Inky Fingers Workshop: Rebel Zine

Rebel Zine is an imprint dedicated to publishing the thoughts, dreams and expressions of the people who live, work and play in the city of Exeter. It has published 10 zines to date.

This next iteration will be all about how participants perceive the potential of the citizenry and city of Exeter, starting from their current viewpoints and informed by positive stories and examples, including those from other places in the world. The capacity for change that the city holds, through its population, will be a major aspect - where might it be 5 or 10 years? What could the city become known or even famous for?

Inky Fingers will be using waste materials from people’s own homes, businesses and organisations in the city as material for a series of four creative workshops, tying the activity directly to experience, consumption and engagement with this place.

‘Facing Exeter’ (working title) will be the next publication on the Rebel Zine imprint. It will be created through workshopping the ideas of how the population, fabric and activity of the city is perceived, its potential and how it might develop in the near future. Using practices including collage, paper folding, printing, painting and scribing, we’ll create four pages through each workshop, making a total of sixteen pages, to become twenty including a cover and back. As a first for the imprint, we’ll be making this book A5 - a larger size than usual - and hopefully more accessible to those outside the ‘zine’ fraternity.

The four workshops will be themed, with lenses to consider the city through, these will be more clearly defined by the artists through discussion with participant groups - including the likes of: ‘Building on success’ [infrastructure, civic development, landmarks and popular movements], ‘Healthy, Happy, Here’ [community initiatives, connection and neighbourhood identity] , ‘Celebration Town’ [Success stories, famous people and great things] and ‘Edible City Living’ [orchards, edible planting, food initiatives].

In workshops, participants will also be exposed to positive news from other places around the globe where change has happened that benefits the local residents, infrastructure and environment. They will be guided and supported to explore, through creative activity, how their dreams for a positive future might manifest - what steps might have to happen? Who might need to be along for the journey?

The making activity will encompass portraiture and junk-art approaches, with participants literally putting themselves in the picture they create - weaving themselves into a narrative of celebration and change.

The work from each workshop will be transposed for RISO printing by the artist team, who will shape the structure of the book based on what the workshops have produced.

After printing, participants will be invited to a collation/ assembly/ celebration event, where we’ll put the publication together, share tea, cake and conversations about the project, themes and people’s responses, thoughts and ideas arising.