Climate Camp Art Zine Workshop

Workshops

Climate Camp Art Zine Workshop Weekend

Date: October 2022

Location: North West Clare Family Resource Centre, Ennistymon, Co. Clare

Duration: 2 Days

Zine Team:

Co-Researcher: EC: Workshop Participant, zine content co-design and co-production

Lead Researcher: GH: Workshop brief design, Infrastructure, and documentation.

EM: Workshop Facilitator: Workshop co-design, zine content co-design and zine co-production

Purpose:

To bring the creative reflections produced at the climate camp community lino print workshops together in a sharable publication. The art-zine is a community cultural artefact, a learning publication, and a means of solidarity building and a call to action for future climate camps and other actions. The zine distributes counter-cultural representations and counter-knowledges from the movement, to the movement and beyond, the movement.

Workshop Method: Zine making, mixed media

Climate Camp Zine in Airmids Journal

2 Day Weekend Workshop Outline:

Day 1:

Meet and Greet, Tea and Trees grounding & connection exercise
Hot dog book: Short zine making exercise
Zine history and design
Reflection on zine purpose and content
Lunch
Exploring the linoprint art from climate camp and other source material from the camp, such as photos, artwork
from other climate camp workshops and text reflections.
Creating zine pages from the source material

Day 2:

Meet and Greet,
Working on zine pages
Lunch
Organising the zine page order and staple together.
Zine and climate camp final reflection.

The handmade quality of zines creates a personal connection between the makers and the people who get the zine

Climate Camp 2022: Creative Zine Making Workshop Weekend Tickets | Eventbrite

The purpose of this workshop was to gather the reflective creative material produced at climate camp into a zine to share with the community, beyond the community, and as a call to action for future camps

Started with Tea and Trees for grounding

Tree hugging, Ennistymon, Co. Clare

Exploring the historical and political world of zines, and zine making design details

What is a zine?

A zine is a small, self-published, non-commercial booklet that usually has original or appropriated texts and images on a particular subject. Zines are often reproduced via photocopier and bound in DIY ways, such as folding and stapling and disregards the traditional conventions of professional design and publishing houses, proposing an alternative, confident, and self-aware contribution.

Historically, zines have provided community for socially isolated individuals or groups by enabling the expression and pursuit of common ideas and purpose. They give marginalised or counter-culture groups an opportunity to voice their perspectives, knowledge and activities with other members of their own communities or with a larger audience. Zines therefore have community, cultural, and historic value as tangible traces of the voice and activities of marginal communities, many of which may otherwise be little-documented.

A range of zines from different social movement contexts using EMs zine collection

Hot Dog: Warm-up mini zine making activity

Climate Camp zine development: Content requirements, audience/user. content, aesthetic

The zine was posted out to 70 people who attended Climate Camp 2022

The zine constained a feedback questionnaire that people could fill out online regarding their views on the value of the zine and the art space at cliimate camp within communty and social movement spaces and activim

HEdge Space at Climate Camp and Zine Questionnaire Public Responses
Questionnaire responses can be found here in the JotForm link with table of responses https://eu.jotform.com/tables/223306127289355 This form reads by scrolling right to left

Below is a selection of responses to the questionaire

Zine Feedback

I feel zines are a great way to document what goes on and to share it to the wider world. I wonder if the diy aesthetic of them may put of people used to more polished media, but I love it

I feel we need to group together and make/ noise, vision, music, art any thing that gets peoples attention to the difficult times we live in. It is also necessary to show good ideas, projects and work done that is for the common good.

I think that the zine offers benefits to readers and viewers in all of the above, and more, as art is so all encompassing. A picture paints a thousand words and art has a way of breaking down boundaries in communication and expression in a way that words cannot reach.

Personable and intimate - warm and tactile, rather than confrontational. The gentle form offers refuge and space for reflection. Appears as a work of art, encouraging a new appreciation of perception and the world that is.

Recipient feedback

Warm - uplifting - appreciation for the hand-made aesthetic and creativity involved

I was delighted to finally see the zine and get a sense of all that transpired at the HEdge space. My first impression was that it looked differant to zines from previous camps and gatherings. It was put together in such a way that it looked very cohesive. There was beautiful art on each of the pages and a very light and positive vibe to it. I loved the written pieces, especially the one about the birdreign and raven taoiseach. Also the piece written to the future self was very moving.

By the end of the zine I was feeling nostalgic. It painted a very intimate portrait of the weekend and I felt inspired to go the next camp.

Recipient feedback

Happy to get a printed 'real' piece of work rather than digital version.

Recipient feedback

First thoughts were of nostagia, remembering zines of my youth and finding these in alternative spaces other the yearsI was excited to see it! I flicked through the pages and remembered the artists behind some of the work and the conversations/connections I had had with them at the art space.

Holding the zine made me smile and I was amazed at the amount of beauty, creativity, and wisdom that all cntributers expressed.

Holding the zine made me smile and I was amazed at the amount of beauty, creativity, and wisdom that all cntributers expressed.

turned out great! It was fantastic to see all the ideas together.

Feedback on the Zine

The zine shares the insights, ideas, hopes of everyone involved. This is knowledge expressed through art and engages those who read it. The zine is also a collective project: people acting together so it can emerge. Self-other care: by expressing ourselves through art, we heal and grow and learn; and when others see this expression, they are often touched and inspired. as well.

The Zine Ripple Effect

Climate Camp Zine Rippling through the Public Domain

An edition of Airmids Journal published by Wild Awake and launched at an event in associations with Common Knowledge in February 2024 festured pages from t he Climate Camp Art Zine as part of a call to action on sustainabiliy issues.

https://www.wildawake.ie/shop/p/airmids-journal-issue-4-digital-download-yhje5-ascc5

This issue is created in solidarity with the ‘Love our Lough’ campaign, and 10% of profits will be donated to Save our Sperrins’.
Both collectives work to cherish, celebrate and protect these vast elders for present and future generations.

This was an example of how a creative publication can have impact in the public domain and show up in unexpected places. Pages from the zine were printed in Airmids Journal as a call to action for camp 2024. This use of the zine by others reflected the zines original purpose, to support solidarity building and act as a call to action for future camps.

The Shannon LNG terminal in Co. Kerry was denied planning permission

Between the time of conducting community consultations and the publication of this report, An Bord Pleanála has decided to reject the planning application for a €650 million LNG terminal proposed for the Shannon Estuary (Fair Clare, 2023, p. 118)

Planning board refuses permission for €650m Shannon LNG terminal – The Irish Times

However, consent has since been granted for the developers to appeal the decision

High Court permits Shannon LNG to challenge refusal of €650m Co Kerry gas terminal – The Irish Times

The SDGs & Climate Camp

Activist spaces like Climate Camp are frequently framed in mainstream media publications as bad actors, radicals. However spaces like climate camp and productions like this zine are explicitly working towards the sustainable development goals by campaigning for renewable energy and the cessation of future fossil fuel develpments which and unsustainable.

Co-researcher-ec-praxis-climate-camp-workshops

Co-Researcher Praxis Journey Trail