A Zine Workshop Facilitator’s Spine

Abstract

Our zine is a guide for workshop facilitators who are trying to be power-aware, reflective and intentional in their practice. It is drawn up using the metaphor of a human nervous system, to ask: How can you have a spine & hold onto your values as a zine-maker, while facilitating a zine workshop? 

We facilitated a participatory action research process to respond to this question, and a gap in literature about zine-ing as a process within workshops—particularly in Indian contexts. Over the past five years, we’ve seen zine-making rise in popularity and witnessed them being co-opted. Our research aimed to reflect on and center relational practices, crucial to zine cultures, in our practice as facilitators. 

What happens in the room, in fleeting and messy moments of facilitation, often remains invisible in zine studies. The role of the zine workshop facilitator, and power dynamics given the medium’s anarchist roots, has not been studied in the Indian context. Our zine responds to this gap by using the metaphor of a spine to map what facilitators need before, during, and after workshops. Each “vertebra” reflects embodied knowledge: preparing, holding space, navigating disruption, and sustaining relationships. 

This zine is both a facilitator’s guide and a scholarly intervention—an iterative toolkit that reframes zine-ing as relational practice grounded in care, play, and accountability.