don’t know, who is Dizzy Ink and why do you want to open up The School of Print?
Dizzy Ink is a design, print, publication and creative workshop studio based in Cobden Place. We specialise in a printing process called Risograph, and are about to add Mimeograph to our offerings. Our main aim is, through education, to make people more aware of how their projects could materialise in the form of print and publication.
Education is our main ethos, and we have been working together with Cobden Place, for this reason, to drum up the idea of creating an open access screen-printing studio. This is first stages of what is to be The School of Print. All the projects going on in Cobden Place circle around the idea of education through facilitation. We have the equipment and the knowledge now, and we want to share it and build up a community.
Can you tell us some more about what School of Print is all about and what it would involve?
It would be on a membership basis, with different pricing plans. The idea is to make a place that is sustainable for everyone and is self-directed. We want to encourage artists to enter with a project, and within the School of Print they have the facilities to be able to do the whole process from start to finish. We want them to be able to make their own product and turn their practice into a profession.
Who is this to benefit?
Initially it would start with the people in the community that we have built up through our business and workshops and so on, and then it could expand further. We want it to be accessible to anyone who doesn’t have the facilities, anyone who has an ounce of something in them that makes them want to learn how to make beautiful print. People who want somewhere for ideas to materialise and who are interested in being around a working studio will also benefit greatly. Ourselves, Dizzy Ink, will be available to assist in any projects, and Tom Camp (who just started his own business, Ay Up) is going to be around, as our in-house screen print technician, and expert.
Inside the Dizzy Ink studio - Photo by Darren Ellis / Serosensa Creative
What kind of thing do you hope to achieve with School of Print?
I’d hope we could encourage the collaboration between people in Notts. And also get students out of a bubble. Let them produce something that’s tangible, and exists outside of the grade boundaries, something that is completely produced in house. Print, cut, finished and bound all in the studio.
We would like to work on big publications and push the boundaries of what Risograph is capable of. It is known for it’s DIY fanzine aesthetic, but working on something like the Raw Print Metazine makes you push it further. I'm not aware of anyone in the world producing books as complex as the Fine Art Catalogue or Metazine using Risograph. It’s amazing what you can achieve like embossing the cover.
When we work with people it becomes a balance between them and us. It becomes a conversation and that feels like the best way to work for us. I suppose that's what it's all of this is about - starting conversations and developing friendships!
Find out more about the campaign and the tonnes of goodies you receive after pledging via the Dizzy Ink Kickstarter website. Hurry! The pledge ends on 2 March 2016.
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