Join the Victoria Baths fanzine-making co-operative! (for one day only)!

We want visitors to the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention to help us make a fanzine all about Victoria Baths!

What is a ‘fanzine’? A fanzine is a small, self-published book or magazine dedicated to a subject the people who are making it love. It is usually personal and handmade and contains a mixture of drawings, writing and things like collages and photos.

People write fanzines about all different types of things and we think Victoria Baths deserves its own fanzine!

Victoria Baths is known as ‘Manchester’s water palace’ because of its beautiful decorations such as tiles and stained glass windows. It was very luxurious when it opened in 1906! Although the swimming pools don’t have water in them anymore, and the building is no longer used for swimming, the Baths is still visited by people who have lots of memories of coming here to swim. The Victoria Baths Archive contains thousands of people’s memories of Victoria Baths, as well as photos and other things which help us remember what it was like in the past.

So, we need your help making the Victoria Baths fanzine to celebrate this unique building, and we want you to show us what you like best about this fascinating place.

Join in the workshops in the former superintendent's flat to make either your own, individual Victoria Baths fanzine or add to a book that will be displayed in Victoria Baths as one big fanzine for future visitors to see. Between 10am and 3.30pm you can make your page to contribute to the collaborative Victoria Baths handmade book, and then from 3.30pm to 4.30pm we will all pitch in to bind the pages together. We'll need all the help we can get!

Visitors will be able to use:

Selected material from the Victoria Baths Archive 

Be inspired by pictures and memories of the building's past.

Lino cutting and relief printing

Explore simple relief printing and create unique illustrations and repeatable patterns to adorn your own hand-made zine. Looking at the decorative interiors of Victoria Baths as inspiration, use traditional lino and easy quickprint foam to make unique tile-sized blocks to print wherever you want.

 

Button book binding

Discover the stitches to bind and design your very own book using buttons, thread, soft papers and card. You can decorate your book with embroidered stitches inspired by the architecture of the Victoria Baths.

Ps, what's a co-operative anyway? 

People with all sorts of different skills and interests form co-operatives and work together to achieve what they cannot achieve alone, helping themselves at the same time as helping each other. Co-operatives are owned and run by their members, and each member has an equal say.

All different types of organisations are run as co-operatives, from food co-operatives to film co-operatives, housing co-operatives to design co-operatives. 2012 is the United Nations' first International Year of Co-operatives, and co-ops across the world are celebrating what makes them unique.

To find out more about co-operatives and how they work, why not go and talk to Footprint, a Leeds-based workers' co-op which prints fanzines, posters and much more, at their stall on the balcony above the sports hall?

 Join the Victoria Baths fanzine-making co-operative upstairs in the former superintendent's flat from 10am-5pm on Saturday 19 May during the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention.  


Free, drop-in and children welcome. 


If you would be interested in volunteering to help at this workshop please email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com. 


(Pictures taken from last year's workshops, led by Rebecca Willmott and Lauren Velvick)