How to run a zine event

(crowd at Brighton Zinefest 2010) 

For 3 years I was part of the group that ran the Brighton Zinefest. We started just with the idea it would be fun to have a zine event in Brighton and managed to build a successful and fun event. Sadly we don't run it any more because hardly any of the original organisers live in Brighton any more, and nobody appeared to take over, and it just wasn't practical to hold another.

People have occasionally asked or emailed me for tips about how to do these things, and rather than repeat myself I thought I might as well write this, and just refer people to it. Most of the info is from my experience of being part of running something myself, and from observations about other zine events I have attended over the years. I might come across as some kind of table-measuring organisation obsessive here, but all this preparation stuff makes the final event far less stressful. I'm sorry if some of this is very obvious advice, but sometimes it's easy to ignore the obvious when you're caught up in something. Hopefully I haven't missed anything important myself. I should also add that there is no 100% right way to do these things, but I hope these are practical tips that will save people stress.

Cake mistakes

 These are a couple of photos from the end of a roll that I forgot to scan. Me & Marcos went down to Brighton for the day in March, and it rained torrentially, so we basically went from cafe to pub to restaurant. We went to meet up with my friend Vicky first at the Mock Turtle, a tea room down by the seafront that looks like a grandmother's dining room. I've been there lots of times, and their food and drink is nice and reasonably priced. Vicky was running late, so I decided to get a cake for her as a surprise. I saw they had added a rainbow cake to the menu, and she loves that kind of thing, and I was curious about what it looked like.   This is what arrived. I think the blue and green was a mistake. Marbled mouldy effect.

This station is non-operational

I haven't been writing here much, because I've been caught up with doing things for my MA, and also had a nasty bout of sinusitis. I'm trying to get as much of my MA project done before the 20th of June, when I start a summer teaching job, and make a start on my dissertation (the practical work is weighted much more highly than the dissertation). Next week I should be back with a short animated film I made for university. I also have some more photos of Bulgaria to post, and to write about the memorial service I went to for Diana Wynne Jones. Everytime I've felt like doing something creative, I've felt like it should be channelled into my uni work, which means other things have been left by the wayside. Naturally I prefer to be working on multiple things at the same time, in different bursts.   It's an extra public holiday at the end of the month because it's the Queen's 60th Jubilee. It's really strange to see everywhere suddenly plastered in flags and pictures of the queen, usually that kind of stuff is reserved for tourist souvenirs. The shops seem to think the best way to be "patriotic" and make money is by putting up bunting and pushing cake decorating and biscuits in fancy tins. England doesn't really do overt national pride stuff, it's seen as dodgy and reserved for far right types or football hooligans, so I guess they just thought "everyone likes school fetes".