In late January, I took part in a residency with some other students and worked alongside up and coming print and publishing collective SHY BAIRNS GET NOWT during the Festival of The Not. The arts festival was based at star and shadow cinema in Heaton, Newcastle and was rand by CIRCA PROJECTS to commemorate the end of their 2 years working with Giles Bailey. The festival had a variety of talks and films along with workshops and performances. Throughout the whole festival we were situated within the main cinema rooms working our publications. On the first day, we created a group publications based around the theme of opposites, exploring what the festival was made up of and what the opposite of that is. Responding to the words either; artist, exhibition or printmaking. In response to these words we all created a few pieces which were compiled and hand bound using Chicago screws after they were all printed through the risograph.

 

The next day we all created our own individual zines themed around the idea of ‘unlikely collaborators’ so using my sentient cardboard birds from my previous module and I had them out of context in Starbucks or wearing air pods etc. After creating our solo and group publications we had them out and distributed them to members of the public who attended the event. On the final day after distributing more zines we just had a less intense day and made some of our own prints. This residency was a great opportunity for me to network and interact with artist outside of my general sphere along with meeting the bairns and other students. It was also a great experience seeing how local artists run these events, especially in not for profit spaces.