From making and collecting their own zines to hosting over 1000 self-published zines in their library in Govanhill, Glasgow Zine Library is a community driven love-letter to DIY culture and creating accessible spaces by and for a diverse range of storytellers. While the library has only had a permanent space in Govanhill since 2018, their Glasgow Zine Fest celebrates its tenth anniversary this year as it descends on the CCA for a two-day programme celebrating zines and their makers.  

The festival started out as a small market in The Old Hairdresser’s bar, but quickly grew into a collaborative programme bringing artists, performers and publishers under one roof. ‘Over the years there have been too many highlights,’ says LD, the library’s director. ‘TYCI and Butch Archive’s talks, Josie Giles’ discussion on trans literature, Travis Alabanza’s performance. We’ve done mural making with Recoat and poetry writing with RAUM and SPAM.’

In this landmark year, the team will welcome over 50 makers to set up shop alongside a programme that explores tactile aspects of zines and how they work in a digital landscape. Themes of slow journalism will be explored, in an attempt, according to LD, to be ‘intentional, lo-fi, temporal, restful and analogue, responding to changes in technology that give us greater access to each other and more ways of making. That’s going to lead to a lot of awesome events including a show from comedian Josie Long, thoughts on ambition and deceit in influencer culture by Symeon Brown, and workshops related to rest.’ Outside the festival, Glasgow Zine Library has become a stalwart of Glasgow’s DIY scene with an open-source approach to programming. ‘Our community can come to us with ideas that they want to see come to life,’ LD insists. ‘We’ve had some amazing things delivered this way, including accessible-theory reading groups, queer nature discussion groups, LGBTQI+ open-mic nights, and zine-making workshops.’

Their robust series of community events is flanked by an upcoming heritage programme which has required a team deep-dive into the archive. It’s a project that LD hopes will involve participants ‘engaging in some community cataloguing, as well as hosting events with some amazing writers and storytellers, to talk about the voices within zines, who makes them, and how we think about and use them.’

Besides attending this year’s festival and paying the community hub a visit, how else should we be supporting our local zine library? ‘Donate your zines!’ says LD. ‘If you don’t have any zines, make one. If you don’t know how, come along and find out. Anyone at the library would be happy to teach you all about them.’

Glasgow Zine Fest, CCA, Glasgow, Saturday 8 & Sunday 9 July; Glasgow Zine Library, 636 Cathcart Road, Glasgow,
@glasgowzinelib on Instagram.