Around Town

‘’Zines saved my life,’ says Red Chidgey, organiser of this Saturday’s Zine Fest!, the first UK festival dedicated to DIY publishing by women. ‘Not to be melodramatic, but they gave me the confidence to think I could really change things.’

The heritage of fanzines – proudly amateurish photocopied publications, handed out at gigs and fairs or posted directly to readers – dates back through the punk era to 1930s sci-fi fan culture, and now there are ’zines on everything from football to fashion. There are only a few public collections of them in the UK – the British Library’s vast archive includes pioneering punk ’zine Sniffin’ Glue, and Southwark community centre 56a (www.56a.org.uk) has 50 boxes you can flick through – but the Women’s Library (near Brick Lane) has a unique female-only collection.

It began with a donation of 50 zines from feminist arts festival Ladyfest London in 2002 and has grown to about 140. While taboo-smashing is a recurring theme (Adventures in Menstruating is pretty self-explanatory, and  Unskinny Bop is for fat girls who don’t want to feel like freaks on the dancefloor), the subject matter and visual styles covered are diverse. One is a hand-drawn comic about the author’s best friends throughout her life, another is a collage of images from glossy mags, with anarchic messages superimposed. There’s even the famous Bikini Kill , written by the band of the same name in Olympia, Washington over a decade ago.

Beverley Kemp is in charge of the Women’s Library archive, which has documented feminist campaigning ever since the Suffragettes were chaining themselves to railings. ‘The ’zine collection really takes that forward,’ she says. ‘It gives us a sense of where feminism is now.’ Although not all the ’zines in the collection are explicitly political, they all help fulfil the Women’s Library mission, to document the lives of women throughout history.

But the appeal of ’zines is deeper than that. ‘People get really passionate about them,’ says Red, and she should know. Having created lots herself (from personal ’zines to a current project on witchcraft), and written a thesis about them for a Life History diploma at the University of Sussex, she’s pushed things forward in the ’zine world by starting a distribution network, running workshops in youth centres and helping to archive and augment the Women's Library ’zine collection.

‘I’ve read amazing ’zines read by women who have experienced sexual violence, rape, really traumatic things,’ Red says, ‘and they put their stories into zines and share them with other people. It’s just tremendous, it really blows the lid off everything, because you don’t usually hear these voices. That, to me, is what the potential of ’zines is about. It’s not just about writing about your favourite band, it’s about sharing stories, and then asking what we can do to change things.’ She reckons that ‘boy ’zines are tamer’, because they’re less likely to deal with such intensely personal issues.

Red’s dedication to promoting girl ’zines also stems from a belief that gender inequality is still a live issue in the UK. ‘No-one really believes in post-feminism do they?’ she cries. ‘It’s just crazy!’ Fiona Moorhead, who’s in charge of publicity at the Women’s Library, agrees, pointing out that after hundreds of years of ‘the recording of men’s experiences’, there’s still a need to champion the voices of women. The 81-year-old institution holds not only academic books, but anything from chick lit and Cosmo to the personal papers of silent movie stars.

While blogging and webzines may have opened up new possibilities to people wanting to get their voices heard – the Women’s Library has started an e-zine archive to complement its paper-and-ink collection – printed ’zines are far from dead. ‘I think it’s something to do with the making of the ’zine,’ says Beverley Kemp. ‘The cutting, the pasting, the artwork, swapping it, taking it along to clubs and festivals, the very personal and underground nature of it. Once it’s out there on the web you’ve lost control over it in a way, and you lose that intimacy.’

Last month’s London Zine Symposium at Bloomsbury’s Horse Hospital was packed with ’zinesters networking, swapping their creations and getting inspired, and Zine Fest! – whose ’zine workshop booked up months ago – is set to be another great showcase of London’s thriving DIY publishing scene. ‘’Zines aren’t going to go away,’ Red tells me with confidence. ‘They’re just going to get stronger.’