Zine Workshop

During this workshop, I became inspired to integrate my mother’s short story and my photographs as a zine, which would mean leaving the moving image format. However, I believe this format change would be an advantage. It will give the viewer time to fully comprehend the short story my mother has made rather than quickly glancing at the writing in 26 seconds in the recent moving image I have made. While creating a zine during this workshop, I thought of using the successful photos from the previous photoshoot. They successfully communicated what my mother was experiencing and feeling when placed alongside sections of the story. The zine I created contained a poem from a speaker at the Bristol Kill the Bill protests about the injustices women face every day of their lives and images I had captured at the Falmouth Kill the Bill protests I have attended. I learned that this is a great format to have written words and photographs together. They complimented each other and strengthened the message behind the images: to fight back against an oppressive fascist government willing to take the country’s right to free speech away. The Kill the Bill zine I created linked contextually into my project about my mother’s experience of oppressive institutions such as the mental healthcare system in the UK, which is getting progressively worse with the implementation of the SIMMH policy, which I want to explore further into as context for this project and my mother’s experiences. The layout of my zine was not as subtle as other people’s zines but was more bold and punchy as I felt inspired by the riot grrrl zines that were extremely popular during the early ’90s. I want to continue creating a striking and vivid zine full of life as that is how my mother wants our project and her story to be presented. In this zine, I kept to one bold colour, but in the zine, for my project, I want to have a variety of colours that coordinate with the images and reinforce my mother’s short story.