With just one week until the big day (we hope you are as excited as we are) we thought what better time to announce the workshops we will have on the day….

11.00am-12.00pm Block Printing Postcards
Learn how to use block printing to create your own postcards. This will involve drawing up a design, carving it out into a block of lino, rolling on the ink and printing out your cards. materials provided and all skill levels welcome.
Led by Jay
Instagram: @greenjaycrafts
All ages, under 18’s need adult supervision

12.30pm-1.30pm Poetry Workshop
Poetry is a great way to express yourself and perfect for sharing in zines. Poet Radhaika Kapur from Manchester writing organisation Commonword Cultureword will help you get creative with words.
Expect a hopeful climate change poetry workshop inspired by natural forms. You can then turn your work into a zine at the drop in zine making session. No previous experience needed.
Suitable for ages 8+
led by Commonword Cultureword
cultureworld.org.uk

2.00pm-3.00pm What’s Names Got To Do With It?
Artist Sharonjit Kaur Sutton is inviting everyone to an open discussion aboutnames, and to create their own zines around this theme. What do our namesmean? Where have they come from? Why do they matter? Do they matter? Whydo we change them? You can share stories of your own, or someone you know -or you might just feel like having a chat!This is inspired by Sharonjit’s personal project called His Name’s Not Charlie,which started with the story of her Grandad (Ranjinder Singh Gill) who migratedfrom Kenya to London in the 1970s but was given the name “Charlie” by his British friends and colleagues – which raised interesting conversations about how
names hold a person’s, and community’s, history and identity.
Led by Sharonjit
Instagram: @ideasloading
All ages, under 18’s need adult supervision

(ALL WORKSHOPS ARE FREE TO ATTEND. NO NEED TO SIGN UP. FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, PRIORITY WIL BE FOR ATTENDEES WHO ARE BLACK/ASIAN/POC)

We will also have an all ages activity table running 11am-3pm featuring one page zine making and colouring in!

May 1st is not only the celebration of Spring at it’s peak but a celebration of labourers and the working classes as it’s International Worker’s Day.
So what better day to announce that this years Zine Fest will be held at People’s History Museum.
People’s History Museum (PHM) is the national museum of democracy, telling the story of its development in Britain: past, present, and future.
PHM displays the largest number of trade union and other banners in the world, and I don’t know about you but I love a banner.

Last Spring/Summer I (Seleena) got to work on an excellent project with PHM as part of their Migration: A Human Story exhibiotn.

I was commissioned to make a banner that represented Migrant workers. I worked alongside PHM and the wonderful Community Programme team. We spoke about what it meant it them to be migrants, the way you are viewed in the media, particularly over the past couple of years. How one minute frontline workers were applauded in one breath then told to go home in another.
We wanted to create something hat took up space, in a way that in galleries and museums, we often don’t. To see images that represented us. That on first glance look like the other banners hanging nearby, but upon second glance, something totally different.

This is the end result:

You can read more about why I think banners are important on the PHM blog HERE.

And you can visit PHM to see the banner between now and March 2023 ( I hear Saturday 20th August would be a great date to visit though *wink wink*)

Melissa

Heya. Writing this has made me realise that I’ve spent most of the past 3-4 years stressing. I work for a charity and it’s kind of draining, especially the past couple of years.

In the between-times, I did create some stuff: there was a writing course with Write Like a Grrl (“writing as radical self-love!”), making zines for my niece and nephew (one was a choose-your-own-adventure story, another was about Black Panther, and loving your blackness), and a couple of unfinished stories about qpoc friendships.

I also made a zine about the tv show Anne with an E – it was cancelled after 3 seasons, so I wrote season 4! That was fun to write.

I struggled with my identity during 2020-2021; also, like a bunch of people, my world shrunk. Reading books and zines, watching tv shows, and writing stories helped. There were two months living at my mum’s and seeing my family every day. That felt great after a year of covid distancing. While at my mum’s, I started roller skating. My sister skateboards, so we’d go out to the local skate parks and I’d do circuits while she practised tricks. It felt good just getting used to being on skates again..and this weekend I’m going to Skating Queer roller disco in Manchester!

During June 2020, when white people discovered racism, I co-founded an anti-racism group at work which was really a group for poc to support each other, as well trying to get stuff changed in our charity. It was such a massively triggering time, and when talking to the black people in my life, we just supported each other; we tried to find joy in the small things, like dance videos, art, each other, and laughing at memes about whiteness…just checking in on how we were doing – still having those check ins. How are you doing?

What else has happened since the last zine fest? Not much. One major change was adopting a little hamster. His name is Soobie Mennym and he’s very cute. He hid behind my wardrobe for six hours the other night but other than that we’re becoming bffs.

Seleena

Well a lot has happened since the first Over Here in 2018. I think we would need at least 20 blog posts to even start to cover it.
On a personal note though, I often think I’ve not done much, but in reality I have.
I work part time in retail and part time as a freelance artist, and whilst I wish I had created more artwork in the past 4 years, I don’t think I could have fitted in many more workshops, as that side of my work has grown and gown. I’ve delivered zine making and textile workshops, perfected delivering them online, got better with my tech skills making PDFs and videos. I’ve created some artworks via community projects, my favourite being a banner I made alongside the Community Programme team at People’s History Museum, which was about rights for migrant workers.
Another work highlight was making a zine and worksheets for the Black Art Trail at Bury Art Museum.
I exhibited a banner as part of a Girl Gang Manchester Exhibition alongside some wonderful Manchester artists, that sadly got cut short due to the pandemic.
I wrote a piece about Asexuality for Wellcome Collection and started to celebrate 10 years of poor Lass zine and podcast with co-creator Em.
Having 6 months off in total from my day job meant I could fit more freelance work in which also meant I didn’t have as much time to create personal projects, so made a few zines but not as many as I wanted. My creativity did peak quite early on during my furlough with me creating a stop motion animation about making a one page zine, there has been no stop motion sequels as of yet!
It hasn’t always been creativity, I found the past couple of years it’s been really hard to create and only done so for work, especially after what I call ‘Black Square Summer’. It’s harder to find joy even in little things like listening to music or reading. I’ve also not been able to attend a Tap dance class for a year, something I used to do weekly.
However I did get braid extensions for the first time ever (which were so heavy I think I developed new neck muscles) and me and my sister made our TV quiz show debut.
I hope to find more Joy I little things, and see people thriving in the near future!

Heena
After a year’s break in 2019, we were all ready to do another Over Here in 2020, but I’m no Taylor Swift, recording all those lockdown albums, so the covid-19 pandemic threw me right off course. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that I know, but I like to keep reminding us what the government is so desperate to bury.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been in a slump for the past two years. Knowing that we’re doing another Over Here Zine Fest has given me a reason to wake up and come alive again, have a look around and see what’s going on, see what we can to address marginalisation in the arts, especially here in the north west of England.

After finishing up on the Commonword Archive project in 2022, I worked on a short-term Covid-19 at Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust. The Trust is a valuable resource; a library of fiction and non-fiction, pamphlets and reports that you can borrow for free if you are member of Manchester Libraries.  They also archive material that documents the stories and histories of Black / Asian / POC communities in Manchester.

I got involved with the Clean Air days at my local primary school, where the majority of kids are Black and/or Asian, so no: you cannot talk about the environment without talking about race. Pollution is dangerously high around the school at dropping off and picking up time.

I’ve also started helping out with Chit Chat Chai, a space offering basic English classes for women during term time. After the classes, there is a café with drinks, snacks and a craft table. It’s all free. I’ve only been involved for a few weeks, but it’s fantastic. I’ve met all kinds of women and it’s been really friendly. 

Yeah, it sounds like I’m up to loads of wholesome stuff, eh. Well let me tell you the truth — I’ve also wasted a lot of time watching Bridesmaids over and over again even though I don’t think it’s very good. So I recently cancelled my Netflix, even though I know the new Bridgerton has Tamils in it. I’ve started reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time in an attempt to curb that hunger.
 
I also managed to knock my YouTube addiction. Over Here Zine Fest is a reason to be busy again, so hopefully this time I’ll stay on the wagon.

Here’s a question for you: Will we use zines to document what people of colour experienced in the covid-19 pandemic?

Below, some pictures from the start of lockdown, March 2020

The virus I drew when I stayed at home:

Brutalist library in Swinton, photographed during lone lockdown not-sure-where-I’ll-end-up bike ride:

We had a quick chat with ROOT-ed Zine, who are doing some amazing work in the North West. They’ll be tabling a stall at the fest in October, so look out for them! 

Tell us about ROOT-ed!

ROOT-ed Zine is an independent bi-monthly magazine and social platform ran by me, Amber Akaunu, and Fauziya Johnson. Our aim is to use ROOT-ed zine to inspire, support, and promote creatives of colour from or currently based in the North West of England. We started the zine while in our final year of university, studying Fine Art in Liverpool. We noticed a lack of representation of people that looked like us in galleries, our university modules, and more and wanted to do something about it.

What does it mean to be a poc in the zine world, and at zine fest especially?

We have only been doing this for nearly 6 months and have not been to zine fest yet (our first will be Over Here Zine Fest), so we don’t have much experience to comment on. However, what made us start ROOT-ed zine was the lack of opportunity and representation within the art world. I feel like this is an issue amongst all areas of life, so it may be a problem within the zine community.

What would you say to potential poc zinesters who are just getting started or want to get involved?

I would say to just shut out external voices and opinions and go for it. Zines are so unique and personal, which is why I think everyone should make zines as everyone has a unique and personal perspective of life in general. Making a zine, especially one that deals with themes and issues that are close to your heart, is such a vulnerable act and so at first it may be uncomfortable to put yourself out there but after a little while, or maybe long while, you will gain confidence in your ability, your voice and therefore your zine.

Want to support us but don’t know how? Want to do more than following us on social media and liking our posts? Read this. Then, you know, follow it up. 

1.      Educate yourselves about race, racism, and how it affects us. To paraphrase Humaira Saeed, we don’t expect your knowledge and understanding of the issues to be 10 out of 10, but you can at least educate yourselves up to 5 out of 10 before you ask us for help. Do a simple online search. And no guilt. If it won’t help us thrive, we have no time for it.
2. Encourage us to do creative things. Be really, really encouraging, and keep on at it. Our confidence needs boosting. Remind us that our voices are vital. Keep reminding us. Encourage us to go for upcoming opportunities, like making a zine for Over Here Zine Fest for example 😉
3.  Educate yourself about our art, culture, history and activism. We are infinitely more than saris, samosas and steel drums. Our heritage should not just be a bolt-on or an afterthought. We belong to culture and activism just as much as you do. We have a rich history that everyone should know about. And we’re not just USA-based either. Yes, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison are great and all, but there have been and continue to be plenty of badass Britain-based BAMEs chipping away at white supremacy through their art and activism. There were plenty folks resisting colonial occupation during the days of Colonialism. There are plenty of POCs in ex-European colonies doing incredibly progressive work from so-called ‘backwards’ ‘uncivilised’ countries. Read up and let them flood you with inspiration. Psst – If you’re into social / cultural history and based in the north-west of England, you might want to visit the Race Relations Archive in Manchester.

5.       Challenge other people’s racism and prejudices because we are tired of having to defend ourselves and explain ourselves all the damn time. It seriously cuts into our being creative time. Share white ally resources.
   
6.       Support our art, artists and movements. And not just during Black History Month either. Buy and consume our work.  Go to our gigs with an open mind. Support our causes. Commission us. Come to Over Here Zine Fest. At her recent book launch, during a Q&A session, a UK-based (black) African woman writer got asked by a white person in this audience about her book. He said, “Is this for me?” Do you think JK Rowling has to deal with shit like this from potential BAME readers, even though her representation of Black and Asian folk within the Harry Potter series is seriously questionable? We would guess: probably not.

We’re gonna keep updating this list, so watch this space. In the meantime, share the s–t out of this it.