Tag: Emergency

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Colossive hits the shelves of the Wellcome Collection!

We had a splendid time at Northwest Zinefest last week – especially considering some of us had slightly lost the run of ourselves at a friend’s landmark birthday party the previous night…

Anyway, moving swiftly on… Admittedly we’ve only done four zine fairs so far, but this was by far the busiest and the salesiest. It probably helped that it was in a destination venue anyway (the very stirring People’s History Museum), and the biblical rainfall may have driven more people inside. However, it was really nicely organised and <grimace> curated, and we had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

Flyer for the Wellcome Collection zine library
Click to enlarge

One of the nicest things that happened was a visit from Elena and Nicola of the Wellcome Collection, who bought copies of Emergency and 3:52 AM for their burgeoning zine collection. Here’s an article about some of the zines in their collection. If you’ve got anything you’d like to suggest or donate to them, I’m sure they’d be very pleased to hear from you: email address on the flyer.

We also had a lovely conversation about Emergency with a man with autism and dyspraxia, who clearly related to it a great deal and said he was going to send a copy to his mum and dad, to show how much he appreciates the degree to which they supported him and fought for him during his childhood.

Huge thanks again to Iestyn and VJ Sellar for letting us publish such powerful and personal work, and thanks to Wellcome for picking it up.

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Emergency: an emotional hand-grenade of a perzine about parenting and hidden disability

When I was cobbling together the first bits and pieces for Colossive, I struck up contact online with an energetic Brighton-based zinester (writer, artist, photographer, editor, designer, reviewer, organiser) called Iestyn Pettigrew.

Before long he had sent me a passle* of his zines, one of which was an uncredited little A6 piece called Emergency. At first glance, what catches your eye is some very attractive, clean, almost abstract interior photography. However, as you read the powerful text, you realise that there’s much more to this zine than a collection of Insta-ready snapshots.

Anyway, here’s how Iestyn himself describes it:

A zine conversation about the difficulties faced by parents of special-needs children with hidden disabilities, Emergency deals with a father managing his own shame and guilt whilst shouldering society’s judgements. Mixing photography and short personal essays, it breaks open this hidden and seemingly mundane world to discuss the emotional impacts and their personal way of coping with the pressures of living under judgement every day.

Having read it, I felt like I’d had the wind driven out of me. And I had the strange and sudden notion that I’d love to publish an edition of it – the first thought I’d ever had that Colossive might expand to publish other people’s work apart from our own.

Iestyn is one of those generous, creative, collaborative, productive and proactive people who make zine culture – and DIY culture more generally – what it is. I’m proud that he let me print an edition of his zine, and I hope you’ll feel inspired to pick up a copy (either from here or at the Sheffield Zine Fest on Saturday 18th).

(Iestyn also edits the Zine Love blog, and is offering a £10 subscription deal for six zines over the course of a year. Contact details are in his Instagram bio.)

* Yes. That’s the collective noun.