Freshly Baked Zines

This spring, our young writers held their own Zine Fair, debuting some fantastic writing.

The Zine Fair started with our volunteer mentors spreading out hundreds of zines – DIY books made by our young writers – across our familiar tables. Looking at them all together was amazing: so much colour and imagination; we were really proud.

We were joined by young writers who had volunteered to be stall-keepers, and soon the visitors – over 87 friends, family and passers by – flooded in. Each visitor got five tokens (designed by our writers) to exchange for five zines – a serious task with so many exciting options. The stall-keepers soon had their sales pitches down, and the buzz was brilliant as everyone looked through the zines and talked about their projects.

Each zine started with a writing project decided by the writers themselves – from satire to cartoons to murder mysteries, poems to stories to magical recipes. After trying out lots of different kinds of writing in the first half of the term, the writers developed their projects and eventually turned them into beautiful, vibrant zines using drawing and collage alongside their writing. At the Zine Fair, they also had the opportunity to present their work to friends and family, reading out their pieces of writing open mic-style.

Zines offer the opportunity to create something from start to finish, and they’re empowering because no-one has to give you permission to publish your work – all you need is paper and pens, and a photocopier if you want to make copies to give away.

It’s always such a joy seeing what our young writers come up with!