Third Session (26th Jan) - W14

 The third session mostly consisted of the participants getting on with their final zine pages. I felt more relaxed on this day and relieved that it was the last day of the workshop. Although I've been able to overcome the anxiety of speaking in front of people, I still feel uncomfortable in a public speaking environment. However, the pressure was definitely off this session and it was exciting seeing all the participants' pages coming together. I also felt more comfortable speaking 1-2-1 with some of the participants as I was more familiar with them.

Me talking to a participant about their page.

During this session, we also voted on the colours to be used in printing the zine and what the name would be. We ended up not using the template I had created for the voting, I just ended up going around the room asking for everyone's votes and tallying them up in my own notebook. It was also made easier by the Print Bureau lending us a chart displaying all the available colours and how they look printed on top of each other. The colours chosen were pink, blue and black. There was actually a tie between blue and aqua however Jess and I were able to make the executive decision that, since the colours were so similar, we would go with blue as it was slightly darker than the pink. I am happy that these colours got chosen because they're completely different to the ones chosen for last year's zine project and I am glad that there will be a visible difference between them.

Vote for the title of the zine, featuring participant suggested names, ending with a tie that was broken with a second vote.

Participants work on their pages while I tally the vote on the colours in the background.

Another important aspect of today's session was that as the workshop was open to all University Students, we had some participants from non-art courses joining us. They were worried about not having any drawing skills however we were able to find a solution in the form of collating and using text. The participants seemed comfortable with this and I am glad that they feel they were able to participate although they did not have much experience in drawing. Collaging is also a part of zines' history so it worked out perfectly. 

During this session, some people were able to finish their pages while some did not. We decided to give everyone two weeks to finish their pages and hand them to us. To allow easy communication, we set up a Teams group so that we could give everyone updates and so that everyone could contact us if they needed to hand their page in. 

Finished pages stuck onto the wall, including post-it notes that tell us what colour each layer needed to be printed as.

Close up of some of the finished pages.

At the end of the workshop, I felt happy. This was mostly due to the stress of the workshop planning being over, as it had all happened so quickly after Christmas. On the other hand, I felt happy seeing participants finish pages and that so many people responded so well to my prompt of 'feelings of being an outsider'. I do believe we were successful in creating what so far looks to be an interesting zine that brought a lot of people together who may have never met. At the end of the workshop, as everyone was leading, one participant did turn to me and thanked me for the workshop as it gave them a reason to get up every morning constantly. I was very happy after receiving this comment and I am proud of myself for trying to do something I was so afraid of and seemingly succeeding.