Get Involved and Get Creative with Joyful Noise Zine!

Three felt portraits in bright colours show a mix of people with different skin tones. The portraits are placed on a white table.

Our new zine (yet to be created, submission wanted!) is all about JOY! The Zine will be in collaboration with artist Seleena Laverne Daye, featuring creative works from LGBTQ+ folk from across the North of England. Joyful Noise will be published in Autumn 2021.

We want to celebrate and share Northern Queer joy in all its glory. So, to help you get creative and to spark some joy, we’ve thought of three fun ways you can get involved

1. Creative Writing Workshop!

We are incredibly excited to announce that we will be hosting two creative writing workshops in September! The workshops will be led by poet and writer Ella Otomewo.

In the informal and relaxed sessions Ella will be sharing different writing exercises to help you find your voice and tell your story. Exploring both poetry and prose, the workshop is about cultivating joy and getting creative through words, alongside fellow LGBTQ+ folk.

A turquoise poster with wonly pink borders, has a A Black woman with mid length curly hair sitting with her hand on her chin. She is posterised in blue and white. The title of the poster is Creative Writing Workshop. The Andro and Eve logo in purple and white sits at the top and centre of the poster.

The first workshop will be for older LGBTQ+ folk and will be held on Wednesday 8th September at 1.30pm at Theatre Deli. The second workshop will be open to all and will be held online, via Zoom on Wednesday 15th September at 7.00pm.

Tickets are free thanks to funding from the National Lottery Communities Fund. Find out more information and book here.

2. Create a Felt Portrait.

As part of our Joyful Noise Zine project, artist Seleena Laverne Daye, delivered an online Felt Faces textiles workshop in July. Seleena created cute and fun craft packs, with all the materials to help you create your own felt portrait.

In case you missed out, we’re providing these FREE craft packs along with written instructions. So you can make your own felt portrait of yourself or someone you know and share in the queer joy!

A bundle of craft materials including felt and threads is placed on a turquoise background.

Each pack includes:

– Coloured felt including skin tones
– Threads
– Needle
– PDF worksheet with instructions
– Face templates for cutting around.

Head to our shop to grab your pack!

Once you have made your felt face, please take a picture and share it with us online or as a Zine submission!

3. Submit to our Zine project!

Already have a creative idea that is centred around joy? Then submit it! 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, word count no more than 1000 words. As part of your submission we will ask for the first part of your postcode.

Submission deadline: Midday 24 September

To submit: complete this Google Form here.

Have fun and get creative! We can’t wait to see your submissions!

We won an Award!

We won an Award!! Last month at Cinema For All’s 2018 Film Society of the Year Awards we won in the BEST SINGLE EVENT category for our screening themed around Sekiya Dorsett’s film THE REVIVAL: WOMEN AND THE WORD. You can read more about what happened at that event in January 2018 on our blog here.

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Andro & Eve co-founders Rhiannon and Katherine with the award! 

We’re really grateful to Cinema for All for this award – Thank you! Big thanks also to Jade Foster and Sekiya Dorsett for making this brilliant film. We want to say a huge thank you to Ella Otomewo Poet and DYLEMA for performing their poetry at our event, and massive love to Rainbow Noir and Our Mel who we collaborated with in creating the night. Finally, our sincerest thanks to our amazing volunteers who help us run special events like this, and you, our audience, for supporting what we do. Here’s to more awesome film screenings in future!


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Ella Otomewo performs at the event ‘ The Revival: Women and the Word’ January 2018

Women and The Word

On Saturday 27 January we curated and produced a special event in Sheffield focused around the film, The Revival: Women and The Word, directed by Sekiya Dorsett. We originally saw this documentary at SQIFF in 2016 and fell for its warmth, humour, honesty, and unique perspective on an often overlooked part of the LGBTQIA community. The film follows a group of Black lesbian poets on a salon style tour of the US organised by creative force and entrepreneur Yaani Supreme fka Jade Foster.

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Jonquille Rice aka Solsis and Bea Steadwell. Credit: The Revival: Women and the Word

Documentaries like this allow you to imagine a different world, one where Black, queer womanhood is centered, celebrated and given space to breathe. We felt it was important to not only show the film, but make sure the Black British community was celebrated, while giving our audience a taste of the talent that exists within the UK, by showcasing poets of colour on this side of the Atlantic.

To do this we worked closely with Manchester’s Rainbow Noir and Sheffield’s Our Mel to programme artists, and help Andro and Eve reach new audiences. We cannot praise Rainbow Noir’s organisers enough for their generosity and support of our aims for this event. It was also awesome to work with another grassroots organisation in Sheffield, through Our Mel, and realise we have many of the same ambitions of creating special events where our communities feel free to express themselves.

Annalisa of Our Mel hosting the event

As massive lovers of zines and indie publishing we also curated a stall selling the words of women of colour.

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Classic zine stall

The event sold out a week in advance, and on the night over 70 people from across the UK turned out to our specially chosen, (and secret) Sheffield venue to enjoy the evening. As ever, we were thrilled that so many people had made the journey out on a cold night to attend, and we want to say thank you for those who supported our work in this way.

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Some of our wonderful audience!

Thanks also to all the people who have been contributing to our accessible ticket fund. This was the first event where we were able to offer discounted ticket prices for those on low incomes, and we can say it certainly encouraged some new faces to attend.

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DYLEMA (Do You. Let Every Man Adapt).

The poets, Ella Otomewo, from Manchester and DYLEMA from East London, performed their captivating poems after the film, making quite an impression on our audience and us. It was so rewarding to listen to the comments from those that had gathered together for this event, and realise the hard work had paid off.

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Ella Otomewo performs her poetry

We’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking, but special thanks should go to Rainbow Noir, Our Mel, LAS Sheffield, QTIPOC Notts, Enjoy Your Homes Press, our fabulous volunteers, and last but no means least, photographer Ndrika Anyika, whose images you see in this post.

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If you missed this event, hopefully we’ll see you at The Kingdom Come #3 on March 10th! Tickets are on sale now. 

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_V3A4831Some of our awesome audience members! _V3A4528_V3A4524_V3A4511_V3A4526_V3A4553_V3A4534

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