The Bookville Publishathon
Two weeks of publishing at Hull Art Lab June-July 2006.
To publish: to make your ideas public.
In the summer of 2006, we were given free reign by Hull Art Lab, who’d invited us for a residency, to make a project happen as part of Humber Mouth and Hull Literature Festival. Following on from our bookshop, Bookville (Feb-May 2005), we wanted to spend the time exploring all the different ways we could think of to put ideas out into the world. Many people made books and zines. We had a photocopier to hand, huge amounts of stationary and a giant barrel of glue. We made a soap box and people gave performances of music, poetry, song. Some people, like Jo Ray, ventured out into the streets with her ideas. Mostly, we camped out in the space and on the last night, we had a fire and cooked bread on sticks. It was beautiful. And alive, anarchic and resonant. We took so much away with us from this short, intense period, referring back to it constantly in our future projects. It was here that we really started to understand how art and people combine, how it can really mean something.