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Sharing Heritage: Salford Zine Library celebrates £8,800 Heritage Lottery Fund grant (Or, big news!)

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the long gap between posts, and thanks to those who have been continuing to send us copies of their zines. We really appreciate it! Over the last few months we've been busy working on various funding applications and now we're able to announce that we were successful in getting hold of some funding from the HLF. Here's the official press release:

Sharing Heritage: Salford Zine Library celebrates £8,800 Heritage Lottery Fund grant

Salford Zine Library has received a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Sharing Heritage announced today. This exciting project, based at Nexus Art Café in Manchester, has been given £8,800 to catalogue its collection of over 1500 zines and other self published works from around the world and create an online catalogue for this unique collection.

Salford Zine Library works with educational institutions, cultural venues and arts organisations to promote creativity and engagement with zines and DIY culture. It aims to provide an accessible resource for preserving and sharing DIY heritage and, through its various outreach activities, continue to grow its collection of self-published works.

Zines (essentially a small circulation self published work) have been around since the middle of the century, and have provided an accessible means of self-expression for a wide range of voices not typically heard via the mainstream media. Throughout the last century the medium was co-opted by a variety of different groups, from football fans to punks and political activists, and there is growing academic interest in zines and DIY culture.

This project will enable Salford Zine Library to catalogue its growing collection and create a website
to allow members of the public to browse the collections via a new website. Funding will also help the library to do more work in the community, promoting zine making and zine makers through regular workshops, readings and exhibitions.

Commenting on the award, Steve Carlton said: “we’re really looking forward to being able to show off our collection on our new website. It’ll be a great resource for those interested in zines and will create loads of new opportunities for us to continue to inspire people to self publish. Zines are an often overlooked part of our heritage and we want to celebrate them.”

Sara Hilton, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund, said: “Sharing Heritage is a wonderful opportunity for communities to delve into their local heritage and we are delighted to be able to offer this grant so that Salford Zine Library can embark on a real journey of discovery. Heritage means such different things to different people, and HLF’s funding offers a wealth of opportunities for groups to explore and celebrate what’s important to them in their area.”

About Salford Zine Library

Salford Zine Library is a unique archive of self published materials, currently housed at Nexus Art Café on Dale Street in Manchester. It seeks to preserve and provide access to zines from around the world, as well as promoting zines and DIY culture through workshops, exhibitions and other events.

There are currently around 1500 zines in the collection, all of which have been donated by zine makers and collectors since 2010. The collection includes zines of all shapes and sizes, covering a broad range of subjects from football and feminism to veganism, science fiction and poetry.

Sharing Heritage

Sharing Heritage is for any not-for-profit group wanting to explore their community’s heritage. With a commitment from HLF of £3m each year, Sharing Heritage grants between £3,000 and £10,000 are available to groups who want to discover their local heritage. Projects can cover a wide spectrum of subject matter from exploring local archaeology and a community’s cultures and traditions to identifying and recording local wildlife and protecting the surrounding environment to managing and training volunteers, and holding festivals and events to commemorate the past.

Heritage Lottery Fund

Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) aims to make a lasting difference for heritage, people and communities across the UK and help build a resilient heritage economy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage. HLF has supported almost 36,000 projects with £5.9bn across the UK. www.hlf.org.uk. Images available on request.

For further information, images and interviews, please contact Steve Carlton at Salford Zine Library via salfordzinelibrary@gmail.com

Needless to say we are very excited! We have a lot of plans for the next few months and the new website is expected to go live (hopefully) in a couple of months, enabling people to search the entire collection. For the first time ever we'll be able to give an exact number of how many zines we've got!

We'll also be announcing some events and workshops and things, as well as some appearances at other events, that have been made possible thanks to this HLF funding. Keep your eyes on the usual places! If you'd like to talk to us about the zine library, work with us on something or feature us on your website/blog/TV program or in your newspaper or whatever, please do get in touch.

Manchester Print Fair #8

This coming Saturday (the 25th) sees the next Manchester Print Fair. This time it's in the People's History Museum and there'll be 40 stalls selling zines, as well as prints and various other dead nice things. Well worth a look. Plus, the People's History Museum is great so you can kill two birds with one stone and have a look around the exhibitions while you're there.

There's a list of stallholders on the Manchester Print Fair Facebook page and there'll also be a variety of print demonstrations by GF Smith.

https://www.facebook.com/events/676521535772712/

SE London Zine Fair 2014

It seems to be the season for zine fairs and print fairs, and here's another one, this time in South East London. We're not going to be there, sadly, but it looks like it's going to be really good. You can check their website here or tell them you're going via the Facebook event page.

New In: Frida and I Don't Know What I'm Writing About by Stephen James

Prolific Manchester writer Stephen James has sent us a couple of tiny zines, Frida and I Don't Know What I'm Writing About. You can find out more about him and his work over at http://folknwords.tumblr.com/.

New In: Power to the People

Power to the People is a "home-made, cut & paste, Old Skool arty-farty free poetry fanzine" by Mishi Morath, a Dulwich Hamlet supporter. Apparently Mishi saw a link to the All To Nah post on this blog and was inspired to produce his first poetry zine. Nice one!

The zine contains loads of poems about football, the police, war and everything between. 

New In: Sing When We're Fishing

The first zine I ever bought, or in fact had ever heard of, was the Grimsby Town fanzine "Sing When We're Fishing". I probably bought my first copy somewhere between 1996 and 1997 and would always pick one up whenever I spotted anyone selling them outside the ground before matches. I don't know where all of the issues I bought are now, but I recently found this one from 2003 in a box at my Nan's house.

The zine isn't a thing anymore, sadly. You can get all of your unofficial Grimsby Town news from the excellent Cod Almighty website now, though.

New In: The Edge Collection

The Edge Collection is a beautiful, fold-out mini zine full of photographs of Manchester architecture by Fernando Lavin. It's the physical manifestation of the equally beautiful website, which you can find here. Go and have a look!

New In: How to Sleep by Neik Glasshouse

Sleeping is pretty good - it is personally one of my favourite things to do. How to Sleep gives you all the info you need to sleep better, remember your dreams, learn how to wake up without an alarm (wow!) and get the most out of your sleep. And other things too.

http://nuonis.com/how-to-sleep/

New In: Cara Josephine - The Official Showgramme

We went up to Edinburgh for a few days of this year's Fringe and were fortunate enough to get tickets to see Josie Long. As we were on our way into the Stand, we were given one of these ace little zines. Josie Long's been making zines for ages, but I think I'm right in saying this is the first one of her's in the library. It includes stuff about music, sea swimming, wealth inequality and loads more.

Josie Long is also the co-founder of the charity Arts Emergency. They do loads of good stuff around supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they can do arts and humanities degrees and fulfil their potential and things like that. That's probably an awful summary of what they do, so have a look at their website and see how you can get involved/help.

http://www.arts-emergency.org/

http://www.josielong.com/

Nottingham Zine Festival 2014

It feels like there are a load of exciting zine events for us to plug at the moment, so apologies if you're itching for more posts about new zines! We thought we'd give Nottingham Zine Festival a quick mention, though, as it's happening this Saturday! We're exhibiting a bit of the zine library collection and there should be a comfy area for you to put your feet up and read some of our amazing zines.

There's also loads of really good stalls, plus some sure-to-be inspirational speakers like Cherry Style and Chella Quint. If you're in the Nottingham area and you're at a loose end on Saturday, pop over and say hi!

@ThriveCollective

New In: Fanzine Ynfytyn (x loads)

Emma Falconer makes Fanzine Ynfytyn and we've been given loads of them, which we're really chuffed about. It's a perzine and over the years covers topics from Jeff Mangum, North Korea and competitions to Mr Frosty, vegetarian recipes and childhood ambitions. And loads more too.

New In: A Guide to Music in Leeds

The Leeds University Union Music Library has a collection of over eight thousand CDs and LPs for its members to borrow. They've also created this zine to introduce students to the collection and the Leeds music scene. There's bits about West Yorkshire's noise/drone scene, the deterioration of tech-death and Scott Walker, plus more stuff.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/leedsuml/

https://twitter.com/leedsuml

New In: Scotland Epistles, Bullshit and Thistles #1

The first issue of brand new Scottish football zine "Scotland Epistles, Bullshit and Thistles" describes itself as a "therapeutic souvenir" to help Scotland supporters cope during the wilderness years - they've had eight unsuccessful qualifying campaigns in a row. There's loads of interesting articles from different contributors on the ups and downs of supporting Scotland around the world.

Copies of the zine will be available to buy at the Georgia, Republic of Ireland and England matches in October and November. Alternatively you can send a message via their Facebook page and sort something out that way if you're interested in grabbing a copy of your own. Failing that, just pop in to the library and have a look.

New In: Terrible Beauty's Greatest Bits

Here it is! As discussed in this post from last week, Terrible Beauty, the Manic Street Preachers zine is back. Here's a compilation zine of the best bits so far, featuring photos and reviews from over the years and things like that. Remember, there's a call for contributions for the next issue, so if you have something to say about the Manics get involved!

Carefully Planned Festival

Hello! We'll be back to posting about lovely new zines very soon, but I just thought I'd nip on and tell you about a festival that our friends over at Carefully Planned are organising and how you can get involved, if that's something you'd like to do.

It takes place on the 18th and 19th of October in a number of venues in the Northern Quarter. There's loads of really good bands playing, like Trust Fund, Colour Me Wednesday, Dignan Porch, A Winning Pair, Radstewart, Slowcoaches, The School, Theo and well, loads more. You can get tickets here if you like.

They're also looking for volunteers to help out over the weekend. You'd have to work a few hours over the weekend, but you'd get a free ticket and you'd be able to arrange it so that you weren't working while you're favourite bands are playing, I'm sure. Get in touch with Matthew via the Facebook group if you fancy helping out. I can guarantee that your help will be very much appreciated.

Terrible Beauty is Back! A Call for Submissions

Terrible Beauty, a Manic Street Preacher's fanzine originally published between 1995-2002 is back! They're looking for contributions, too, so get in touch with them ASAP. Here's the call for contributions:

Something’s rumbling under the paving stones, something’s stirring in the urban density.

We’re dusting off the type-writer keys....sharpening our scissors and our minds, unfurling the banner.
Terrible Beauty Fanzine went on a long sabbatical of the soul that was necessary and cool but we’ve been watching from the sidelines and something’s calling, calling us back.

We’re refuelling, we’re rewinding, we’re fastforwarding and we’re coming at you some time in 2015. The fanzine will return to mark the 20th anniversary the ground-breaking Holy Bible album as well as celebrate the continuing, shimmering beauty of the band that are still telling it via rock and roll like nobody else is. Although the Manics are our central inspiration our vision is much broader than musings on the band and we warmly invite contributions on the artistic/cultural/political significance referenced by them and beyond.

We are also happy to review/swap zines with others and support small press/zine culture however we can.

Send enquiries/contributions to Mary & Viv at email: terrible_beauty@outlook.com

We've also been sent a compilation zine full of the best bits from Terrible Beauty over the years. We'll do a blog post about that later this week.

New In: A Series of Poems About, Inspired By, and Written in Manchester and London (And some other zines too!)

Stephen James has sent us these three zines of his to add to the collection. Thanks Stephen! You can find out what he's up to on his excellent blog.

New In: Aether #1

Look at this! We received it with a little note from the Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall in that London, saying that they'd withdrawn this zine from stock and asking if we'd like to keep it. It's a science fiction fanzine dated August 1977 and contains book reviews, short stories (Including one titled "Is there intelligent life at the Reading Festival?") and other bits and bobs. This will go nicely with the rest of our 70s/80s sci-fi/fantasy zines.

Thanks Poetry Library!

New In: The Moral Victory - A Dulwich Hamlet FC Fanzine

The first issue of the new Dulwich Hamlet FC fanzine "The Moral Victory". Includes a roundup of the 2013/2014 season and looks ahead to the new season with articles, illustrations and poetry. A really excellent read. Pop in and have a look!

New In: Shooting Star Press

I think these are probably the first wrestling zines that we've received at the zine library, but hopefully not the last! Each 24 page risograph printed issue focuses on a theme and there are loads of cool articles and illustrations and things, including a biography of Mankind/Dude Love/Mick Foley, complete with slightly terrifying illustration.

Check out the Shooting Star Press website for more info.

New In: All to Nah Fanzine

All to Nah is the long running fanzine of German non-league football club Altona 93. It's inspired by the concept of Die Weltbühne and is read by supporters and non-supporters from around the world. 

While the majority of articles are written in German, the zine occasionally receives submissions from English speaking fans of the club. It collated these English language articles to create a special English version, and they've been kind enough to send us a copy of this, plus the latest issue in German.

New In: The Chapess #4

The brilliant Cherry Styles edited The Chapess now has a fourth issue (it's a special 26 page A4 edition), and we've got a copy of it in the library now! It includes contributions from the following people:

Aimee Wall
Alexis Gross
Kara Jesella
Sara Sutterlin
Daisy Lafarge
Liz Kinnamon
Stella Lueng
Sarah Todd
Grace Denton
Jesse Riggins
Lauren Crow
Charlotte Mellor Meecham
Alice Slater
Beth Maiden
Anneliese Mackintosh
Charly Morris
Hannah Buckman
Cherry Styles

http://synchronisewitches.bigcartel.com/product/the-chapess-zine-4