Drink & Draw Zine-making Workshop focused on Self Care
7 - 10 PM, Tuesday May 17, 2016
Charge House @ 2507 Holman Street, Project Row Houses

Charge in partnership with Zine Fest Houston (Maria Heg, Anastasia Kirages and Sarah Welch), invite you to a Drink & Draw Zine-making Workshop focused on Self Care.

Organized by Charge co-organizer Jennie Ash, participants are invited to collectively create a zine exploring what individual, community-based and/or collective self-care looks like, entails, requires, or provokes for artists, curators, organizers, researchers, and educators in Houston. The final product will be a zine journal, available both as a pdf and in print.

Zines have the potential to transform the ways we retain and share knowledge across communities and this workshop aims to explore how we can use zines to understand and represent self-care systems and community based learning.

This will be a space for creating, reflecting, and an opportunity to share personal narratives and find solidarity within your local community. Attendees will be emailed a series of questions to consider before the workshop in preparation. 

The final zine will encapsulate what we cover during our conversations, along with any personal contributions of words and art.

We will have pens, markers, glitter, photos, magazines, and glue sticks galore.

This event is free and open to artists, curators, organizers, researchers, and educators in Houston.

This event is inspired by "Self Care for Skeptics", a zine that approaches self care through the lenses of feminism and queer theory curated by Lauren Fournier (www.laurenfournier.net)

Self-care Zine-making Prompts/Questions for Workshop Participants

Thanks so much for registering for the Drink & Draw Zine-making Workshop focused on Self Care!!!

I am super excited about getting to spend some time with ya'll collectively sieving through the concept of self care, asking what it means to you as a creative human, as well as a what it means to us as a creative community. 

I wanted to put a workshop like this together because over the past few years, I have been thinking about the words self care a lot. In an age of precarious labor, compassion fatigue, burn-out, backlash, austerity, and emotional exhaustion, it's a phrase that seems to be everywhere from psychological conventions to academic convenings but oftentimes, I am left asking a) what does self-care actually mean and b) what does it actually looks like.

As a self-confessed work-a-holic art who loves what she does but is constantly exhausted, I am personally interested in creating a space/platform where we can share and learn about the creative/unique methods we each use to sustain ourselves. 

What does self care look like outside of activities like spa days, diet regimens, fitness, quiet time, clay masks, cups of tea, vacation, creative expression, meditation, yoga, eating chocolate, not eating chocolate, gardening, journalling, organizing, and spending time outdoors (from Self Care for Skeptics, Lauren Fournier, 2015).

The artwork and writing created during this workshop will be included in a zine, which I hope will help us share, synthesize, and understand what self care looks like for the creative community in Houston. 

Below are some things to float in the air but we look forward to what you bring to the table :)  

PROMPTS

Where do I feel deprived?

What do I need more of right now?

What do I need less of?

What do I want right now?

What am I yearning for?

Who or what is causing me to feel resentful and why?

What am I starving for?

QUESTIONS 

What does the word self care mean to you?

What does and/or could individual self care look like?

What does and/or could collective self care look like?

What does and/or could cultural self care look like?

What does and/or could communal self care look like?

What does and doesn't count as self care. Why? 

What creative support structures exist in your life?

What support structures exist in your community?

What tactics have you used to implement self care?

Does self care affect creativity?

How can we talk about self care in a professional setting?

When does self care venture into self indulgence? 

How does self care relate to ideas of productivity and personal value?

Is there such thing as a self care outside of the self?