The Shrieking Violet in the University of Salford Library

A full set of back issues of The Shrieking Violet is now available to view in the University of Salford Library zine collection.

This has entailed returning to the cheap photocopier shop on Oxford Road where I copied issues of The Shrieking Violet between circa 2009 and 2014.  

It felt really strange stepping back into a spot where I had spent so many hours engaged in the repetitive and almost meditative motions of copying, folding, ordering and compiling. I always thought of The Shrieking Violet as a zine about the city, but I realised for the first time how personal and autobiographical they were at the same time, almost like a diary of discovery and learning at a formative time of my life. Reading back now, I was struck by how righteous my younger self was at times, but also by how long I’ve held the same interests and motivations (from a very early age), which have only deepened and expanded over time.

Part of me wondered how I ever had the time, energy and motivation to do such things, how I managed to write so much, and if I was mad to do this. 

I thought about getting a set of back issues printed professionally for the library (which would have been a lot less onerous and time-consuming), but going back to the photocopier made me realise how intrinsic the material and act of photocopying and folding by hand was to The Shrieking Violet. While there are many things I would do differently now, not just from a design perspective, but to improve accessibility and legibility (for example I never realised how tiny the text was!), there’s something that really appeals to me not just about the instant, cheap format, but the unpredictability and randomness of the quality of the reproduction and the tone of the ink according to the individual machine. Perhaps it’s because no matter what my interests are, the spirit of punk is there somewhere in the background, underlying everything I do … 

I also always enjoy becoming reacquainted with one of my favourite ever interviews, with the artist Maurice Carlin, in issue 12 of The Shrieking Violet (2011), about his project The Self Publishers, which collected and compiled discarded sheets found in photocopier shops around Manchester and Salford. 

Other issues particularly pertinent to Salford include issue 9 (a special guide to Sounds from the Other City festival), issue 23, which features Claire Hignett on the story of the Basque children who were evacuated to Salford during the Spanish Civil War, and issue 24 (The Shrieking Violet guide to the Public Art of Central Salford). 

The zine collection can be viewed during library opening hours (24-hours daily for students) and during staffed hours (until 9pm daily) for visitors, at the Clifford Whitworth Library, University of Salford, M5 4NT. 

All back issues of the Shrieking Violet can also be viewed online at www.nataliebradbury.co.uk/publishing.

New website and Shrieking Violet online archive

Earlier this year I commissioned the designer Des Lloyd Behari to make me a new website to bring together most of my writing, projects and other work in one place.

The website features an archive of back issues of the Shrieking Violet, which can be explored at https://nataliebradbury.co.uk/publishing/ in a more reader-friendly way than they had previously been available.

While I still have a lot more of my writing archive to add, the website is live and can be explored at www.nataliebradbury.com.

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The Shrieking Violet interviewed by Mark Reid

I was recently interviewed by playwright Mark Reid for his new project The Rudiment, which has the intention of interviewing a range of creative practitioners in depth. As I feel most contented and comfortable when walking and exploring, I took Mark for a walk along the River Mersey from East Didsbury to Stockport town centre, a route I often walk.

To read the interview, which discusses the practice of writing and interviewing, inspirations and motivations and my engagement with various creative projects, from Manchester Left Writers to Manchester School of Samba, visit http://therudiment.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/meandering-mersey-natalie-bradbury.html.

Why I call myself the Shrieking Violet

I wrote this in response to a recent article in the Guardian about the decline of the name 'Nigel'.

Why I call myself the Shrieking Violet

I call myself the Shrieking Violet because of a man called Nigel: Nigel 'Nig' Hodgkins, my Year 9 English teacher, who had a bowl haircut, big, round glasses and a 'flying jacket' (and as a result was mocked a lot by the girls at my all girls' school for being hopelessly uncool). At the age of 13/14 I didn't say very much (didn't know how), but wrote copiously. My main ambitions in life were to be editor of the Times (the family newspaper of choice, and therefore my main source of cultural knowledge), a rock 'n' roll music journalist or on Top of the Pops (or possibly all of those).

A lot of the time I felt like if you weren't loud you were ignored, seen as being stupid or dismissed as having nothing worth saying, but Mr Hodgkins noticed that I did have things to say and once said he knew that I was 'no shrinking violet'. This stuck with me and I determined that I was going to be a 'Shrieking Violet' instead of a 'shrinking violet', and that I was one day going to have a band with that name. 

One day after class someone asked Mr Hodgkins who his favourite band was. He said 'oh you won't have heard of them' and wrote 'L-o-v-e' on the board. I loved them, and excitedly exclaimed 'I love Forever Changes'! It turned out Mr Hodgkins wrote for the Penguin Book of Rock & Pop in his spare time. I used to get the bus to Canterbury to go record shopping at weekends, so I started going and standing in the 'music' section of Waterstones, on the first floor, and reading 'Nig Hodgkins'' entries in the Penguin Book of Rock & Pop – which included Pixies, Beach Boys, Husker Du and Public Enemy. 

After a couple of years Mr Hodgkins left our school. He'd always said that the '80s were the worst decade for music, which I vehemently disagreed with (I still think the eighties might be my favourite decade for music), so as a leaving present I made him a tape of my favourite '80s songs, called, of course, 'Making Plans for Nigel' (I stretched '80s slightly to include 1979/1990). I first heard 'Making Plans for Nigel' when I taped it off Steve Lamacq's Evening Session, and it's still one of my favourite ever songs, with one of my favourite ever guitar solos (when I moved to Manchester they used to play it at Smile at the Star and Garter, and I used to think of Mr Hodgkins as I danced around).

The last time I saw Mr Hodgkins was at the Canterbury Fayre music festival, when I was 16, in the summer holidays after my GCSEs (the same summer holidays I spent recording my first ever album, on cassette tape), out in the rolling Kentish countryside surrounded by hop fields. Love were headlining, playing Forever Changes in its entirety, complete with horns and strings, and it's one of the most transcendent musical experiences I can ever remember having, ferocious and mellow at the same time, of its time but also still so forceful and so bright and fresh. Arthur Lee died a couple of years later, so I'm so glad I got the chance to experience it. I still wear the Love t-shirt I bought at the festival, which is increasingly washed out and ragged but I intend to keep wearing it until it falls apart.

I hope Mr Hodgkins is still writing about music and going to gigs and being passionate and inspiring about what he does!

The Shrieking Violets on Bandcamp

I recently digitised the first album I ever made, on cassette tape, when I was 16, during the summer holidays after my GCSEs. It was recorded in my parents' attic, in a very rudimentary fashion, on a Sony shoebox recorder. It can now be listened to at https://theshriekingviolets.bandcamp.com/album/first-album. I'm not sure why I felt the need to put it online, except that I guess it's the first thing I ever made, by myself, just got on with, produced, because I had to, needed to. For that reason it's still my most treasured possession.

By way of introduction, here is a piece I wrote about my teenage music-making for Black Dogs' publication Hope From Dead End Town a few years ago.


'A View from (under) the Bridge': a short story about growing up weird

I grew up in a small town called Hythe on the south coast of England, a picturesque and pleasant, yet quiet, town nestled between the English Channel and rolling Kent countryside which is populated predominantly by two groups of people: pensioners and Conservative voters. Hythe is in the south eastern corner of England, not really on the way to anywhere, and it's a place where time passes slowly; when I was a teenager, the social life of one group of old men consisted of sitting in a row on one of the town's bridges for a chat at the same time every day, resting halfway between home and the shops, their walking sticks propped up on the pavement. As a child who was never conventionally pretty, girly or interested in subjects deemed fitting topics for discussion by teenage girls, I didn't really fit in there, or at my all girls' school a twenty minute bus-ride away, and as much as I tried to make friends my overall experience was of overwhelming loneliness, from which I tried doggedly to distract myself by making music and art.

In my early teens I became obsessed with playing the guitar, both as an outlet for my creative frustration and as something to do to pass the time. I asked for an acoustic guitar for my fourteenth birthday, and when my mum and dad took me to a guitar shop in the nearest city, Canterbury, I knew that the black Fender I picked up, so shiny I could see my face in its surface, was the guitar for me; it was love at first sight. Later, I talked them into buying me a hard, black guitar case lined with what looked liked luxurious red velvet, a fitting home for my precious instrument, and was given a hippyish, rainbow-woven guitar strap which contrasted nicely with its stylish, unbroken blackness.

I took to lugging the guitar everywhere with me as if it was my best friend, the awkward, slippery handle of the heavy case wearing red marks into my hands as I wandered around the town from spot to spot, an unlikely, roving busker singing songs no-one else knew the words to. I tried to play songs like Shake Some Action by Californian band Flamin Groovies (with lyrics like "If you don't dig what I say/Then I will go away/And I won't come back this again. No/'Cause I don't need a friend”, Shake Some Action was the rousing, defiant anthem of my teenage disaffection, and it's a song I still play from time to time today), and underage romance 13 by Big Star, little realising that potential listeners wanted something familiar they could hum along to like the Beatles or Oasis. I clung onto the hope, however, that if only someone who shared my love of sixties and seventies American power pop would walk past one day and stop and talk to me, I'd finally meet someone with whom I had something in common, and find a companion.

I used to sit and play on a smooth worn step in front of the town hall, my legs dangling down onto the paving slabs of the High Street, struggling to make my voice heard over the uninterested shoppers, or on the uncomfortable, stony beach and the distinctive, pink-painted promenade which ran alongside it, and sometimes on the gently sloping banks of the historic, tranquil Royal Military Canal which meanders placidly through the town, built centuries ago to defend the Kent coast from the threat of invasion by Napoleon, amid daffodils and swans and under the shade of weeping willow trees.

One day I decided to take this to its logical conclusion and go and sit and play under one of the bridges which takes cars and pedestrians over the canal, to find out how it echoed, and make some recordings on my portable 'shoebox-style' recorder. I was inspired partly by my favourite guitarist at the time, John Fahey, who wrote a piece of music based on a 'singing bridge' in Memphis, Tennessee (as a teenager, I spent a disproportionate amount of time daydreaming about visiting the Southern States of the United States, inspired both by its completely alien landscape and the potential for adventures suggested to me by its literature and music), and in part by the episode of the Simpsons in which Lisa Simpson, another hero of mine, joins saxophonist Bleeding Gums Murphy in a jam on a moonlit bridge, an homage to the famous story of jazz musician Sonny Rollins practising on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York over on the equally remote, exciting and exotic East coast of America. Despite my parents' concern – they teasingly called me 'troll', and warned me of vermin and the dangers of waterborne Weil's disease – I became obsessed with going and sitting, alternating depending on whichever took my fancy that day, under two facing bridges at opposite ends of the town centre. I found the bridges to be perfect practice rooms to experiment with different sounds and try out the metal and glass slides and capo I'd bought from the nearby music shop in the High Street, which was run by one eccentric, opinionated man who would talk your ear off if given half a chance. Eventually, I put voice to my own songs and lyrics.

For me, the bridges were both private and a magical places, giving me space to sit, think and watch the world go by. In sunshine, I watched elusive ripples of light dance above me, reflected on the bridges' low roofs, trying again and again to capture the fleeting dashes of sunlight and recreate the essence of the place as short films on my digital camera. In stormy weather, rain and hail fell onto the surface of the water in small circles and the bridges became my refuge from thunder and lightning, an experience I found more exciting than frightening. I was usually undisturbed, save from occasional hired rowing boats going past bearing noisy families and the occasional sunburnt couple, some of whom appeared to be pleased by my music, which must have broken up the physical monotony of their oar strokes, and some of whom didn't seem sure how to react.

For a couple of years, it felt like I spent all my weekends and summer holidays under bridges – so much so that I even had my sixteenth birthday party down there and convinced some of my classmates to get the bus into Hythe to join me, eating cake and sheltering from the half-hearted rain of a mid-May day.

The Shrieking Violet issue 22

Read the Shrieking Violet issue 22 online now:

This issue's cover is by Alex Humphreys. Alex uses two-dimensional imagery with a high emphasis on the use of colour and composition. With the enjoyment of combining bold shapes and techniques of mark-making, Alex aims to make work with an experimental, abstract outcome. Alex's work is hand-screen printed and lies heavily in the form of traditional print. Alex also plays in Sex Hands, one of the Shrieking Violet's favourite Manchester bands; see them at Night & Day on Thursday February 6, and at Gullivers, on Wednesday February 26, in support of another of the Shrieking Violet's favourite bands, Trash Kit.

In issue 22:

Manchester-based craftivist duo Warp & Weft introduce their Stature exhibition in Manchester Town Hall (February 24-March 9), which examines how women’s lives and achievements have been recorded in history. Warp & Weft are Helen Davies and Jenny White. Helen is an artist specialising in needlecrafts; she is interested in the social history of craft and women. She also makes monsters at helenmakes.co.uk. Historian Jenny White is interested in the way different sections of society are represented in the media and history, and is drawn to those whose stories aren’t usually told. She also takes photos for Trash Gallery.

Tom Whyman takes a look at the legacy of football pundit Alan Hansen, and the growing impossibility of having an opinion and engaging critically with the world. Tom is a writer and philosopher currently studying for his PhD at the University of Essex. Before that he lived and studied in Manchester. He blogs at infinitelyfullofhope.wordpress.com and tweets as @HealthUntoDeath.

Cazz Blase explores the alternative realities of Manchester and London in the work of Jeff Noon, Ben Moor and Neil Gaiman, where the real meets the unreal. Cazz is trying to establish herself as a freelance journalist while working as a library assistant at Manchester University. She normally focuses on music and/or feminism, but has a long term love of radio comedy and sci-fi and thought it was time to share it with a wider audience than bemused friends in cafes.

Joe Austin pays a visit to one of London's overlooked Modernist landmarks, and a hidden sculptural masterpiece, at the TUC's post-war headquarters, Congress House. Joe is a qualified architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 24 years or so. Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about.

Artist and musician Henry Ireland reflects impressionistically on his experiences over the past year, accompanied by photographs from his summer-2013 tour of the UK with Two White Cranes and the Nervy Betters. Henry helps run Polite Records and lives in London with his wife Frances.

David Wilkinson discusses The Fall, The Blue Orchids and the working class autodidact, drawing on interviews with Martin Bramah and Una Baines undertaken during his PhD. David lives in Manchester, where he completed his PhD on post-punk last year. He is currently research assistant on the project ‘Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture 1976-1984’, led by Matthew Worley and John Street. He has also written for the F Word, Manchester Histories Festival and Manchester District Music Archive. At the moment David is thinking about punk and sexuality and will be doing a talk on this for LGBT History Month at MMU (Geoffrey Manton Building Lecture Theatre 6), Wednesday February 12 at 6pm. The Blue Orchids, meanwhile, are playing at the Star and Garter on Saturday February 15 at the Light it Up clubnight.

West Yorkshire-based photographer and eternal wanderer Jonathan Salmon presents some atmospheric images contemplating a new life in the country, capturing both the freedom and suffocation caused by vast open spaces. Jonathan lives down the hill from the old Yorkshire town of Queensbury, one of the highest towns in the UK, and often wakes up to an eerie fog. Jonathan is currently artist of the month, and his photographs are on display, at Trof in Levenshulme (Trof have contributed this issue's recipe, see below).

Writer and journalist Kenn Taylor contributes a poem about austerity. Originally from Merseyside but now living in London, Kenn has a particular interest in the relationship between community, culture and the urban environment.

Manchester-based filmmaker and musician Richard Howe continues his series on mental health in the movies by looking at Temple Grandin by Mick Jackson, which stars Claire Danes as a young autistic girl. Tweet Richard about films @rikurichard. Watch his latest short film, Beware, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDve4PXLlrw.

Jared Szpakowski introduces ALBUMCLUB, a monthly theme-based music exchange. Jared is an NHS administrator and an artist based at 3rd Floor Studios in Manchester. His work documents everything from the life and death of houseplants to the decomposition of airline chapatis, NHS paraphernalia and the contents of his wife's granddad's Bible who he never met and is no longer with us. He keeps an almost-daily blog at www.threeteabagsinanenvelope.tumblr.com and has just launched a monthly soundtrack to accompany the visuals. He is also the chairman and founder of ALBUMCLUB.

Book and print-maker Jo Wilkinson has contributed an illustrative drawing. Jo constantly battles with time, finding that there are never enough hours to draw, collage, collect ephemera, fold, cut or sew. Her small, pamphlet-style books are usually non-narrative pieces, with her drawings comprising illustrative, one-off stories on a page, although she has created one love story. 

Husband and wife team Trove, who believe in making good food from scratch, tell the story of how their cafe and bakery came into being and contribute a recipe for beetroot hummus. Trove's organic, homemade, artisan bread, from sourdough to rye, is used both in the cafe and can be found in Unicorn Grocery in Chorlton, Back's Deli in Heaton Moor, Polocini cafe, Romiley, Fig and Sparrow lifestyle shop and cafe, Manchester, Cowherds Vegetarian Cafe, Trafford, Volta bar and restaurant, West Didsbury and Eleckrik cafe/bar, Chorlton. Trove has won two Manchester Food and Drink Festival awards, one for being 'Truly Good Food Heroes' and the other for being the best 'Cheap Eats' venue in Manchester. Find them in Levenshulme, opposite the Antiques Village.

Download and print your own copy here. Read issue 22, along with back issues of the Shrieking Violet, in Salford Zine Library at Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester's Northern Quarter. Paper copies can also be found in the Working Class Movement Library in Salford.

Shrieking Violet talk in Bradford, Tuesday 14 May, 6pm followed by DIY discussion with Black Dogs

I've been invited to repeat my talk about the Shrieking Violet during Bradford Zine Week (Monday 13-Sunday 19 May) at the Bradford Baked Zines Pop Up shop, 13 Market Street, as part of a series talks, events and workshops.

The talk will take place on Tuesday 14 May between 6pm and 6.30pm, and will be followed by a discussion on DIY culture featuring other self-publishers, including locally-based artists' collective Black Dogs, whose work I am a big fan of, from 6.30pm-7.30pm.

For more information visit https://bradfordbakedzines.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/natalie-bradbury-talk-tuesday-14th-may.

The Shrieking Violet issue 20

After a hiatus of six months or so whilst life got in the way, the Shrieking Violet has finally reached issue 20.

Issue 20's cover is by Manchester-based freelance illustrator and designer Catherine Chialton. Her work is generally inspired by science, nature and food, and is split between using ink and vectors. Continuing Catherine's normal linear and patterned aesthetic, this piece was inspired by the usually grim Manchester weather, but with a brighter finish to it.

Manchester-based filmmaker Richard Howe continues his series on mental health in the movies by looking at Betty Blue, which he fell in love with at the tender age of nine. Check out Richard's films at https://vimeo.com/18599252, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhye0hzz72Q and www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj6H_eCz_4s and tweet Richard about films @rikurichard.

Artist, writer and arts administrator Jack Welsh has contributed an article about old and new public artworks by Eduardo Paolozzi and Daniel Buren in Tottenham Court Road tube station, London, which has been undergoing extensive renovation. Jack is based in Liverpool, but frequently works in Manchester. He recently completed a Masters in Arts Management, Policy and Practice at the University of Manchester. His dissertation, examining how the Art on the Underground programme contributes to the economic development of London, is part of a longstanding research interest in the role of art and design in underground transport networks.

Joe Austin writes in praise of twentieth century artist Frank Dobson, sometimes referred to as the first truly British Modern sculptor. His interest was sparked by the discovery of a sculpture by Dobson in his local park. Joe is a qualified architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 23 years or so. Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about.

Midlands-based writer, musician and occasional wrestler JT Wilson has written about the Mystery Castle, a folly in the Arizona desert. JT first heard about the Mystery Castle while researching his forthcoming novel (about cryptozoology, love and other animals). He shares the hero's fondness for grandiloquent gestures, but not his architectural talent. Say hello to JT @jt_stories.

Sam Lewis, a London-based musician, and occasional music writer, interviewed Michael Azzerad, author of Our Band Could be Your Life, as part of his Master's dissertation on how technology affects music. Listen to Being There at http://beingthere.bandcamp.com.

Freelance illustrator Fuchsia MacAree has contributed two drawings, one of Queen Victoria and her border collie, and one repeat pattern originally created for a fundraising Movember exhibition. After degrees in graphic design and illustration, she is now doing a year-long residency in Dublin.

Rebecca Willmott has written a children's story about the January Blues, hoping this will become a longer story in time. Rebecca graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2011, specialising in Children's Literature in her final year. The story shows how baking (in particular, gingerbread men) brings the two characters together whilst mourning a great loss. It is influenced by the Shrieking Violet and Rebecca's many culinary experiments. Rebecca also submitted a gingerbread man recipe for the Shrieking Violet's third issue.

Richard Bilsborough, who has spent the past 14 years being told he should take up cookery, has contributed a recipe for pork, barley and apple stew. He is from Preston, plays guitar for a band called Fighting and has a very dull administrative job.

Valentina Orrù has recently completed a MA in Arts Management, Policy and Practice at the University of Manchester, researching urban regeneration and cultural planning. In love with Manchester and with a passion for cities, cultures and travelling, she loves discovering new worlds without forgetting her origins. Valentina is very pleased to contribute a traditional recipe from her Italian region of origin Sardinia, translated into the Sardinian dialect of her home village Mogoro, to this edition of the Shrieking Violet.

Read issue 20 online here:

Download and print your own copy as a PDF here. To request a free paper copy email your name and address to Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

I have been asked to do a guest lecture about self-publishing and the Shrieking Violet blog/zine for undergraduate students on Manchester Metropolitan University's interdisciplinary Unit X in April.

Read about issue 20 of the Shrieking Violet on Creative Tourist here.

The Shrieking Violet issue 17

The Shrieking Violet issue 17 accidentally turned out to be an architecture fanzine (or at least, if there's a theme it would be buildings and the built environment), possibly a subconscious influence from visiting the Archizines exhibition in London in November. Pavilions run through the issue (and I have written about my favourite pavilions in architecture and art).

South Manchester-based illustrator Andy Carter was inspired by pavilions to create the cover. He says: “The inspiration for it came from when you said you were writing about pavilions, although I may have mistook that to mean 'bandstands'. So I just thought about what happens on bandstands like brass bands, street performers and chavs/tramps hanging around.” Andy is equally inspired by everyday life and more subjective narratives. His work is heavily reliant on line, shape and texture. He enjoys screen-printing and margaritas. I've wanted to ask Andy to do a cover ever since he illustrated a double page spread on Channel swimmer Sunny Lowry for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention Souvenir programme.

Stuart Wheeler has kindly allowed me to reproduce a selection from a set of photos he took of Victor Pasmore's Apollo pavilion in Peterlee (currently top of my wish list for daytrip destinations), which has recently been listed. Stuart is an Architectural Assistant at 3DReid in Manchester and graduated from [Re_Map] unit at the Manchester School of Architecture. He tweets @stuwheeler.

Following the excitement of last year's Festival of Britain 60th anniversary year, Joe Austin has written about the spin-off Live Architecture exhibition that took place in Poplar in 1951. Joe is a qualified Architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 22 years or so (he lives just up the road from the site of the Live Architecture exhibition). Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about. Joe is a fellow William Mitchell fan, and lover of twentieth century art and design, which is how I discovered his wonderful blog.

Kenn Taylor has contributed an article about the 'boom and bust' of social housing, with specific reference to the Woodchurch Estate in Birkenhead. Kenn is a writer and journalist based in Liverpool with a particular interest in the relationship between culture and the urban environment.

Liz Buckley has reviewed Lost is Found, an exhibition currently showing in gallery 1 at the Cornerhouse. Liz is a final year Art History student from Salford. She studies at Manchester University and is going to start an MA in Gallery Studies in September. She loves post-war art and is an aspiring curator and art critic in her spare time.

Jessica Mautner has written up a recipe for 'Liverpool Corpse Cakes' – biscuits inspired by both the local Chinese community and Victorian funeral rituals which were handed out to passers-by in Liverpool city centre in November. Jessica is a multidisciplinary artist based in Manchester. She makes temporary, site-specific encounters which are a political response to place, space, history and community. Her materials-based, experimental practice explores sensoria, particularly through texture and taste, and she is interested in the negotiation and subversion of built and planned environments by flexible organic forms. In the past few years, she has taken part in exhibitions, residencies and festivals across Europe and the UK; in January she made a new piece in Newcastle commissioned by Situation Rhubarb, and her short film Phi is showing at Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.

Richard Howe has written about Alfred Hitchock's classic film Spellbound. Richard is a Manchester-based filmmaker, caterer and musician (google Realitease@vimeo.com, Devilsorange@youtube.com, Tremors@vimeo.com). Look out for Dream Bubble, Realitease Feature and Frankenmovie projects. Hear his music here.

Steph Fletcher has drawn inspiration from Escher to illustrate Richard's article. Steph recently started an MA in art at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, and helps run the North West-based zine Twigs and Apples. She enjoys drawing, writing, cycling and vegan cooking.

Nick Mitchell has contributed two short stories. He was born in Bradford in 1975 and has lived in Manchester since 1999, working as a musician, writer and record label owner (Golden Lab Records). His musical projects have included Summum Bonum, I Had An Inkling, Beach Fuzz, A Wake, The Gamecock, Float Riverer and Chalaque. His stories and poems have been published in both the UK and the USA.

Read the Shrieking Violet online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Download and print your own copy of the Shrieking Violet here.

Very badly photocopied copies will can currently be found at Islington Mill, Salford and Cornerhouse, Manchester and will left around various places around Manchester city centre next week, including Piccadilly Records, Good Grief! shop (in the Soup Kitchen), Koffee Pot, Oklahoma and Nexus Art Cafe.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Also recommended

Your City Is A Public Orchard is a new guide to foraging in the city made by Hotspur House-based Textbook Studio. It's a book with a handcrafted feel and plenty of pictures, which folds out into a page full of recipes for nettles, rosehips and much more! Best of all, it's free and can be picked up from various locations around the city.

The Shrieking Violet issue 16, Manchester Blog Award and recent inspiration

Issue 16 features Bert Jansch, Manchester's typography, city quarters, Esperanto, Belle Vue, smokey beans, creative writing, poetry, embroidery and illustration.

I have been thinking about the different types of quarters that seem to be appearing more and more, not just in Manchester but in other towns and cities I have visited.

Nija Dalal is a writer and radio producer, and has just finished an MA in Anthropology. She's radio obsessive, cooks and crafts and sews, and keeps a blog about it when she remembers. She grew up in the American South, in a bizarre immigrant household, though no more bizarre than most immigrant households. She says "y'all." Currently in Manchester, she's lived in Sydney and Atlanta, and she's looking for a job in radio (do you have one going, by the way?)...Nija has condensed some of her Masters thesis findings into an article about the anthropological implications of Manchester's typography.

Bill Chapman, who has been speaking Esperanto since 1967, got in touch with me offering an insider's perspective on an article I wrote about the Esperanto for the modernist issue 1. During our subsequent exchange of emails, he sent me a photo of the Manchester Esperanto society in 1948 (motto 'Obstinately onwards'!) and told me about the adventures Esperanto has enabled him to have. Esperanto celebrates its 125th anniversary next year, and I asked Bill to expand on his stories in article form for the Shrieking Violet. Bill is a magistrate in north Wales and has worked for many years in education and training, most recently in the field of lifelong learning. He is enjoying being a grandfather.

Long-time contributor and friend of the Shrieking Violet Rebecca Willmott describes herself as 'a self publisher with a specific writing interest in revisiting the circus with a needle and thread'. Her favourite things are: pumpkins, clowns, embroidery hoops and running writing and book binding workshops with children and sometimes adults, 'but children are more curious'. Manchester's Belle Vue circus holds a particular fascination for Rebecca, and she has written and embroidered an article on it. Rebecca has just moved to London to start an internship at textile magazine Selvedge.

Louise M. North wrote her first story, about a blue apple, aged 5. She likes writing about the odd, the weird and the wonderful and, if she can manage it, the odd, weird and wonderful all in one story. Louise has combined the odd and weird in a story about a recognisable Manchester locale, with an illustration by Alex Boswell.

Cyrus Amini, who has contributed a poem to issue 16 of the Shrieking Violet, has previously been an independent video producer and broadcast professional. He now develops property nicely but mainly concentrates on enjoying himself.

Mr Jacket's smokey beans recipe came to the Shrieking Violet via Morag Rose of the Loiterers Resistance Movement. I have tried and tested it and recommend eating hearty helpings on top of toasted, buttered rye bread for dinner on a winter's night, with the leftovers for lunch the next day.

The cover is by Manchester-based illustrator Bryony Jackson. I'm really pleased as I have long been a fan of Bryony's work and have been asking her to design a cover ever since the Shrieking Violet started back in August 2009!

Daniel Fogarty, an artist and designer based at Rogue Studios in Ancoats, kindly assisted with the design and layout.

Remember, this publication is best read whilst listening to guitarist and singer Bert Jansch, who died of cancer last month.

Read issue 16 online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Download and print your own copy of the Shrieking Violet here.

Very badly photocopied copies will be left around various places in the city centre this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, including Piccadilly Records, Good Grief! shop (in the Soup Kitchen), Koffee Pot, Oklahoma, Nexus Art Cafe, Cornerhouse.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Manchester Blog Award

The Shrieking Violet won Best Arts and Culture Blog at the 2011 Manchester Blog Awards which took place during Manchester Literature Festival, after being nominated for the third year in a row. It was good to hear readings from other blogs at the awards ceremony, and to hear the winning entires in the Real Story competition, including Shrieking Violet contributor Nija Dalal! It was a shame that I was rushing off to the Jens Lekman gig at Band on the Wall, on the other side of town. Many thanks to anyone who read, nominated or voted for the Shrieking Violet.

Other winners included Shrieking Violet issue 10/Manchester's Modernist Heroines contributor Hayley Flynn, who won Best City and Neighbourhood Blog with Skyliner. David Bailey, who designed the cover for the Shrieking Violet issue 10, won Best Personal Blog for Food Legend.

Recent inspiration

I've been dipping in and out of the artist Ryan Gander's book Catalogue Raisonabble Vol. 1. My favourite bits of the book are his writing, especially extracts from his 'Loose Associations', interesting essays which flit from topic to topic in 'loose associations'. These led me to a brilliant magazine called Dot Dot Dot, produced by Stuart Bailey of Dexter Sinister, in which some of Gander's Loose Associations appeared. I've been reading issue 19 of Dot Dot Dot, which compiles editions of a newspaper called THE FIRST/LAST NEWSPAPER which was issued from Port Authority for three weeks during November 2009. Content is a mixture of archive material and contemporary articles written by different international artists and writers, some fairly short and others more in-depth, quite often concerning the media, the history of the press, the evolution of publishing and mass communication.

I recently watched this lecture from 2007, which has contributions from Stuart Bailey, as well as Michael Bierut from the website Design Observer. I really enjoyed hearing about how Dot Dot Dot started and developed as a magazine, and how it received submissions of content that was not what you would expect to find in a graphic design magazine but the editors published it anyway to change conceptions about what 'should' be printed. I was also interested in Michael Bierut's talk about how Design Observer started and grew, and attracted readers despite the length of its posts! He made some observations about comments on blogs and blogging 'communities'. I am often discouraged that there are few comments posted on the Shrieking Violet (especially negative comments) and the lack of discussion or debate around anything I write.

Self-publishers of the World Take Over! Salford Zine Library exhibition and film at Salford Art Gallery

The Shrieking Violet was interviewed over the summer for a film compiled by Salford Zine Library which will be shown during a new exhibition at Salford Art Gallery. Craig Barr from Salford Zine Library interviewed self-publishers across Manchester, including OWT Creative, Vapid Kitten and Manchester Municipal Design Corporation, and invited zine makers from all over the world to send in short films of themselves. Also on show will be items from the Salford Zine Library collection, usually based at Islington Mill, Salford.

Watch the trailer, starring artist, actor, Hotpants Romance member and the Shrieking Violet issue 11 contributor Lowri Evans, which has music by Maria and the Gay:

Watch a short chapter from the film here:



And another here:

The exhibition and film will run from October 15 to January 29 at Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Peel Park Crescent, Salford M5 4WU.

Issue 16 of the Shrieking Violet will be dedicated to Bert Jansch (1943-2011)

The Shrieking Violet issue 16, which is currently in production, will be dedicated to (as in I will recommend that people listen to his music while reading it) Bert Jansch, singer and guitarist in Pentangle and notable folk musician in his own right, who died from cancer earlier this week at the age of 67.

It will be the third issue of the Shrieking Violet to be dedicated to the memory of a musician who soundtracked my teenage years and passed away prematurely: Issue 8 was finished in April 2010, coinciding with the death of my musical hero Alex Chilton (Box Tops/Big Star) at the age of 59, and Trish Keenan of Broadcast passed away just as I was finishing issue 12, aged only 42.

One of the most compelling arguments for owning records (or books) in a physical format is that you never forget how you came into possession of those that sum up certain stages of your life.

As a big fan of folk and blues guitarists like John Fahey, I’d heard a lot about Bert Jansch but it wasn’t until a trip to Ireland after my A-levels to meet the editor of a fanzine I had been contributing to that I bought The Best of Bert Jansch (along with Fakebook by Yo La Tengo and a Hank Williams boxset, both of whom also became major musical obsessions) from a cosy, crowded record cum bookshop in Dublin. The record came to define the end of that summer, the changes in my life as I moved away from home to start university, and the passing of the days into autumn; there’s a darkness and sadness to Bert’s music behind its delicate, fingerpicked beauty and I have always thought that Bert’s was a music for the drawing in of the days, falling of leaves from the trees and the brief intensity of autumn light.

What makes Bert’s music for me is his warm, personal voice, which is one of the most distinctive and recognisable I’ve come across. As well as being one of my favourite guitarists, he’s also one of my favourite singers: his voice is plain, unadorned and unaffected. Bert’s is singing how it should be, unflashy and unshowy, complementary to rather than distracting from the guitar melodies which are at the centre of his songs.

As a shy, awkward teenager, when I started university my love of musicians like Bert Jansch helped me make friends. A fellow guitarist lived in my flat in halls and we traded CDs, introducing me to Bert Jansch’s 1968 album Birthday Blues.

This summer I stumbled across The Pentangle’s absolutely magical 1969 LP Basket of Light for £1 at a car boot sale at the end of my parents' road in Kent, a record I had long coveted on vinyl. Returning home, I rushed to put it on the stereo. My mum, who was lucky enough to be teenager during punk and post-punk, protested loudly and turned it off; she couldn’t stand it. In a reversal of the usual parent-child relationship, my taste in whimsical, gentle, introspective folk music made me a rebel!

Recipe callout

I am currently looking for a vegetarian/vegan recipe to include. If you would like to contribute a recipe, with photo of the finished dish, email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

The Shrieking Violet is two! Issue 15

Issue 15 of the Shrieking Violet is out now, roughly coinciding with the fanzine's second birthday (which would have been August 1 if real life hadn't got in the way!).

It features a passionate defence of urban green space Birley Fields (under threat from MMU's new 'super campus') by 'lefty, greeny veggie', Keith Reynolds, who writes the blog Valiant Veggie about creating a mini-wildlife habitat on a balcony in inner-city Hulme, as recently featured in the Manchester Evening News. Keith is "passionate about his work (in mental health), community development, nature and green issues and making stumbling efforts to be "the change he'd like to see in the world".

Brian Rosa, an artist, curator, urban researcher and PhD candidate in human geography at The University of Manchester, writes about Manchester as the 'original modern' city.

John Mather is a Civil Engineer by profession. His passion for swimming has led him to compete in Windermere's 'Great North Swim' and also swim between Scotland's Western Isles. He once ventured into Siberia's (very cold) Lake Baikal. John has returned closer to home to contribute a page about Levenshulme Baths from an illustrated guide he is compiling to Greater Manchester's swimming pools.

I have written a mini-guide to the summer wildflowers which can be commonly found in Manchester, inspired by the nature writer Richard Mabey whose most recent book is entitled Weeds: A Cultural History (listen to Mabey in the Wild, his recent Radio 4 mini-series on wildflowers here). I have also included my interview with Ancoats Peeps artist Dan Dubowitz.

The Shrieking Violet is all about taking inspiration from the everyday, and Sam Lewis from London-based band Being There, who have just recorded their debut album, asks whether the American beat poet Frank O'Hara was saying something or nothing. Alex Boswell has drawn a picture of Frank O'Hara.

Bury artist and poet Josef Minta has contributed some poems accompanied by an illustration. He has just published his first collection of poems and images for the Kindle, called The Abbreviated Day.

Manu Pérez, who is originally from Seville but lives and works in Manchester, has written a recipe for traditional Spanish Easter dish torrijas (this fanzine has been a long while in the making!).

The cover is by Manchester-based graphic designer Alyson Exall.

Read issue 15 online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Free paper copies have been left in various locations around the city centre such as Good Grief! shop, Oklahoma, Koffee Pot, Common, An Outlet, Manchester Craft Centre, Nexus Art Cafe and Piccadilly Records. The fanzine can be downloaded and printed here. Issues 1-14 can also be downloaded here.

To request a free copy in the post email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com. Email this address also if you would like to contribute to future editions or are interested in helping out with making the design more interesting and exciting, or join the facebook group here.

More news

The Manchester's Modernist Heroines walk (a collaborative project with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement) will be repeated on Saturday September 3 during the DIY Feminist Festival. Meet at 2pm in Platt Fields Park. For more information see www.nowhere-fest.blogspot.com.

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention souvenir Shrieking Violet special plus some directions and timings

The Shrieking Violet programme for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention. Includes information on all the stallholders and speakers, an interview with Joe Biel, director, $100 and A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US, an interview about letterpress with artist Amy Pennington, Deerly Beloved Bakery's recipe for stuffed bread and interviews with Antony Hall and Yu-Chen Wang, artists who are working in the building for Future Everything festival. The zine also features my article on historic swimming pools in Manchester, with annotated illustrations by Daniel Fogarty. Jacky Hall and illustrator Andy Carter have collaborated on a spread commemorating channel swimmer Sunny Lowry who trained at Victoria Baths. Paper copies will be available at the event.

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Download and print a copy to assemble yourself here.

Timings

10.30am Guided tour of the building

12pm Guided tour of the building

12pm Film screening: $100 Dollars and A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US, committee room (upstairs)

1pm, Talk: Dave Haslam, "The DIY alternative; fanzines 1977-1990", committee room (upstairs)

2pm Talk: Alex Zamora, Fever Zine, committee room (upstairs)

3pm Talk: Betsy Lambourn and Anna Frew, Vapid Kitten, "Is digital publishing the future of zines?", committee room (upstairs)

Directions for anyone coming from outside Manchester by train into Piccadilly station

1. Exit Piccadilly Station via Station Approach (the exit on the same level as the trains, next to WH Smith).

2. Follow Station Approach to the traffic lights and cross over onto Piccadilly.

3. Follow Piccadilly for 5 minutes until you reach Piccadilly Gardens bus station (across the road on your left).

4. Go to the bus stop at the far right of the bus station and get on a bus - numbers 41, 42, 43 or 142 or 143, which are very frequent, are best. These are operated by Finglands and magic bus (cheap) and Stagecoach (expensive). Ask for a single ticket to MRI (they don't sell return tickets). This should be £1.20 on a magic bus, a lot more on a Stagecoach bus.

5. The bus follows Oxford Road, the university corridor. After 10/15 minutes look out for the Whitworth Art Gallery on your right hand side, in a park called Whitworth Park. Ring the bell and get off on Oxford Road by Tesco (just past Manchester Royal Infirmary on your left).

6. Go back slightly and turn right onto Hathersage Road (the MRI is on the corner) and follow for about five/ten minutes.

7. Victoria Baths is on the left!

View Larger Map

Future Everything will be running a regular free bus between Piccadilly Place in central Manchester and Victoria Baths, with the first bus leaving from near Piccadilly Place at 10am and the last bus leaving Victoria Baths around 4pm.

The Shrieking Violet Issue 12 (and why you should read it whilst listening to Haha Sound by Broadcast)

Issue 12 of the Shrieking Violet has no theme. It does, however, pick up on topics covered in previous zines such as public transport — Tom Hiles has created an imagined map of how a Manchester Underground system might look, whilst poet, artist and public transport enthusiast Stuart Vallantine explains plans in the 1970s for a tunnel to connect Piccadilly and Victoria stations, with an illustration by Alex Boswell — and the media — Steve Hanson recounts a strange but true experience working for the Daily Sport in the Express Building and I have included my interview with artist Maurice Carlin about his project The Self Publishers.

Artist Daniel Fogarty (whose work can be seen at the BlankExpression 2011 show at BlankSpace at 43 Hulme Street until 13 February) has contributed a design essay on Granada idents and Anouska Smith from Cause and Effect art asks why it is so hard to make a living being an artist.

The zine also includes a letter from Joe Troop to his childhood home in Moss Side — part of his project My Hero — and creative writing by Michael Cassidy. Instead of a food recipe, Issue 12 contains instructions by Tom Hiles for making a seed bomb.

The cover is by Fuchsia Macaree.

Small numbers of black and white paper copies of the Shrieking Violet have been left in Piccadilly Records, Nexus Art Cafe, Cornerhouse, Magma books and Good Grief! in the Soup Kitchen as of Wednesday.

Issue 12 can be read online here (in an unfortunately low resolution PDF):

Open publication - Free publishing - More manchester

Download a copy to print yourself here.

To have a paper copy sent to you free of charge email your address to Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com. Also use this email address if you would like to contribute to future issues or join the facebook group.

Issues 2-12 of the Shrieking Violet can be read online here and issues 1-12 can be downloaded here.

Tom Hiles is hoping to sell merchandise featuring his Manchester Underground map in the future. If you are interested in finding out any news on this when it becomes available email thomashiles@gmail.com or follow him on twitter.

At the start of the year, when I was putting Issue 12 of the Shrieking Violet together, I started listening to Haha Sound by Broadcast a lot again. So I was shocked when, a couple of weeks into the year, it was announced that Broadcast’s singer, Trish Keenan, was battling pneumonia in hospital and had been on a life support machine since Christmas after contracting swine flu on tour in Australia. Sadly, the next day, on Friday 14th January, it was announced that she had died at the age of just 42.

Since it was released, Haha Sound has rarely been far from my record player, and it is one of the records that came to define for me a certain stage of growing up. Haha Sound was released in August 2003 during, in my case, the long, extended summer between GCSEs and sixth form. At that awkward age when you’re too underage to do much, but old enough to want to do something, being a shy teenager in a small, sleepy seaside town the highlight of my (not so) social life was listening to John Peel on Radio One and daydreaming about moving to a big city. Having fallen in love with Broadcast after hearing him play Pendulum and Before We Begin from Haha Sound on a regular basis, I got the bus to the nearest place with a decent record shop, Canterbury, when the record was released to buy it (from the unfortunately now long since closed down Richards Records) on a thick slab of Warp records vinyl. Over the next two years — the final two years I spent living in Kent before I moved away to go to university — it is only a slight exaggeration to say that Haha Sound was all I listened to.

I had previously obsessed over the wonky genius of Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd. Broadcast, too, are a brilliantly skewed pop band but, whereas Syd Barrett’s eccentricity was familiar and recognisable, grounded in an everyday, typically English setting of big bands, curly hair (in contrast, Steve Lamacq mentioned on the Evening Session around this time that Trish Keenan had ‘the straightest hair in pop music’ and seemed genuinely amazed by it), floorboards and bicycles, Broadcast’s experimental take on pop music was a different kind of weird altogether. Trish Keenan’s smooth, icy, precise vocals floated over pop beats and sounds I had never heard before, including percussion that, in my mind, made me think they were hitting an assortment of boxes, bells and bits of scrap metal. They even sang the odd word in German. The record sleeve, too, was like nothing else I’d seen, featuring collaged fragments of photographs, scattered boxes and clusters of warped, typewritten letters in strange arrangements.

Syd Barrett’s comforting, flat, boy-next-door vocals reminded me of quaint, leafy cathedral cities, but Broadcast, from far-away Birmingham, were glamorous, exotic and arty and, I decided, sounded like what living in a big city would be like. They referenced the past, borrowing musically from everything from nursery rhymes to sixties pop, and creating an almost chant-like effect at times, but also remained somehow futuristic and timeless. I still have yet to hear a song I like more than Before We Begin, a swooning slice of warm retro-pop gorgeousness that never fails to give me slight butterflies in my stomach as it swirls around me.

Broadcast played at the Night & Day soon after I moved to Manchester in 2005, promoting the follow up to Haha Sound, Tender Buttons, a more straightforward, but still brilliant, pop record. Pathetically, as a first year I hadn’t yet made any friends who liked Broadcast and was too nervous to go to a gig alone, so had to wait until December 2009 to finally see Broadcast live, at the Deaf Institute, when they were promoting their last release, a mini-album with the Focus Group. It was everything I had expected — an enveloping combination of swirling visuals, captivating pop music and a mysterious stage presence — quite unlike any gig I had been to before or have been to since.

This fanzine is dedicated to Trish Keenan and the inspiration I found in Broadcast's music.