London Zine Symposium 2008

London Zine Symposium 2006
LZS ‘06 took place at The Square Social centre on April 22nd on the north side of Russell Square.

A day in the life of the London Zine Sympoium 2006

Article taken from Last Hours issue 13

After organising the first London Zine Symposium back in April 2005 we couldn’t resist arranging another one for 2006. The second annual London Zine Symposium look place on Saturday 22nd April. It turned out to be almost double the size with more stalls, workshops, discussions and events going on throughout the day, not to mention the vegan cake.

The symposium took place this year at The Square social centre, on Russell Square. Thanks to Chris Lever, Chris 12 oh 5, Greg, Barney, Jas, Ariella, Miranda, Mikey D, Rich, Rob, Alex CF, Kris, Chris, and everyone else who helped out and came along.

8.00 a.m
The zine army who had crammed themselves onto our pocket sized living room floor awoke to prepare for the day. The aim was to leave early so that we could get down to the Square to set up with plenty of time to spare.

8.45 a.m.
After gathering together everything we needed from the flat the zinesters are ready to set off. Luckily we had the use of a car so carrying all the different things down wasn’t going to be too painful.

9.30 a.m.
Zinesters arrive at the Square and needed to tidy up from the previous nights party and get all the tables for stalls and chairs for the cinema room set up.

10.30 a.m.
I arrived at the centre to a hive of activity with people busily moving around, setting up stalls. Felt a bit lost as I didn’t know what the plan was so I decided to set up the exhibition, enlisting the help of Mikey and Rich. With the help of some duct tape, sticky back foam and a few screws we got the exhibition up on the walls super fast. I went back upstairs, to a quiet panic over time and the fact that all the tables still hadn’t been properly arranged yet. Next there was just enough time to set up the Last Hours and Gasp! distro tables, neatly arranging the badges and zines in cute little rows.

11.30 a.m.
Final few moments of stress, with everyone running round trying to get things organised. Searched in vain for a sharp knife to cut the vegan cakes we had made with, so settled for a pathetically blunt butter knife, trying not to give into the temptation of taking a few bites.

12.15 p.m.
Yay! Doors opened, only fifteen minutes late. It wasn’t the mad rush I had expected from last year, but realising that we were starting two hours earlier in the day could have been a factor. There was still a large number of early birds waiting to get in and snap up the best bits. I got caught up on the Gasp! stall shifting stuff from our zine distro.

1.00 p.m.
More and more people kept arriving. Luckily the weather was beautiful and sunny so we were able to use the building’s garden terrace area; otherwise we would have been seriously over-cramped. I still hadn’t had a chance to look at any other zines yet, let alone buy any.
Meanwhile Rob, Alex and Rich are running a DIY extravaganza in the basement, showing people how to screenprint, bookbind and more. Plus $100 dollars and a T-shirt gets screened in the Fish room.

1.15 p.m.
Realised I was supposed to be running the knitting workshop now. Gathered a large circle of people interested in craft out in the garden and then realised I hadn’t really planned how I was going to do this. Started off by confusing everyone about casting on, which can be really tricky to begin with. I was really impressed by a predominately male turn out though. Totally punk rock and just goes to show the sexism behind common gendering of hobbies.

2.45 p.m.
Walking back into the main room I was pleasantly surprised to see it was heaving with people. It was hard to see where any of the actual stall were. I spent a few moments flitting between various places, dishing out food, collecting donation money, serving cake, and standing on the door before I decided it was best to choose one place to stay for a bit.

3.00 p.m.
Stood on the door, watching people stream into the building. I caught up with friends in the sun whilst the pavement in front steadily filled up with anticipant people waiting to go on the Radical Bloomsbury tour.

3.30 p.m.
A huge crowd of people – well over a hundred – moved off to start the tour. It was fabulous to see these great mass of zinesters going off on a collective walk.

3.40 p.m.
Headed back to the Gasp! stall to see that it had been pretty much obliterated with only a few things left on it. I managed to squeeze in time to have a quick look around and pick up a small handful of zines, but I think the majority of the really good stuff went earlier on. Even with all the people who had left for the walk the place still looked packed, with people everywhere.

4.00 p.m.
Realised that I hadn’t properly eaten or drunk anything that day and that all the food had been polished off hours earlier. Oops.

5.00 p.m.
Latecomers still arriving. Went outside to do an interview with a friend who was doing a video feature on the zine symposium as part of her university course.

5.30 p.m.
The gallery room was transformed into a performance space with open mic and music.

6.00 p.m.
Started to wind down in the main rooms, although the vibe was very much that people could have stayed all night and turned it into a party, but the space was booked for something else that night.

6.30 p.m.
Tidying up and getting things back to where they were to begin with. This was quite stressful as we had far fewer people to help with this than we needed and it felt like another race against the clock.

7.30 p.m.
Ready to leave, after having a thoroughly good day. So with a DIY spring in our step we headed off back to get the bus home, ready to flop down on the sofa and relax.

Other reviews

Mark Pawson - a London based illustrator - wrote a cool review of The London Zine Symposium ‘06 for Variant issue 26 which can be read here http://www.variant.randomstate.org/26texts/ComicZine26.html

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