Chicago Zine Fest: A reflection on facilitation and participation by Jamie Walsh

{CHICAGO ZINE FEST}:
A reflection on facilitation and participation by Jamie Walsh

Jamie Walsh is the founder of Quickest Flip, an inclusive arts collective via website and quarterly magainze. As a second year Masters Candidate in the Arts Management Program at the University of Oregon, Jamie’s focus is in community arts and museum inclusion. We feel very privileged to have Jamie featured in this week’s ELANblog post.

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The CZF, now in its fourth year, is an independent event creating an outlet for small press and independent publishers to showcase their work. Planning for each fest is a seven month process filled with a series of really awesome fundraisers: an outdoor movie night, a Halloween zine reading, punk rock karaoke, bingo, and concerts. They also host several community meetings as a way to gather feedback and suggestions.

As an Arts Administration graduate student, I realize the amount of energy and planning that goes into executing a public event. If I didn’t know the organizers, a group of 7 passionate zine makers, I would have thought that this event was hosted by a large organization with unlimited resources and experience. I was thoroughly impressed by this year’s Chicago Zine Fest.

This year, the fest included over 200 exhibitors, a panel discussion, workshops, and events. The fest takes place at the Columbia College Conaway Center, located in the Ludington Building in Chicago’s South Loop. This is the perfect location since the college’s Center for Book and Paper Arts is located on the second floor.

The fest started off on Friday, March 8th with the panel discussion entitled: “Writing about Heath, Disability, and Accessibility in Zines”. The panel was comprised of Kerri Radley, Maranda Elizabeth, and Dave Roche. Each of these panelists self-publishes perzines about their disability/health issues. Perzines are a genre of zine; the “per” standing for “personal”.  Kerri, who is deaf, writes a zine called Deafula. On her blog she writes that her zine is “a humorous, straight-forward look at one person’s experience being deaf. It’s introspective and relatable for anyone who has ever felt like an outcast, while also being an informative resource for hearing allies”. Kerri spoke about her experience of becoming deaf at the age of five, after learning to speak English, and of her relationship within Deaf culture, a relationship that is made more complex by her ability to so easily participate in non-deaf culture. For this panel, the CZF set up a service called CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) which provides realtime captions viewable on a computer screen and projection for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Also on the panel, Maranda Elizabeth spoke about their zine called Telegram. As stated on their website, Telegram is a zine about mental health, disability, small town adventures, the concept of home, self-care, support, and secret-sharing. Maranda spoke openly about their diagnoses and experiences with depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. In addition, David Roche spoke about his zine called About My Disappearance, which details his personal experience with Crohn’s Disease. This panel was facilitated by zine fest organizer Jami Sailor. It was a wonderful start to this two-day event.

The first day continued with a Youth Reading at 826CHI and an Exhibitor Reading by a selection of twelve exhibitors from this years fest. Later that night there was an event called Zine, Lose, or Draw: a game show hosted at Quimby’s Bookstore. The next day, Saturday, March 9th was the main event — the Zine Exhibition. With around 100 exhibitors on the first floor and another 100 exhibitors on the eight floor, the event was heavily attended. I was located on the 8th floor, tabling three issues of Quickest Flipest, a submission based publication I facilitate that features artwork and writing by individuals both with and without disabilities as a way to promote inclusion in the arts.

Throughout the day there were also a series of scheduled workshops:

  • Self Preservation: DIY Archiving for Zinesters
  • In the gutter: a super-quick intro to writing and drawing comics
  • How Your Library Can Help You Make Zines
  • Arts Inclusion: a discussion about diversity and inclusion in the arts
  • From Fests to Living Rooms: Organize your own Zine Event!
  • Beyond Zine Fests- Building a Year-Long Local Zine Scene
  • Hit the Road! Touring your Zine & Producing Events
  • POC Zine Project Presents: Lessons from the first”Race Riot!” Tour
  • Anthologizing Your Zine

I facilitated the workshop “Arts Inclusion: a discussion about diversity and inclusion in the arts”. This was a great experience for me. I began the talk with an introduction about myself and my graduate research interests regarding the inclusion of artists with developmental disabilities and mental illness within a contemporary art context. This discussion was attended by about fifteen people and ran for an hour.  As a group, we spoke about increasing diversity within submission based publications as well as the dynamics of ‘insider vs. outsider’ in the art world. Two of the workshop participants had started a feminist blog in Lansing, Michigan and were seeking ideas on how to increase the diversity in their submission base. Another participant spoke about being a teacher and the barriers to higher education for individuals with disabilities wanting to pursue studio art degrees.

The fest ended with an after-party at Uncharted Books. I can’t say enough positive comments about the Chicago Zine Fest. The organizers (who have become self-made experts in fundraising, sponsorship, networking, marketing, social media, event management, volunteer management, organization, and logistics) made a complex two-day event look easy. Well done!