Posted by Scarlet Hall, Research Assistant, Durham University and Fuse
We have been collaborating with LGBTQIA+ young people in the North East and South Yorkshire, through Fuse led research funded by the NIHR School for Public Health Research (SPHR) exploring how physical activity spaces could be more joyful and safe. This blog describes how the ‘Moving Spaces’ zine was made and makes suggestions for those wishing to co-produce creative research outputs.
This blog draws from reflective conversations between Caroline Dodd-Reynolds (Fuse), Mary Crowder (University of Sheffield) and Shevek Fodor (Sounds Like Shevek) during the making of the zine. It is written with contributions from Caroline, Mary and Shev.
Seek continuity between research methods and research outputs
At the start of our research project we knew we wanted to host a series of research workshops and then co-produce a physical activity resource with the young people we were working with. After seeing the results of using visual creative approaches in our workshops, we knew we wanted a highly visual and creative resource that would connect and resonate with people.
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| Shevek Fodor |
We sent an advert out to LGBTQIA+ networks for a graphic designer who would understand the lives of diverse LGBTQ+ people, in particular young neurodiverse people. When Shevek Fodor shared their zines with us our eyes and hearts lit up. We invited Shev to lead on making a collaborative zine. We chose the zine because of its DIY ethos, radical history of self- publishing and as a vehicle for self or group expression of thoughts and feelings.
What is a zine?
Zines originated through people writing letters and sharing information about things they were driven and passionate about. They’ve been used as a way for people who were overlooked within mainstream media to have their voices heard.
Practice reciprocity
We thought the young people would be inspired meeting Shev, a young neurodiverse queer artist. For Shev, this role offered a new opportunity to experiment with collaborative zine-making in a research setting. We offered hands-on guidance (budgeting, finance systems, mentoring) as part of co-production principles of reciprocity. We introduced Shev to the young people prior to the zine session and their curiosity was piqued…’is this person one of us or one of them.…?’
Involving artists at later stages of research is not straightforward. We aimed for a balance between giving Shev space to design and lead the sessions while also sharing our own knowledge, ideas and learning. The trust built in earlier research workshops meant we could also pass on an established quality of ease in the group when it came to the zine making workshops.
Trust the creative process of each person and the group
Shev laid the zine making table out in a beautiful, organised chaos of found images, stickers, magazines and cards. Young people made creative contributions to the zine, inspired by earlier conversations about physical activity. They found ways to take part and to also hang out in their safe space – which we were encroaching on. Some people chewed and chewed over the right words to express themselves with contributions coming together at the end. One person got stuck and did their piece later with a youth workers’ support. Two zine contributions were made that involved multiple voices, through Scarlet documenting conversations around particular images. Scarlet also made contributions from a researcher’s perspective. Shev took these contributions – writings, drawings and collages – and wove them together into a first draft.
Allowing the time for collaborative editing – it brings difference into conversation
We shared this draft with the youth groups, the SPHR and Fuse communications teams and academic colleagues. We received a lot of feedback – the zine was provoking conversations. The young people gave detailed feedback on what they liked, what was missing, and sequencing of ideas. They spoke the words that became the introduction and expressed their small hopes for a few people to engage with the zine. There was a thoughtful conversation across the youth groups, about whether to personalise individual contributions or depersonalise to show that it could be any LGBTQIA+ young person saying this.
Academic colleagues also read and shared reflections with us, including feedback that policymakers might struggle to engage with the zine’s non-linearity and various people suggested we include a page of key take-home messages and recommendations ‘so things don’t get lost’. The young people responded to this feedback saying that people needed to listen and pay more attention to the messages that were implicitly in there. This dialogue led to the writing of a framing document for the zine.
Value queer embodied theory and practice
Another dialogue arose around authorship. Some reviewers found it confusing not knowing who had written what and had a strong wish to know who – a young person or adult – had written different bits – a desire perhaps for a clear identification of distinct voices. For Scarlet, a queer researcher, the ‘queer polyvocality’ (Brice et al., forthcoming) of the zine – many voices that weaved together in to more than sum of their parts – reflected queer practices of overflowing notions of stable identity, disrupting predetermined binaries and unsettling ideas of authenticity (Lescure, 2023).
This somewhat aligned with ideas from the young people. For some, there was a wish for attribution so ‘friends and family would know I made this’, and there was also a wish for zine contributions to be unnamed ‘because any queer young person could have made any piece’ and ‘we made it all together’.
One young person said they appreciated that researchers ‘weren’t butting in with your opinions but also giving your views when right to do so’ and another adding ‘it’s important that the adults’ voices are also in there as you were part of the conversation, and some adults have also had similar experiences’. The young people decided to make creative doodles in place of signatures which were mixed in with academic doodles/logos to show the talking and making and editing together – the polyvocality – of the zine making process.
Through this collaborative editing process (over three months), the young people began to converse indirectly with interested adults who wanted to help, including with the funders. These conversations happened with the young people keeping editorial control. We sense this may open up and shape more generative future encounters between these young people and further influential adults.
Indeed, some of the young people involved have made a plan to hand deliver zines to local venues around town (hairdressers, surgeries etc.). It seems empowerment and co-ownership inadvertently leads to physical activity!
To find out more about this work, please contact Scarlet scarlet.hall@durham.ac.uk or Caroline caroline.dodd-reynolds@durham.ac.uk
Lescure, R.M., 2023. (Extra) ordinary Relationalities: Methodological Suggestions for Studying Queer Relationalities Through the Prism of Memory, Sensation, and Affect. Journal of Homosexuality, 70(1), pp.35-52.
Brice, S. Marston, K. Wright, R. and Hall, S. (forthcoming). ‘Mycelial Love’ in Harrison, P. Joronen, M. and Secor, A. Love and Catastrophe in Cultural Geography. Edinburgh University Press
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