Zining Day: How it feels when I’m included…

The Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage at the University of Leeds will be taking up temporary residence this month in the Art Gym’s immersive boxing ring as part of Tate Collective Liverpool’s takeover of the gallery.

Art Gym is a three week programme of free, drop-in activities held within a new and specially designed space at Tate Liverpool. Inspired by a traditional gym, Art Gym offers visitors of all ages and abilities the chance to make a personal training programme, designed to learn new creative skills or develop existing ones. Instead of kettlebells and treadmills, visitors can enjoy a wide range of classes, lectures, workshops and art stations teaching everything from traditional craft work to digital art production.

As part of this free programme of events, Helen Graham, Director of the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage, and PhD students Jade French and Julia Ankenbrand are running a drop-in session on Zine making. Zines are self-published, low-budget, non-profit DIY print publications.

Helen Graham said:

“We are really looking forward to working with Tate Collective as part of their Art Gym initiative. Running a zine making workshop as part of the Gym intersects really well with our current Centre research theme explore ’the status of inclusion’ in art galleries, museums and heritage after decades of rhetoric of access, inclusion and participation.

“Drawing on a contribution made by one of our PhD researchers, Carley Stubbs, to our first research workshop in 2015, we are going to be exploring through making a collaborative Zine the feeling of ‘being included’. How does it feel to be with loved ones? How does this translate—or not—to public spaces and organisations like art galleries?”

Zining Day: How it feels when I’m included… takes place on Wednesday 23 March from 1.00 to 4.00pm at Tate Liverpool.

Art Gym runs from 7 to 21 March: more information can be found here.