We’re mega excited to announce that submissions are now open for Joyful Noise, our new zine in collaboration with artist Seleena Laverne Daye!
This zine has been made possible through funding from the National Lottery Community Fund. Our community has helped choose the theme for this zine, which is joy! Joyful Noise will be published in the Autumn.
As part of this project we’ve loved hosting zine making workshops this July with lots of different people and sharing in some queer joy. We’ve also got some creative writing workshops coming up this September, to help you get inspired. Read on to find out what we’re looking for for JOYFUL NOISE!
JOYFUL NOISE is a zine that celebrates Queer Joy in all its glory. From folk in the North of England.
The past 18 months has been hard on many of us, especially in the LGBTQ+ community, and it’s important to remind ourselves that it’s vital to rest and seek pleasure, to add joy to our narrative, to take up space and be joyful whilst we’re doing it.
We’re making a zine full of JOY. We want your joy. What makes you feel good? What do you do to feel joy? How do you rest and reset? How do you use joy as a form of resistance?
We want submissions for the JOYFUL NOISE zine. Words, artwork, feelings, lists, illustrations, recipes, collages, comics, letters and more.
If you want to share a picture of something you’ve created in one of Seleena’s workshops this July, you are very welcome to submit that.
Submissions:
Black and white, 1-2 sides of A5.
If you are submitting images, JPEGSs and PNGs are both fine.
There is a word limit of 1000 words for text-based work, please submit as a word document .
Please feel free to submit a scanned page of work / collages.
As part of your submission we will ask for the first part of your postcode.
For our Reclaiming the Rainbow Photo Challenge we have assembled a brilliant bunch of South Yorkshire Creatives to judge entries. Read on to find out more about them and how they feel about the rainbow flag!
Reclaiming the Rainbow Photo Challenge is a way to raise awareness of the Pride flag as a symbol of safety, build connections, and celebrate the strength of the South Yorkshire LGBTQ+ community through this difficult time. You can find out more about it and on how to enter here.
First up is Zoyander Street (Pictured above). “I am a neurodivergent, genderqueer trans man living in Rotherham, and an artist-researcher and critic working at the fringes of indie videogames for over a decade. After becoming increasingly sensitive to the limitations of linear text, I began exploring interactive and tactile mediums of communication, because I want to surface ambiguity and allow mess to stay messy. Led by ethnographic and historical research, I create lo-fi glitchy games and custom hardware for festivals, galleries, and museums”.
Gilbert Baker said that he chose the rainbow for the flag because it is a “natural flag” that “comes from the sky” – it comes from the same place as the light that shines equally on everyone and sustains the myriad forms of life on earth. Just as you can never find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, you can never perfectly locate queerness or pin down the boundaries of our community; we exist as an expression of the beautiful variety of forms that exist in this world.
Zoyander Street
Next up is Nelly Naylor. “My names Nelly, I’m a proper Yorkshire lass, I live in Sheffield with my girlfriend and our cats Slim and Shady! I studied photography at Sheffield Hallam and in my final year I launched my business. I noticed that couples in the LGBT+ community were not represented at all! I knew I was the girl to fly the flag for our community so I become a LGBT+ specialist wedding photographer. 5 years on, a few awards in the bag and 150 5-star reviews online, I’m still championing equal marriage and documenting it in my unique colourful fun style!”
The rainbow flag to me was something I could identify with- for me the symbol if I saw it in a cafe, bar, or on someone’s website, I knew it was a safe space for me to be myself. I know it sounds cliche but I do wear the flag with pride, on clothing, shoes, umbrellas whatever it may be the symbol says to people this is me, I’m comfortable with who I am and this is my journey. I’m also really glad we now have a progress flag now, I feel every year we do progress in everyway.
Nelly Naylor
And finally, our third judge is Yuen Fong Ling. Yuen Fong LING is an artist and curator based at Bloc Studio, Sheffield, and Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. Ling has a socially-engaged and performance-based art practice that explores his biographical connections with omitted histories, people, places and objects.
Recent projects include: “Towards Memorial” (2019-ongoing) explores the remaking, gifting and wearing of sandals once designed and handmade by gay socialist activist Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), and “The Human Memorial” (2020-ongoing) explores the empty plinth to consider what monuments and statues we want in public space? What we stand for, and importantly when and where?
My relationship with the rainbow flag has been different throughout my life. There were times when I shied away from it, embraced it, was protected by it, exposed, made vulnerable by it, and even rejected it. What this has meant, is that it’s constantly evolving and changing symbol for me. Now, more than ever, do we need to reclaim, rework, make our own, these colours for our community
Yuen Fong Ling
We hope our judges words inspire you to think about your relationship with the rainbow flag and take your own photo for Reclaiming the Rainbow.
If you’re LGBTQ+in based in South Yorkshire, send us a photo now!
The photo should be
– Inspired by the phrase ‘Reclaiming the Rainbow’ and
– Show either yourself or another LGBTQ+ community member in a location in South Yorkshire.
Deadline for entries is midnight 1 Aug. Full details on entering, can be found here. Good luck!
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