Creating a digital zine - LGBTQ+ parents’ and carers’ stories of adversity, love, joy and hope (2)

What’s on offer?

We are excited to announce our project to create a digital zine for LGBTQ+ parents to share their stories of adversity, love, hope and joy.

We will curate a digital zine from a collection of individual submissions from parents and carers that share their reflections and experiences of being an LGBTQ+ parent in the United Kingdom. Submissions will be welcomed throughout the festival between Saturday 19th October to Saturday 9th November 2024. More information on the project and how to submit a zine page or takepart in a workshop can be found on the webpage. The project will conclude in November 2024 and the zine will be available online.

How can I contribute?

There are three ways to participate in this project:

1) Submitting a page for the zine (either digitally or by posting us a page). 

If you choose to submit a page, you can either send us a digital page or a physical page. We can also post you packs and prepaid envelopes and materials to make pages. For more information about this, please see below. Submissions will be welcomed throughout the festival between Saturday 19th October to Saturday 9th November 2024.

2) Attending one of our two online workshops. 

You do not have to submit a zine page if you come to the workshops - you can just come along to hear about our work and learn about zines.

We will hold two online workshops on Zoom that will last 1.5 hours each. We will introduce the project, invite participants to make a mini-zine using prompts, and provide information about how to submit a zine page.

Our workshops will invite LGBTQ+ parents and carers into a queer, creative and safe(r) space to craft and communicate their stories of adversity, love, joy and hope in parenting. In doing so, parents and carers will have the opportunity to attune to each others’ complexities and experiences, many of which will likely be shared, and enable the group to resonate, reflect and respond. We hope parents will feel connected and empowered with/in this project experience.

We hope the activity will be enjoyable and empowering. These are little spaces for LGBTQ+ parents and carers to meet and share parenting stories that matter to them. This project will gather and platform these stories in the form of a digital zine to be shared. Connections might be made within this project amongst parents and carers which will continue beyond the scope of these workshops.

All participants in the workshops and all people who submit zines will receive two paper copies of the finished zine as a thank you for taking part. We hope you will continue to share the messages after the event. 

3) Sharing the zine. 

The digital zine will be published online and paper copies can be purchased for a small fee that covers printing and posting costs.

What’s it about?

Research about solutions to perinatal loneliness identified that LGBTQ+ parents and carers experienced discrimination and exclusion which resulted in feelings of loneliness. Hoping to overcome feelings of loneliness, we want to create a digital mini zine to share stories of LGBTQ+ parenting adversity, hope, love and joy. We want to raise awareness of the challenges facing LGBTQ+ parents whilst also changing the narrative away from negativity and towards messages of resilience and hope for the future, and the next generation of children, parents and carers.

Who’s leading the event?

The digital zine will be created by Lea Cooper with support from Melanie Riley and Dr Ruth Naughton-Doe (University of York). The online workshops will be facilitated by Lea with support from Mel and Ruth. 

Open to

LGBTQ+ parents and carers, and their families, are invited to take part in the zine workshops and/or to submit a page to be included in the digital zine. The event on Saturday November 9th morning will be open for families to attend with their children. 

Of particular interest to

LGBTQ+ parents and families 

Scheduling information

Zine submissions open from 19 October 2024 to 9 November 2024.