LGBTQ+ Youth Zine Workshop

Do you love to doodle for hours at a time? Are you always making up your own stories? If so, you're just a step away from self-publishing your own zines!

What is a Zine?

Zines are books you printed and bound yourself, at home or at the local copy shop (the word ‘Zine is short for magazine). All over the world, artists, writers, and activists make zines to share their creativity with one another. The Bay Area is home to a rich tradition of DIY art and activism. 

Create your zine in just 1 session with us! Additionally, your zine will be added to the Queer Arts Center's LGBTQ+ OurStory Month Zine Exhibit! Materials + Pizza included!

We will provide pizza, beverages, and all the materials, including pre-cut paper, markers, colored pencils, stamps, illustrated books, and magazines for collaging, glue, and scissors. After the program, all the pages will be compiled and formatted into a DIY magazine (a.k.a. "zine"). Finally, the zines will be showcased as an in-person exhibit as well as an online video so that their friends, family, and community can admire their work.

About Your Instructor Vian

My various identities: I am chinese, queer/trans, they/them pronouns, college educated, still healing from wounds related to schooling. I have been working in alternative education, especially unschooling and Self-Directed Education (SDE) for the past 6 years. I firmly believe that child liberation is human liberation.  I am passionate about enthusiasm-driven learning, nature connection / animal tracking, fiction, comics, storytelling, improv comedy, and role-playing games, and building transformative justice capacity in our grassroots community spaces.

About The Queer Healing Arts Center

The EAST BAY LGBTQ+ HEALING ARTS CENTER aka The QUEER ARTS CENTER is a grassroots, interdisciplinary collaborative of Oakland, California-based disabled, Black, Indigenous + Brown LGBTQ+ identified artists and wellness practitioners serving a global community. We are diverse across gender, sexual orientation, and relationship spectrums as well as ancestral heritage and spiritual orientations. We each are rooted in healing-justice values and maintain adherence to professional standards by continually expanding inquiry into our respective fields of practice.

OUR MISSION

The Queer Arts Center offers creative opportunities for health equity through culturally competent, financially accessible, interdisciplinary art innovation; advocates for marginalized LGBTQIA rights; and promotes the well-being of the QTPOC artist community.