Allied Media Projects (AMP) cultivates media for liberation. Our media includes all the ways we communicate with the world. Our liberation is an ongoing process of personal, collective, and systemic transformation. We are a network of people and projects, rooted in Detroit and connected to hundreds of other places across the globe. Together, we grow and exchange ways of using media to create the world we need.

AMP’s goals are to:

Support and grow our network.
We do this through administrative services that increase our communities’ ability to access resources and help make the radical practical.

Convene and shape our network.
We do this through transformative events that foster critical connections between people, projects, and ideas.

Amplify the power of our network.
We do this through storytelling platforms and programs that distribute media-based organizing genius in a multitude of forms.

Over two decades, in collaboration with our vast network, AMP has developed a set of shared principles to guide our work. Read the AMP Network Principles .

Allied Media Projects. “About.” Allied Media Projects. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://alliedmedia.org/about.

Center for Book Arts promotes active explorations of artistic practices related to the book as an art object.

For nearly 50 years, CBA has supported artists and uplifted the book arts by presenting exhibitions, lectures, readings, and performances; providing opportunities for artists, writers, curators and scholars through residencies, fellowships, publishing, and collecting; and empowering the creation of new book art by providing courses on book art related technique and history. We are committed to providing a nurturing environment for our community in New York City and beyond to grow and learn together. Our studios and virtual educational programming make accessible the equipment and skills needed for artists and writers to take book production into their own hands, and giving creative voices a tool to self amplify without the need to rely on the gallery model or commercial pressures.

Founded in 1974, Center for Book Arts was the first not-for-profit organization of its kind in the nation, and has since become a model for others around the world, serving as a space for research, education, exhibition, making, and community building.

Center for Book Arts, Inc. “About Center for Book Arts.” Center for Book Arts (blog), 2021. https://centerforbookarts.org/about.

Our book center holds a carefully curated and nationally recognized collection of approximately 25,000 titles of poetry, small-press literature, and ephemera, including limited-run broadsides, chapbooks, zines, and other hand-made items, many produced in conjunction with our programs. We are also home to the largest collection of haiku in North America, the largest Native American section in Wisconsin, and our collection of contemporary poetry is the most comprehensive of its kind available for purchase in the U.S.

Woodland Pattern Book Center. “About Woodland Pattern.” Woodland Pattern, 2020. https://www.woodlandpattern.org/.

This project focuses on a contemporary publishing phenomenon that lies at the intersection between cultural trend and social movement, artistic intervention and community project. Known in Latin America as editoriales cartoneras, they are often referred to as ‘cardboard publishers’, because one feature that unites the diverse publishing projects is the material from which they make their books: recycled cardboard. Yet the term ‘cartonera’ encompasses far more than ‘cartón’, the English word ‘cardboard’. It is also a reference to the cartonero figure, the ‘cardboarders’ who turned to the waste streams of Buenos Aires for a living after becoming unemployed in the wake of the economic crisis (2001). It was from these urban recoverers that Eloísa began to buy cardboard at five times the market price to cover their hand-made books, and it was with them that they set up a productive publishing workshop that has published over 200 titles since 2003. Some of them, like Eloísa and Dulcinéia (São Paulo), continue to work directly with waste-pickers. Many others, though, have recycled the model, adapting it to their particular local contexts, communities and social needs. This has led to diverse collaborations between cartoneras, school groups, immigrants and refugees, indigenous communities, peace organizations, and so on.

Through interdisciplinary research, carried out in collaboration with our cartonera partners within an ethos of horizontality, we aim to:

(1) Understand why and how cartonera practices have travelled so rapidly and widely, with a focus on the aesthetic and social forms that have driven this growth.
(2) Explore how the socio-material practices of cartonera publishing inform or complicate our understandings of social movements, resistance and activism.
(3) Develop an innovative methodological framework that might be employed by a global community of academics and practitioners seeking to understand – or take part in – contemporary artistic practices with a focus on activism, resistance and social change.

In order to explore the connections and divergences inherent in cartonera practices, we focus on two projects from Mexico – La Cartonera (Cuernavaca) and La Rueda (Guadalajara) – and two from Brazil – Dulcinéia Catadora (São Paulo) and Catapoesía (Minas Gerais) – in the context of the broader cartonera community (within and beyond Latin America). This comparative approach is combined with an interdisciplinary research methodology. Intersecting formal literary analysis with ethnographic methods, we consider the projects simultaneously as a collection of artistic texts and objects and as a set of production methods, everyday interactions, and organizational logics, oriented toward social transformation. This interdisciplinarity operates in two directions: a set of participative, presence-oriented ethnographic methods – from encuentros to exhibitions – have been extrapolated from the textual forms themselves; simultaneously, the texts are analysed through the lens of the social forms and collective practices through which they are produced.

This project makes a number of contributions to research across different humanities and social science disciplines. From a literary angle, it fills a significant gap in research: though these publishers have attracted attention from scholars and journalists since 2003, their focus has largely been on their production processes, leaving the literary form and content of the books unexplored. Our project explores how the multiple forms of the books (as literary, philosophical or political texts and as art objects) play a key part in creating new relations, communities and meaning. From sociological and anthropological perspectives, it explores the ways in which theories of social movements can be productively broadened out to include – or dialogue with – phenomena that, like cartoneras, are not only artistic in character, but also fragmentary, fragile and precarious. Finally, our innovative use of interdisciplinary methods makes this a ground-breaking study for scholars and practitioners around the world seeking to engage with practices – like Ni una menos, Bordamos por la Paz, the Tendedero project, and so many others – that are simultaneously artistic and activist, aesthetically innovative and socially oriented.

Ungprateeb Flynn, Alex, Lucy Bell, and Patrick O’Hare. “About the Project | Cartonera Publishing.” Cartonera Publishing (blog). Accessed February 23, 2021. http://cartonerapublishing.com/about-the-project/.

BlueJackal is a platform for engaging with and creating visual narratives, comics, picture books and initiating dialogue and learning within these contexts through interactive programs. It is run by three core members, Shivangi Singh, Shefalee Jain and Lokesh Khodke.

BlueJackal was born in 2015 of a desire for, as well as the ever receding possibility of, togetherness. We see coming together with all its temporariness, contradictoriness, conflict as well as possibilities. As writers, artists, researchers we have often felt compelled by and yet wary of what constitutes the 'limits' or the defining borders of our callings. We have realized both, the need to draw these strategic boundaries and the will to dissolve them. BlueJackal is a platform for exploring this conundrum in its creative, political and philosophical dimensions. We are interested in seeing what 'contamination' and 'cross breeding' through unforeseen associations can bring to this platform.

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BlueJackal is always looking for interesting projects and collaborations around picture books, comics and visual narratives. If you have an idea, please write to us at bluejackalhere@gmail.com.

​BlueJackal. “About.” bluejackal, 2021. https://www.bluejackal.net.

Fairs is a calendar of art book fairs, zine fests, and comic book events around the globe. Many of these events feature a heavy presence of risograph printers and publishers. This calendar is a wiki, please feel free to log in to add or edit events on the list.

“Fairs.” n.d. Stencil.Wiki. Accessed April 15, 2021. https://www.stencil.wiki/fairs.

Founded in 2008, MZF is an annual explosion of zine-focused wonder in the form of a boisterous festival featuring over 70 vendors from across the country. It's always free to attend, and always super fun (even when it needs to be virtual, by mail, or otherwise pandemic-safe for our lovely community).

In normal times, the single day event is held at the Central Branch of Milwaukee Public Library, and packed with opportunities to explore and purchase various forms of DIY and independent publishing presented by diverse artists, writers, illustrators, photographers, poets--and more!

The festival also features hands on experiences and workshops throughout the day. Stop by to test a typewriter, make a letterpress print, construct a flipbook, or learn about zine culture, history, and social impact. Every year the fest is a little different... [especially right now] but our vision always remains the same:

-We believe your voice should be represented in the published world.

-We support radical, independent, and unorthodox ways of publishing by cultivating a community of those who support one another in doing so.

-Proactively creating space, equity, and leadership opportunities for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Zinesters of Color is woven into MZF's mission. We are listening, learning, and evolving to do this better.

The Bindery. “Milwaukee Zine Fest.” The Bindery, 2021. https://www.binderymke.com/milwaukeezinefest.

SAZF is a community zine festival organized by five woc in San Antonio, Texas. Since 2017, we have made space for local and national creatives to share their art, meet other zinesters, and celebrate DIY culture. This year, due to the need for a safe fest, we curated an online catalog instead of our annual in-person event. It is important to us that we continue the DIY tradition of making the best of what you have and overcoming obstacles to continue to create. We are so happy to join the international zine community that has used those guiding principles to adapt to our current circumstances and still find new and creative ways to share zines. Follow the link in bio to see the catalog on ISSUU. Contact the zine makers through the information in the description to order directly from them. We will not be handling any orders and accept no responsibility for any zines lost or delayed due to the holiday gift rush. Please allow extra time for international zine shipping. Please share with your friends and keep making zines! Thank you so much to all our contributors, our awesome community that has supported us through the years, and to you! Thank you for being with us for SAZF 2020! Everybody stay safe and cozy this winter, we'll be back in person as soon as soon as we can!

SAZF. “San Anto Zine Fest,” 2020. https://www.instagram.com/sanantozinefest/.