Healesville is set to host the first edition of a festival celebrating a unique kind of creative vessel.
The first ever Healesville Zine and Comic Festival will be held at The Memo on Friday 31 October and Saturday 1 November.
Event organiser Cora Zon, whose exhibition Cipher will be on display during the festival, said they are very excited to be hosting the first Healesville Zine and Comic Festival.
“Zines are the most accessible form of self publishing, anyone can create and publish their own work, whether it be art, photography, poetry or prose using a photocopier,” she said.
“I’ve run zine making workshops in libraries, schools, at festivals and events and, most recently, at Healesville Sanctuary and Tarrawarra Museum of Art, everyone, from young children to seniors, has enjoyed the process.
“There will be many examples of zines and independent comics at the fair to inspire your creativity, I hope the community feels curious and comes and has a look at how zines and comics could add to their enjoyment of life.”
Saturday will be the Zine Fair between 12pm and 4pm, followed by Read to Me between 5pm and 7pm where comic artists and zine makers will read their work aloud with the images projected on screen and concluded by a performance by zinemaking rock band Secret Migraines from 7.15pm to 8pm.
Between 12pm and 1pm, attendees can also view a presentation on the Silent Army Archive which highlights how independent comic making is a ‘community building experience, through collaborative publications, and social pursuits.’
Sarah Howell will host a Collage Comics workshop between 12.30pm and 2pm, where participants can bring a poem (an old favourite or one of your own) or flick through a book of poems during the workshop and create a collage.
Ms Zon said the most special thing about the medium of zines is that they offer a window into the world of an individual.
“Everyone can make a zine and every voice is celebrated, zines are a fantastic way to share niche interests,” she said.
“I love seeing fresh perspectives on topics and feeling expanded as a result of reading these publications.
“Zines are fun, fun to look at, fun to make and fun to collect.”
Dungeons and Dragons and Spoken Word components will also be part of the festivities:
A Poet’s Breakfast (open mic) between on Saturday 10am and 1pm for poets of all ages and experiences hosted by poet and musician Andrew Darling.
This will be followed by a Toastmasters presentation on public speaking between 1pm and 3.30pm.
Between 10am and 4pm on Saturday you can learn to play Dungeons and Dragons with dungeon masters Ally McNabb and Chris Godfrey, with a make your own dungeons and dragons zinemaking workshop also on offer with Alex Clark between 2.30pm and 4pm.
Star Mail cartoonist Danny Zemp will be facilitating a caricatures workshop throughout the festival and said it’s very exciting and the best thing they’ve done is keep it free for all to participate.
“It’s also away from a big city, you’re far enough away from the city that it’s like a holiday but it’s still close enough so you can make a day trip or even stay for the weekend,” he said.
“On Friday I’ll be working together with a few schools and making sure that they can attend and participate in some of the workshops that we’re running for comic and zine making.
“We also have a masterclass running on Friday that someone else has organised.”
Paid comics masterclasses will be held between 9.30am and 4.30pm on Friday 31 October (bookings required).
Between 1pm and 2pm that day, visitors can find out about the research project ‘Contemporary Australian Comics 1980-2020: A New History’ with the Australian Comics Folio Panel.
Mr Zemp said he loves comics, he lived, breathed and grew up on comics.
“But I didn’t hear about zines until I came to Australia, I’d never really participated in zine making until I became a Toastmaster and after that I embraced the simplicity of a zine, it’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s informative and you can get a message out there fairly quickly, it’s minimal effort,” he said.
“You progress further and go into comic making, it requires an awful lot of work, dedication, time and money… it’s essentially a labor of love because you’re not going to make money from comics, really a few people do and even from zines you’re not going to make a dollar from it.
“Everyone should come along who has an interest in pictures, comics and cartoons to see the people behind the funny pictures that are getting created and the effort that has been put in.”
The event has been supported by Yarra Ranges Council (through a Festival and Events grant), Yarra Valley FM, Toastmasters D73, Your Library, Healesville Sanctuary, Tarrawarra Museum of Art and Sticky Institute.
To find out more about the event, visit healesvillezineandcomicfestival.org/ or instagram.com/healesvillezinecomicfestival/.
