About this Event
Join us for a two-part in-person creative session where we dive into collective research on KEYSTONE SPECIES. In this workshop, you will craft your own collective zines.
Session 1: 13th June - create research pages through reading, editing, drawing and collage (these will be printed by Jennifer on a variety of paper types and colours for use in session 2- original pieces will be returned to everyone by session 2)
Session 2: 27th June - using the printed matter from session 1, create zines using simple book binding processes and play with experimental formats to create the collective zines that you can take home.
(If you can't attend both sessions, you can select just one session - else share your place with a friend if you like!)
Keystone species are creatures that play a crucial role in holding ecosystems together. When they are removed, they can cause a ‘trophic cascade’ - an ecological phenomenon where changes such as adding or removing a predator trigger chain reactions such as local extinctions, over consumption of vegetation resulting in soil degradation, and other kinds of significant changes that have an impact on other organisms.
Join Dr Jennifer Crouch in a creative workshop over two sessions that invites participants to engage in speculative world-building via creative visual storytelling to re-imagine the term (or organising concept) of ‘species’.
Different case studies of keystone species will be explored with participants that illustrate the diverse, multiple and specific offerings different species provide while revealing our profound interconnectedness. We will question who or what we are as interdependent, embedded and relational creatures ourselves.
Starting with selected readings from a pack that will be given to participants from diverse sources, we will mobilise biological processes such as metamorphosis, mutation and transformation to envision futures that decenter delusions of individualism while wholly valuing each species’ offerings to ecology as part of a collective and complex whole.
The relationality and multiplicity of our resulting visions will nurture insights into the ways in which our own subjectivity is formed through molecular flows, co-evolution, and bio-geo-chemical cycles. Using collage, we will mix and form images; the resulting collaged artefacts will be brought together to tell the story of our findings in the form of a poster/zine that will be printed for participants to collect at a future date.
SESSION 1 - 13/6/2026: 2 hours and 30 mins
The workshop will be structured around three interwoven activities. The resulting imagery (collaged texts and drawings) from these activities will be taken away by Jennifer to print in various ways. You original work from this session will be returned in the next session:
- Mapping texts – Participants read texts from multiple perspectives as a group, reflecting on their meanings/content. Texts will be highlighted, cut out, stuck together and organised into a mind-map to connect to different actions/feelings/perspectives relating to bio-geo-chemical flows.
- Collage activity/ drawing – Using found and drawn images, participants re-construct speculative visuals to understand how a keystone species relates to its ecology/population.
- Amalgamation/ zine-making for reflection and storytelling – participants co-create a poster/zine that will be printed after the workshop and brought to session 2 to be created into a zine. Participants can keep extra copies after the second session.
SESSION 2 - 13/6/2026: 3 hours and 30 mins (more time is allocated if people need it)
Participants meet again and review the prints of their work. Jennifer will demonstrate simple book-binding and folding techniques for participants to try out. By the end of the session, each person taking part will have an individual zine containing our collective research created using experimental bookbinding formats, fold-outs and inserts. More time is allocated for this session, which starts at 13:00.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Proposition Bethnal Green, 279 Cambridge Heath Road, London, United Kingdom
GBP 11.55 to GBP 16.96
