Medway

The last in a series of four drop-in creative workshop days, looking at ways to create DIY publications and explore self-expression.

This workshop offers a chance to try out, practice, or combine skills from our previous workshops in the series, working on a theme of living with invisible illness. Try writing about your experiences, express your ideas with simple printmaking techniques, drawing, or collage and create your own zine, or bind your pages as a pamphlet or artist’s book.

The workshops are open to Medway residents 16+ years old who are affected by invisible illness – those with illnesses themselves, but also carers, partners, friends or family etc. living in the Medway towns. The sessions are offered free thanks to a small grant from Involving Medway, as part of Medway Clinical Commissioning Group’s work with community health.

Taking place during December and January, a time of year that people with illness can find difficult, these workshops offer a non-festive oasis and a supportive, uplifting space to explore self-reflection and creative skills. There will be a friendly welcome, snacks and refreshments.

You don’t need to have attended previous days, each class and drop-in session is a separate event and you are welcome to attend as many or few as you like.

No previous experience is needed, this is a supportive session for you to self-reflect and try out making DIY publications as a way to cope with, heal from, or understand your situation in a different way. Participating may lead to communicating your feelings to other people, or may offer useful tools to use privately for self care.

A two-hour morning book binding class complements this drop-in session – please book in advance if you are interested in that too. The link is a pinned post on the Sick! Facebook group page.

A workshop for people who want to learn how to use printmaking to communicate ideas and stories in visual ways. In two hours, artist Xtina Lamb will show you simple methods to create effective graphics with print techniques including relief printing and stencils.

Zines are small self-published magazines, focused on a particular topic or theme. We’ll be looking at printmaking methods that go particularly well with zine-making. All the materials you need will be on hand, and we’ll have a Risograph machine and inkjet printer as additional ways to reproduce multiples quickly.

The workshop is open to Medway residents 16+ years old who are affected by invisible illness – those with illnesses themselves, but also carers, partners, friends or family etc. living in the Medway towns.

No previous experience of printmaking is needed, this is a session for you to explore image making as a way to cope with, heal from, or understand invisible illness in different ways. You may chose to use the methods to create your own mini-zine, or contribute to a collaborative zine, or maybe use the skill to develop your own personal projects.

In the afternoon a separate 3 hour drop-in session will run, allowing people to continue with their printmaking, or read our collection of health-related zines, or create zines in a variety of ways. There is no need to book for the drop-in session.

This is the second in a series of four workshop days through December 2017 and January 2018, offered free thanks to a small grant from Involving Medway, as part of Medway Clinical Commissioning Group’s work with community health.

If you live outside Medway but would like to join us, please message us as we may be able to invite you too, depending on availability.