So how is your International Zine Month going? Over here at Sheffield Zine Fest, we’re lucky enough to have two Occupational Therapy student apprentices working with us on the practical barriers and mental health benefits to making zines! They’ve been following along with the #IZM2020 daily challenges and you can see some over on Instagram. You can join in with the challenges yourself, and also download a mini-zine created for day 15 here:
Hi zine fest pals,
We are putting this year’s Sheffield zine fest on hold to support efforts to contain the coronavirus. If there is a way to host one before next year we will let you know, and we will contact those who applied to table to see if you’d still like to, but otherwise please assume we would like to put this event on in 2021 instead.
Your zine fest organising team includes folks with underlying health conditions and folks who work in frontline healthcare, so apologies for the radio silence from us. We’ve been kinda busy! We urge you to strictly follow social distancing measures to prevent it spreading via people who don’t show symptoms.
On what would have been the date for this year’s event, 16 May, we are hoping to host an online day of activities and share some zine prompts if we are able.
Over the coming weeks, please remember that some of our zinesters are on low incomes, some are crafters and artists who freelance, and many have already been self-isolating because they are more susceptible to coronavirus. We will be featuring our tablers’ work in the coming weeks and months – please support them if you can by ordering their work or commissioning their creative services online.
Huge thanks to the Festival of Debate and the Workstation – we hope to continue our great relationships with an outstanding festival and generous venue in future.
For now, there are a number of zine prompts put out by our friends and sibling zine fests, and some great downloads below.
Zine Downloads for Dark Times from our good friend Nina at Echo Zines in Belgium:
In these uncertain times when a lot of us are staying at home* to protect ourselves and others from the coronavirus, it’s so important to have some distraction and fun things to occupy the mind. Not all of us can cope well with being locked indoors for several weeks. One type of distraction can be reading zines, so here is a list of zines I’ve made or contributed to which are available to download for free in pdf format. You can read them on your screen or print them at home if you have a printer. Enjoy!
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Quaranzine Fest 2020 ~ a viral safe-space! | APRIL 4th & 5th 2020 | #quaranzinefest – Quaranzine Fest is simple. Post your work on the platform of your choice April 4th and 5th with the hashtag #quaranzinefest – no submission process, no selection process, no fees, no leaders, no volunteers, no building, no table, no limit on vendors, no fire code restrictions, no peanut butter fingers touching your zines.
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Sheffield Zine Fest co-host Chella has done some downloadable mini-zines, including a kid-friendly Passover Haggadah, and shares some other gems like printable watch-along bingo cards and a video dance-break archive.
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US Radio station NPR has produced an excellent mini-zine about COVID-19 for kids by the brilliant Malaka Gharib on their Goats and Soda programme.
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Sherwood Forest zine library in Austin, Texas is asking for scanned PDFs to build up a virtual zine library. You can find out how here –
(please only scan your own zines – some zinesters do not consent to their work being shared in other formats)
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And finally… Swansea Zine Fest are now hosting a virtual event on Saturday 10 May – check out their page for details
– show them some love – we can’t wait to attend, ourselves!
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Thanks again for all of your support –
Lots of love from
Chella and Bettie
Massive thanks to the awesome Jonathan Wilkinson, the artist behind our poster art this year who super kindly allowed us to use the image.
Check out welivehere.co.uk for more of Jonathan’s work.
We would also like to thank Festival of Debate, which we are part of again this year. The team have also donated funding to help run Sheffield Zine Fest for 2019 and 2020.
Founded in 2015, Festival of Debate is an annual series of panel discussions, debates, Q&As, artistic responses, keynote speeches and other public events in Sheffield, exploring politics, economics and society.
Yeah, we’re back! 16th May 2020, table applications open now!
Shout out to Festival of Debate who are supporting us to cover some of our costs this year.
Sheffield Zine Fest 2019 is coming on 18th May!
This years fest will be held at the Workstation, Paternoster Row.
Tabling applications will be opening over the next few days, so check back or keep an eye on social media for updates.
Table registration for Sheffield Zine Fest 2017 is now OPEN!
You guys. You guys!!! This has been awesome and we can’t thank you enough for tabling awesome wares, running amazing workshops, volunteering your hearts out, and for visiting and promoting the event and making our 4th zine fest such a success. Big up to the Hubs for hosting us in style and hooray for everyone who partied hard with us afterward with Girl Gang and Night Owls! We’ll be around throughout the year – join the Sheffield Zine Fest community page on Facebook to stay in touch and find out about other events we’ll be involved with, and you can always reach us via our contact details on the menu link above. Thanks again from Chella and Bettie. xxx
The 4th annual Sheffield Zine Fest takes place on Saturday 30 April 2016 as part of the Year of Making and linking with Girl Gang Sheffield and Nightowls for evening entertainments!
This year we are supported by SHU Students’ Union LGBT+ Liberation Group and fundraising for SAYiT (Sheffield’s LGBT youth group). The zine fest will take place at the Hallam Hubs from 11 am – 4 pm.
A list of exhibitors is under the Exhibitors tab in the menu.
Check out the Facebook page and Twitter for updates on the day!
The third annual Sheffield Zine Fest will be held on 14th March 2015 at Electric Works. The fest will run from 11am til 6pm with a full schedule of workshops throughout the day.
Zinesters! Get in touch to book your table now!
It’s finally here! Today is the day! Come on down to Sheffield Zine Fest! We’ll be at the Electric Works from 11 am, just down the road from the bus station and the train station. The workshop schedule is up – just click on the menu above, and a list of tablers can be found under exhibitors. At lunchtime you may like to check out one of the nearby cafes like the Showroom, Site Canteen, or Tamper Coffee, and check the specials board at the Rutland for a zinester special! Also at the Rutland, Blue Bee’s done us a Zine Fest beer on tap! We’re going to head there for tea after the fest and then head upstairs for the after party and podcast recording of a one-off live comp zine featuring some of your favourite zinesters and some lovely music from the amazing Ian Ashworth, Nat Johnson and Katherine Jackson! Need anything? Catch us on Twitter @sheffzinefest or by email: sheffieldzinefest@gmail.com
Sheffield Zine Fest 