DATE: November 11, 2022
TIME: 2:00 PM
LOCATION: José Estêvão Secondary School – Aveiro
COORDINATOR: Francisco Cardoso Lima
TRAINER: Miguel Correia

Information session about fanzines and self-publishing at José Estêvão School Group.

The José Estêvão School Group is implementing the National Arts Plan. Alongside numerous other projects the school is involved in, the National Arts Plan is particularly meaningful as this school offers artistic programs in visual arts, photography, and design.
As part of the activities included in the National Arts Plan, the school will create a fanzine. To understand what a fanzine really is, the school welcomed art director Miguel Correia to its multipurpose space. A former student of the school, Miguel Correia is responsible for the fanzine “Ultra Violenta,” published in Aveiro. He is also a promoter and collector of various graphic objects related to the fanzine universe (all documented on the website fanzine.pt). Miguel returned to his school bringing part of his fanzine collection—a diverse and wide-ranging assortment.
The multiple and very varied possibilities that a fanzine allows—particularly regarding form, content type, graphic composition, publication, and distribution—make it clear how difficult it is to find a simple, black-and-white definition for this object. In reality, the best way to understand it is through experience.
To see, touch, hold, flip through, and read one fanzine, then another, and then another. That was the experience the students had on a Friday afternoon. And clearly, they enjoyed it.

The publication that the school intends to create will be dedicated to artistic creation and guided by two key vectors:
-The creative freedom of the fanzine, closely related to the type of personal work developed in the form of a Graphic Diary;
-The encouragement (and provocation) of self-editing and self-publishing of personal fanzines, made from graphic material produced by the students themselves and their peers.
After the experience this meeting provided, and daring to define this object, we would say that a Fanzine is… a space of freedom.
And how important it is for students to participate in a fanzine space of freedom.
And how important it is for students to create their own fanzine — a space of freedom.

News on the ESJE NAP website: HERE