For all 3 seminars we will be joined by Jean McEwan, a zinemaker and artist. This page provides some background information about zines, and some guidance for attendees on what you could do to prepare in advance of the seminars. You can also see some photographs of the zines produced at seminar 1 at the bottom of this page!
What is a zine? A zine is a non-commercial, creative, Do-It-Yourself, publication, which might include stories, photographs, ‘found objects’, quotes, collages, artworks, drawings, letters, bits of writing, documents, sections cut from magazines or newspapers – anything, really! Working with Jean, we will be inviting all seminar participants and speakers to contribute to a collective zine for the Welfare Imaginaries seminar series. You might want to make a page, several pages, or a section of a page. We will be stitching together all our work from the three seminars and making the zine available online for others to share and use.
Do I need to bring anything? Jean will be bringing some materials for delegates to use. However, if you would like to, please do bring any of your own materials, for example, cut-outs of magazine or newspaper articles; headlines; images that you relate in some way to welfare; favourite quotes. You can bring objects as inspiration and take them home at the end of the day – you don’t need to donate or leave them.
Is there anything else I need to do to prepare? Before the seminars, we propose that you think about some or all of the following questions:
- What is welfare?
- How do we think about or understand the ‘welfare’ of the ‘welfare state’? What gets included? What gets excluded?
- What does welfare mean to you? What does it mean to the people around you?
- What words do we use to talk about welfare? welfare, social security, benefits (others?) How do the words we use change the meaning we make?
- What are our collective and individual memories of welfare – and how do ‘public’ and ‘private’ welfare imaginaries connect (or not?)
- How has welfare provision and/or public attitudes to welfare changed over time? Was there a ‘golden age’ of welfare?’
Welfare Imaginaries 