Alternative Press is at the Truman Brewery All I want for Xmas Market

All I want for Xmas Market,Truman Brewery 3rd – 6th December 2009 We will be holding a stall of comics, zines and handmade cards. Come along and get something special for someone this year!

Old Truman Brewery 91 Brick Lane London E1 6QL http://www.trumanbrewery.com/files/rooms/2765/PAGE_MANU.html

Just two more days left, but it looks like there will be loads more stuff happening at the Truman Brewery.

The Lik & Neon shop is now stocking some of my stuff

I was in the Lik & Neon shop today near Bricklane. A really cool little shop which sells loads comics, zines, magazines, t-shirts and lots of other home made crafty things like jewellery. The nice lady that runs the shop along with the help of her assistant and 3 cats decided they liked my stuff and have decided to stock some of my things like comics and t-shirts etc. Hopefully some of my stuff will sell. Here is the website link to the shop: www.likneon.com and here is where to find the shop: 106 Sclater Street, E1 6HR

The Late Late Breakfast Show Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is meant to be an unlucky day, but it was really lucky for me. I got take part on Tracey Moberly's show broadcast live from the Foundry on Resonance 104.4fm. It was a proper random panel of interesting people including a radical priest who set up Housmans radical book sellers (Their having their 50th anniversary celebration tomorrow night), Viv Albertine from The Slits and John Sinclair, can't remember the other people's names. I talked about the zine friendly event, zines/comics and a bit about the Alternative Press. It was my 1st time ever on a live radio show and was kind of nervous, but it was good fun and got to hang out with all the people evolved over some lunch. So I had a proper random, but fun day. Many thanks to everyone at the Foundry.

Update on the 18/11/09
I now have a link where the radio show can be heard and pictures can be seen. My bit is from 46mins.

Here is the link: http://www.sanderswood.com/radio/flbs/2009/title/091113/

Photographs © foundry

Are you zine friendly? Blog launch night/Party Thursday 12th November 2009

I'm going to be helping out and probably taking loads of pics.

Here is a brief summary about the event: "Alternative Press are hosting another awesome evening of Zines, comix, book arts and poetry at our second Zine Friendly event at the foundry, in order to promote our new project, the Zine Friendly Blog! A resource for Self Publishers far and wide, we will be listing venues, promoters, stockists and events that are all “Zine Friendly”!" "

We’ll be having a cake sale with free tea, Knitting circle, CD compilation lucky dip (just bring a cd of your own favourite music and take your pick!), free blank zines for you to use and a poetry workshop followed by some performances and a short open mic…"

Starts 7pm until around 11pm.

86 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3JL http://zinefriendly.wordpress.com

The comic wall at Comica Comiket 2009 ICA

The Comica event was full of lots of cool people,comics and things happening including a comic wall organised Gareth Brookes. He had a really cool idea of getting people to interact and take part in the day's event. Here is my attempt in trying to explain it: He drew a whole load of boxes on paper attached to the wall leading up to the event. The boxes were then numbered. Then he cut up statements from a well known graphic novel numbered them and with the help of Jimi gave them out to people. Then people would have to interpret the statement onto by drawing in the box which matched the statement. As the day went on and the m ore boxes drawn in, the easy it was to work out which graphic novel the statements were taking from. If you still don't get it, check out the pictures I took on the day here: Link

Art at the Foundry

Today I was visiting the Foundry. There's always a lot going on in that place, but today there was artwork on display by Lunartik (www.lunartik.com), Phil Corbett (www.Philcorbett.com) and some cool stickers by un-plugged.co.uk, the guy behind it even gave me some free stickers of his plug sockets.

Comica Comiket 2009 at the ICA

This Sunday I will be taking part in the Comica Comiket event at the ICA, click poster below for details of the event.

Handmade & Bound 2009

Sunday 1st of November I was at the Handmade & Bound event helping out on the Alternative Press communal table. (Also had some of my work on display). It was good clean fun and lost of interesting home-made books, comics, zines and even a guy who had his own home made and caned goats cheese. Feeling really inspired now.

New Alternative Press web site

Hi, I haven't bloged in a while, been a bit busy doing random things including building a new website for the Alternative Press. Here are some pics and the link: http://www.alternativepress.org.uk
It is my third site I have built now, still very basic, but I'm hoping to try and sign up to a part time course in css and xhtml (fingers crossed.

"Are you zine friendly? Tales from the Alternative Press fair" On last hours

I just came across this article on the last hours (website) by Gareth talking to Edd about the Alternative Press Festival as a whole. I think he summed it up quite nicely. Check out the link below:

http://www.lasthours.org.uk/articles/are-you-zine-friendly-tales-from-the-alternative-press-fair/

"UK Creative Careers" Publishing your own work interview

Here is our interview podcast by Laura from the Creative Choices website, which took place at our book launch last week. Check it out below or download the podcast for free from this link:http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=57961715&id=325821348

The title of our interview podcast is “Publishing your own work” and the channel it's on is called "UK Creative Careers".

"Are you zine friendly?" Interview on the Dazed and Confused website.

Here is the link to our interview with the Dazed and Confused magazines online site Dazed Digital:
http://www.dazeddigital.com/ArtsAndCulture/article/4265/1/Are_you_zine_friendly

Alternative Press Festival Day 5: "Alternative Press Fair" 2nd of August

The Alternative Press Fair was the 5th and last day of our five day Alternative Press Festival. It was a fun day, a bit more laid back compared to the other days of the festival, but think it was a nice way to end a full on five days of creativity comics and zines.

For this event I got to share a table with my mates John and Van who also make comics and zines. Some of John's work can be seen in the second to last picture. The event took place at the St. Alosius Social Centre, the same place we had the 1st Alternative Press fair back in February and Peter Lally was in charge of organising this event.

Many thanks to all the people who took part and came to the festival and for Jimi Gherkin for having the idea to start with and Peter Lally, Gareth Brookes, Ceri May, and Chris Bateson who were the other main organisers of various days of the festival. Well done everybody.

Alternative Press Festival Day 4: "Collaborama!" 1st of August

Collaborama was a very exciting and experimental day. During the day we had artists/designers/writers etc selling their home made comics/zines like you get at most small press events, but at the same time everybody incluiding exhibitors and vistors were working on pages to go in a zine which was made on the day. We had the guys from the Footprints Co-operative came down from Leeds with their Risograph machine to print our collabarative zine on the day. Everybody was helping out and some people voluntatered to help collate and folde the zines. There was a great buzz about and lots of people were working hard trying to make the deadline to submit work. Once it was done, there were a lot of happy and proud people around enjoying the zine.

Also on the day there were various workshops going on upstairs such as a screen printing workshop.

In the evening we had Resonance FM's Orchestra performing a written piece by Ed Baxter which was interpreted live by two groups of illustrators using over head projectors. It was quite exciting to watch and I have never seen anything like this take place before. I have a little video footage which I will hopefully upload at some point.

This whole day of events took part in The Miller at London Bridge.

Video of me doing a speach about the book I designed at the book launch

Video of me doing a speach about the book I designed at the book launch

Below is the rest the video footage I filmed at the book launch. I gave a copy to Mickey and he managed to edited them all and upload them to you tube before I even had a chance to do it myself. One less job for me to do, thanks Mickey.

Alternative Press Festival Day 3: "A Spoken Night Out!" 31st July 2009 video

Alternative Press Festival Day 3: "A Spoken Night Out!" 31st July 2009

This was a fun night out. This night gave poets, some of which featured in the "Publish You" book a chance to read out some of their poems. I got up too and did a bit of stand up. It went down well, they seemed to enjoy my stories. This night was organised by Ceri May and Chris Bateson.

I managed to film some of it, but had a few camera problems that night, my memory card was full and my battery died all at the same time.

Here is the link to watch the video of me: http://vimeo.com/5945196

I will upload the footage of the others I got at a later date.

Alternative Press Festival Day 2: "Are You Zine Friendly?" 30th July 2009

"Are You Zine Friendly?" the 2nd day of the 5 day Alternative Press Festival 2009. This event was held in the basement of the Foundry and was organised by Gareth Brookes. This event like the book launch also had a really good turn out. We had one big communal table where people left their zines and comics to be sold while they took part in the Collaborating area, enjoyed live music and drew on the giant sketch books Gareth made and had hanging from the Foundry walls. The whole night had a really good exciting vibe and the time went really quickly. We also had some welcome and unexpected guests including a guy from the evening standard who interviewed Gareth and Jimi and we also had a lady from Dazed and Confused who interviewed the whole team including myself, Jimi, Peter, Gareth, Ceri and Chris. Lets hope they wrote nice stuff about us.


Please click image for bigger view.

Alternative Press Festival Day 1:"Publish You" Book Launch 29th July 2009

29th of July was the day of our book launch and the 1st day of our five day Alternative Press Festival. It was a very proud day for me seeing the 1st book I ever designed being launched. Actually it was a very proud day for all of us that were involved in the book.
We had a really great response and the Housmans Radical Book Shop where we had the launch was totally packed out, we could barley move.

We also had some interest from various people including a couple who were filming the book launch and are going to be making a documentary on the whole festival. We also got interviewed buy a lady who works for a website called Creative Choices who is going to use our interview on a pod cast for her website. So going to be keeping a look out for that. I also filmed some of the book launch myself and I'm going to upload the videos and my speech when I get a chance.

The book showcases some of what's going on in the small press scene including, illustration, comics, poetry, art books and zines.

The work for the book was selected and compiled by Jimi Gherkin, Peter Lally ,Gareth Brookes and myself. We had to make a lot of hard choices and agree as a group.

New postcards

These came the other day, I got a reprint of some of my old postcards for the festival, but decided to add a pair of sun glasses to it. So these are kind of a limited edition festival version of my old post cards.

Book Launch add for back of programme

Busy times, here is the add I made for the back of the festival programme.

Last night was the book launch of the book I designed and put together for the Alternative Press. The book launch was at the Housmans radical booksellers. The place was fully packed out, we had a really big crowd. Hopefully I will be able to upload pictures and talks that took place on the night.

Craft making day for the Alternative Press Festival

Last Saturday, I was helping out some of the guys with making banners for the Alternative Press Festival. Here are some of the pictures I took on the day. I used the panoramic mode on the camera phone.

Finished working on book

This is my 1st blog entry in a while. I have been really busy working on the book. Here are some pictures of when I was trying to work out the order of some of the entries and the layout of some of the other pages. It's all done now and uploaded to the printers ftp site, received the cover proof and now just waiting for the printers to print the books. Can't wait till they arrive, this is the 1st book I've ever put together , designed, and got ready for print. The book launch should be good.