Girls Rock Bloomington, a local nonprofit focused on music education and youth mentorship, will host a songwriting and zine making workshop for girls, transgender and non-binary youth ages 8-17 on April 6 at the McCalla School.
Zines, niche booklets or magazines that are usually self-published, are one of the most accessible types of creative expression. Known for their DIY nature and connection to different counterculture movements, zines can be created by virtually anyone, which makes them so special.
Zines originated in the 1930s but are most frequently associated with the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s. Zines are inherently connected to counterculture, politics and expressions of identity. With the rise of internet and social media culture, they are even easier to distribute to large amounts of people.
Every summer, GRB holds an annual summer camp for girls ages 8-14. Throughout the year, the organization also offers after-school programs, workshops and open mic nights.
Amy Oelsner, who performs and releases music under the stage name Amy O., is the founder of Girls Rock Bloomington. She previously worked with Rhinos Youth Center in Bloomington, which was a youth center for kids interested in music but has since closed. Oelsner created GRB to fill the gap left for youth music education. She said her decision to form GRB was inspired by her experience volunteering and working with a Girls Rock Camp in Brooklyn, New York, where she used to live. Girls Rock is a youth organization with various camps all over the nation.
Oelsner said she was introduced to zine culture in her teenage years, in which she was inspired by female punk bands such as Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill. She said she was also involved with the punk and Riot Grrrl scene of her hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
“I used to go to the all-ages punk venue that was in my town when I was growing up, and it was very formative for me,” Oelsner said. “And yeah, it got me into zine culture, and then I myself have made multiple zines, and I used to make zines with the teenagers when I worked at Rhinos.”
Oelsner said zine-making and songwriting are unique art forms because they are so widely accessible.
“You don’t have to have any experience to write a song or make a zine,” Oelsner said. “It’s something that you really just do through learning. You can sort of be taught, but it really just comes down to trying it over and over again and finding your own way. And I think that the best things in life come through figuring it out your own way. And that’s how innovation happens in this world.”
Oelsner said she wrote the basic structure of a song for participants to work on writing together. The theme is growth, and she plans to have participants brainstorm lyrics to complete the verses.
“The way that we will come up with those verses together is through a generative process where first I will have everyone make collages around the theme of growing and self-growth,” Oelsner said. “Then, based on those collages, we will do some freewriting. And then from the freewriting is how we will create the lyrics.”
The collages will then be included in a collective zine which will be produced and distributed by Hideout Press.
Emily Zarse is the events and engagement coordinator of University Collections at McCalla which promotes and preserves IU exhibitions and archives. Zarse said UCM and GRB are collaborating to create a community archive project to feature the art and stories of women and non-binary guitarists. They plan for the GRB zine to be included in the archive project.
“The participants will make a zine that will definitely be placed in the exhibit alongside objects and artifacts from University Collections, as well as donations from guitarists all over the community,” Zarse said about the upcoming exhibit, which will be developed over the next few months. “We’re also doing a call for submissions for women and non-binary guitarists to submit photos of them with their first or favorite guitar, and a little bit of a snippet or story of why it was important to them.”
The project will be called “She Shreds,” and it will be a complement to an existing UCM exhibition of instruments called “Amped at IU.” The call for photo submissions is currently open and can be found here.
The workshop is free to attend, and participants can register for the event on the university calendar.
