tips on giving a zine workshop

[False Start Distro]

I'm teaming up with some people to put on a show of tons and tons of mini zines in the gallery of Meltdown Comics. The idea is for the person to make a bunch of copies of a mini zine or art book and an accompanying display to hang on the wall. The display can be no larger than a square foot and should have a place for people to leave a donation when they take a zine, honor system style.

The idea is to try to have the walls covered with these different zine displays, so we've decided to have a few zine workshops to get interested newbies started on their minis.

Although I've been involved in the zine scene for 10 years now, I've only made a handful of zines, and the last one was maybe 6 years ago! I won't be doing the workshop alone, but I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on what should be covered or what you'd like to see in a workshop. I'm most familiar with the cut and paste method, which is easy for people to just dive into in a workshop, but should computer methods be covered in-depth as well?

I'm also possibly going to be giving a workshop on zines to an illustration class at a local art school, and so I'm wondering if any illustrators or art zine makers have any tips on giving a zine workshop specifically to artists?

Thanks so much for your help! 

[Jerianne]

This is a great resource you should check out: http://grrrlzines.net/workshopguide.htm, and here's a related article we ran in Zine World called Bringing Zines to the Community.

[Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go]

Hey! The link Jerianne gave you on grrrlzines.net is probably the same as the description on the Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go website (though the contact info is NOT up to date). You'll see a "workshop how-to link on our homepage.

You'll see that we usually do collaborative zines. Having samples for people to see is helpful. Generally speaking, the younger the audience the more guidelines you need, especially about topics. They're in schools that tell them what to write about and they don't necessarily have the skills to freestyle it. We also like to talk about the great effect of combining words and images.

Hope our workshop description helps.
Cheers,
Margarat - Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go

[False Start Distro]

Awesome! Thanks so much!

[The East Village Inky]

Thanks from me too! I've taught workshops for adults but I'm going to teach one to middle schoolers (hmmm, at a tony private school quite unlike the free for all (literally) attended by my daughter. ..wonder if they're paying me!