zine – Andro & Eve

Get Involved and Get Creative with Joyful Noise Zine!

10th August 202111th August 2021 by androandeve

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.

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 15^th 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!

Joyful Noise, Submissions Wanted!

24th August 202130th July 2021 by androandeve

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!

A brown skinned hand draws something on a tiny zine made from blue and pink paper. Craft equipment ad materials are on the table.

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.

Submission deadline: Midday 24 September

Want to submit? Complete this Google Form here.

If you have any questions drop us a line at hello@androandeve.com.

Nine people are shown on a zoom call holding up mini zines of joy. Everyone is smiling — Zine Workshop participants and their zines of Joy!

New zine project launched!

24th May 202125th May 2021 by androandeve

We’re mega excited to launch a new community zine project, in collaboration with zine and textile artist Seleena Laverne Day, and poet Ella Otomewo.

After the success of our first zine, Centre, (launched in 2020), we wanted to continue to find creative ways to connect our community in these challenging times. This project has been made possible through funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.

The project will take submissions from LGBTQ+ people throughout the North of England and Midlands, with Seleena curating and designing a brand new zine, to be published in Autumn this year.

An A5 bright yellow zine sits on a purple surface. It has the words 'Centre Zine' in bold black lettering across it with a plum triangle placed on top. — Our first zine, Centre, published in October 2020

And even more excitingly, we’re pleased that we will be offering creative workshops in zine making and creative writing, both online and IN PERSON as part of this project!

Workshops are planned for members of the public to take part in this July. Special workshops for groups including Lesbian Asylum Support Sheffield, students in Further and Higher Education, and Older LGBTQ+ people are also planned. More details to be announced, but if you know of anyone that fits those categories, please do spread the word.

Its important to us that this zine reflects an even wider spectrum of LGBTQ+ voices, and that our community helps shape it at different stages.

So to kick off the project we want YOUR ideas for the theme of the zine. Seleena Laverne Daye has been busy generating ideas, so spare us 3 mins and head to our online form to pick out your fave idea!

The aim of this project is to connect all ages of LGBTQ+ people during this challenging time. We are very aware of the isolation younger and older people may have faced owing to the pandemic, and hope this project will provide social connection and positive experiences for our LGBTQ+ community.

Sign up to our newsletter through the link below to be the first to hear more about our upcoming workshops!

Stop the scandal

14th October 202015th October 2020 by androandeve

As part of Centre zine, we chose to highlight the Stop the Scandal Campaign. This grassroots campaign was created by Yorkshire’s Racial Justice Network and supported by Yorkshire Resists. They wrote the following piece for our new zine, which is on sale now. 50% of profits from sales of Centre zine, will be donated to the Racial Justice Network. Read on to find out more about Stop the Scandal.

The Stop The Scan campaign challenges a move initiated by West Yorkshire Police in 2019 to introduce mobile fingerprint scanning linked to immigration databases, using equipment funded by the Home Office.

These biometric devices are used with officers’ mobile phones, as they detain people in the street. This adds an extra, dangerous dimension to Stop and Search protocol, which according to the government’s own research, disproportionately targets Black and Brown people (with Black people 10 times more likely to be targeted by police¹).

The technology is used once police officers have deemed an offence to have been committed. This could be anything from loitering to dropping litter. If the officer doubts the given identity from the person detained, they may then use a scan of their fingerprints in order to carry out a person search on their identity. It’s crucial to emphasise that an officer uses their own discretion to determine how authentic your given identity is, a subjective judgement, which in the campaign’s view, has the potential to even further discriminate against trans people within Black and Brown communities.

Black painted text says 'Hands off our prints' with a stylised fingerprint placed behind some prison bars to the left

Scans like this have only previously been carried out at police stations following an arrest. But what future lies ahead, where one’s dignity is stripped down and reduced to the opinion of a police officer, and a frequently inconclusive fingerprint machine?

The officer may choose to check identity against records held on IABS (the immigration fingerprint database). Stop and Scan is part of an immigration system that a 2019 inquiry into the Windrush scandal showed, to hold not only “poor quality systems and data”, but a “failure to monitor the impact of compliant environment measures” (now known as hostile environment measures)². A flag on the database – which could exist for any type of activity – may prompt a call to Home Office enforcers, heightening the risk of entering indefinite detention, or being deported.

The question remains: why use a device which could only identify those with fingerprints either on the IABS or criminal database, IDENT1?

The Stop The Scan campaign was created by the Racial Justice Network and supported by Yorkshire Resists. We are a network of individuals and organisations working together to end racial injustice. Our campaign is about alerting you to the racist nature of the intrusive power that biometric technology extends to the police. These technologies are being introduced, but they lack any meaningful scrutiny of their impact on the communities that the police are supposed to protect.

After the pilot by West Yorkshire Police ended, no evaluation of its use and impact was done before the technology was rolled out nationally.

Aside from West Yorkshire Police, no other police force is publicly recording the ethnicity of the people they are stopping and scanning. The lack of transparency makes it difficult to ensure that the use of this technology does not target certain communities unfairly.

In response to what we know, and what we can only speculate, the Stop the Scan campaign is calling for:

The dismantling of the Hostile Environment: the UK must be a safe place for all people to seek and live a decent life.
The severance of all links between the Police and Immigration, including a firewall between the police and all Home Office databases.
An end to Stop and Scan.

We are looking for support from people able to help raise awareness, to advise on the shifting legal rights landscape during the pandemic, for advisors who may help construct a legal challenge to the roll out, and for people who have been scanned and are willing to offer their experience as a case study.

To find out more, visit StopTheScan.co.uk and search the #StopTheScandal and #EndStopAndScan hashtags. To get involved in supporting the work, email stopthescan@racialjusticenetwork.co.uk.

Sources:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03878/

2.https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/1518/151806.htm#_idTextAnchor025

Launching centre, our new zine!

1st October 20201st October 2020 by androandeve

A white person's hand holds Centre zine. It has a bright yellow cover with bold black letters overlaid with a purple triangle. The text says 'Centre Zine'.

We’re thrilled to officially launch our very first zine! CENTRE is a collaboration with artist Okocha Obasi, founder of Racezine Collective.

We believe in artists. They have the power to make change. We also believe that everyone has the ability to be creative, and therefore creative opportunities should be available for everyone. Creativity helps us explore. Helps us dream. Helps us find a way back to ourselves. Or discover who we are. Something people LGBTQ+ identified need. In a world that often taught us we didn’t fit, discovering ourselves can take that much more.

Our mission at Andro and Eve is to bring the community together to celebrate queer culture. The COVID-19 crisis has given us an opportunity to adapt our offer and find new ways to reach our community.

CENTRE is one such way to connect our community with one another, in a year in which everyone has been in some way affected by the global pandemic. Okocha has curated and designed this unique collection of stories, poems and creative works, bringing voice to a range of LGBTQ+ people living in the North of England.

4 copies of Centre zine sit on top of a pink surface. The zine has a bright yellow cover with the words Centre Zine in bold capitalised typeface covering the whole page. A big, purple triangle sits on top of the text. — *Centre, a new zine, designed and curated by Okocha Obasi and produced by Andro & Eve.*

We also believe Black Lives Matter, and stand in solidarity with those who fight against the structural racism here in the UK and across the world. CENTRE contains a piece by Stop the Scandal, a grassroots campaign to stop the use of mobile fingerprint scanning linked to immigration databases by police. We’ve also connected with our friends at LASS (Lesbian Asylum Support Sheffield) to bring you an interview with one of their members. 50% of all profits made from sales of CENTRE will be donated to Yorkshire’s Racial Justice Network, who bring together over thirty organisations in the West Yorkshire region to proactively promote racial justice.

A look inside Centre Zine. With bold black and white typeface. The title says 'you could be happy. — *A sneak peek at one of the pieces to be found in CENTRE.*

The stories, poems and creative works in CENTRE are about things chosen by LGBTQ+ people living in the North of England that matter most to them. Andro and Eve, as a queer arts organisation based in South Yorkshire, is proud to serve and represent ‘Northern’ voices and we hope you will enjoy reading CENTRE.

Our thanks in producing this zine go to organisers from LASS, Stop the Scandal and Racial Justice Network. A huge thank you to Okocha Obasi for his creative vision and hard work, and to the artists and members of the Andro and Eve community who have contributed their work to CENTRE.

Ready to get a copy? Order from our shop here. And celebrate its launch with our special online party, A REYT QUEER NIGHT IN, on 10th October. We’re bringing the party direct to your front room! We hope that we’ll connect with you online soon.

Katherine Warman. Creative Producer / CEO Andro and Eve. September 2020.

#CentreZine

This zine has been made possible through Arts Council England’s emergency funding in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

CENTRE, a new zine!

6th July 20207th July 2020 by androandeve

This summer we’re very aware that many LGBTQ+ people will be missing the annual Pride celebrations, places where communities can come together and feel free, standing up for what matters to them.

We’re also aware that as event organisers, we can’t physically bring people together. That is why we are collaborating with artist Okocha Obasi to create a zine. Obasi is a graphic designer and recent graduate from Leeds Arts University, and the creator of the RACEZINE COLLECTIVE whose aim is to platform creatives of colour. RACEZINE COLLECTIVE has produced projects include a non-profit zine, performance events and infamous club night TONGUE N TEETH.

Through our collaboration we’re launching the new zine ‘Centre’. The hope is that this can act as method to connect folx across the North of England and provide visibility and a voice to our queer community, particularly those often marginalised.

So with that in mind, here’s what you need to know about our latest project!

CENTRE: A new zine

What’s at your centre? What matters most? What are your hopes for the future, and how is this informed by who you are?

CENTRE is about centering untold stories. We want responses from all ages, and all walks of life, but are particularly interesting in hearing and documenting Queer and QTIBPOC stories in the North of England. We’re also keen to hear from LGBTQIA folx identifying as neurodiverse, deaf or disabled.

We’re looking for responses in the form of: Letters, personals stories, personal historical materials, recipes, interviews, art, comics, drawings, prints, paintings, spoken word, intergenerational collaborations, short stories and anything else that you want to share with the world.

To submit something all you need to do is complete our Google form and attach your submission there. If you have any issues using tech, or need extra support, drop us a line and we’ll do our best to help you.

Deadline for applications is midday on Monday 10th August.

We cannot guarantee that all work submitted will make it into the published zine, however we may (with your permission) publish your work on our website instead.

The zine will be published in the Autumn and launched with a special online event. More details to be announced!

We look forward to receiving your work!