From 1st September 2016, we're taking over Sheffield Print Club!
Sheffield Print Club is an open access screen printing studio, located in the heart of Sheffield. Sheffield Print Club empowers everyone to get creative by providing open access printing facilities and running regular screen printing workshops, which are suitable for all abilities and ages. Anyone can use Sheffield Print Club's facilities - which include exposure units, screen beds, inks, paper, and all the other kit you need to get printing! - for a very low price.
Sheffield Print Club was founded three years ago by Jane and Laurence, who have put a huge amount of work into establishing this amazing and accessible community space. However, due to other commitments, Jane and Laurence are having to leave Sheffield Print Club.
Sarah and David outside our new home!
We're thrilled to announce that we're therefore going to take over running the space! We're delighted that we can help continue Jane and Laurence's amazing work, by providing people across Sheffield an accessible community space where they can print, meet, and create. And we hope that we can help Sheffield Print Club continue to grow and develop.
We have lots of exciting plans for what we'd like to do at Sheffield Print Club - though our first few months will be a case of settling into our new home, getting to know the space and the community around it, and continuing Jane and Laurence's incredible work.
For the moment, we can confirm that we will continue to run monthly screen printing workshops (take a look at Sheffield Print Club's current programme here!), have regular open access hours (we plan on being open 3 - 4 days a week), and will continue all the other great creative services that Sheffield Print Club currently offers, such as cleaning, coating, and exposing screens.
We'll also start offering other printing facilities - such as letterpress workshops, using our beautiful 1930s Adana letterpress - and much more besides. So we hope to see lots of you there soon!
Learn how to design and print your own, beautiful, designs
The Edge of the Universe Printing Press will continue to exist as its own, separate, organisation. We'll keep building on the work we've been doing for the last three years, by offering open and accessible writing, self-publishing, andprinting workshops and services. Though we'll run some workshops out of Sheffield Print Club's space, we'll continue to be mobile, able to travel to the people and communities who need us. Our core focus is on inclusivity,accessibility, and education. We'll continue to work closely with a huge variety of educational organisations (from schools, colleges and universities, to community groups, lifelong learning schemes, and workplace-based training) to help empower people to develop their skills, confidence, and creativity. We'll also work with other cultural, community, and third sector organisations to help them bring writing, publishing and print to the people!
We move into Sheffield Print Club on 1st September. Until then, it's business as usual for the Edge of the Universe team! Don't forget that we're holding one of our ever-popular Try Out Screen Printing! events at the Moor Theatre Delicatessen on Saturday 20 August. Drop in between 11am - 3pm to try out crafting and printing your own design! We'll provide paper to print on, but feel free to bring your own tee shirts and totes (and tea towels, and pillow cases, and hoodies...!) to print onto as well. As always, Try Out Screen Printing! will run on a pay what you want donations basis.
Thanks to the awesome CADS' equally awesome Space CADets programme, we've been given a free studio space until the end of June 2016. From our new home in the AVEC Building (which is opposite Yorkshire Artspace and The Rutland, and a stone's throw from the Showroom Cinema), we'll be running a super exciting programme of screen printing, writing, design, and self-publishing workshops, as well as offering open studio hours to folks who want a peaceful, welcoming space - that's stocked with a bountiful supply of stationery and general craft stuff! - to work on their own creative projects. Read on for details of our workshop programme...
An introduction to writing prose fiction. Get your creative juices
flowing with mini-exercises that will introduce you to key concepts in creative
writing, then craft your own short story.
What to bring: Your
imagination! Oh, and maybe a pen and notebook.
What you’ll get: A completed
first draft of a short story.
Through a series of fun, practical exercises, you will learn about the
rewrite formula, as well as loads of other tips and techniques to help make
your writing better.
What to bring: An existing
piece of your own writing that you want to redraft (this could be a story,
poem, play, script, article, essay…!)
What you’ll get: A new-and-improved draft of your writing
Learn how to marble paper, which can be used to create your own
beautiful DIY publications. Whilst your marblelous designs dry, you’ll learn
how to hand-bind your own publication.
What to bring:Nothing required – though you can bring A4 pages (of words, images, whatever…!) to bind into a notebook.
What you’ll get: 10 x sheets
of marbled A4 card, plus an A5 hand bound notebook
Inspired by NASA’s gorgeous Visions Of The Future
reto-styled posters, we’ll be helping you create your own space-themed design
that you’ll print onto tee shirts and tote bags! We’ve got amazing
glow-in-the-dark ink to help make these prints truly space age, so we’re pretty
excited about this ‘shop.
Places on this workshop are STRICTLY LIMITED. To give us time to order
in your tee shirt, event registration closes on SUNDAY 12 JUNE.
What to bring: Nothing
except your imagination! (Oh - we’ll need your tee-shirt size in advance, too)
What you’ll get: A black tee
shirt + 2 x black tote bags printed with your own design (additional items can
be printed at a surcharge)
* * *
Please note that the AVEC Building is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible. We're really sorry for any inconvenience this may cause - and plan on running these workshops again in a fully accessible location!
Erasure poetry is a way of creating poetry by rearranging and removing words in an already existing text. You can take anything – a newspaper article, a page from a magazine, or even an entire novel – and turn it into poetry by blacking out lines, drawing, painting or collaging onto the existing text, or by cutting the original text up.
Many writers have created stunning new works of literature using erasure. A couple of the most well-known examples are Tom Phillips’ beautiful A Humument, and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes.
“I like to think of [erasure poems] like those old word search puzzles we used to do in elementary school – a field of letters with hidden messages to find.”
- Austin Kleon, word artists
What will happen during the erasure poetry workshop?
Participants will:
·Be introduced to the concept of erasure poetry, and get to grips with it through some fun warm-up exercises
·Under the guidance of the Edge of the Universe Printing Press tutors, create new works of poetry out of existing texts
·Turn these poems into your very own poetry collection – which you’ll create during the workshop, and get to take home with you!
All participants will also be given the opportunity to sell their erasure poetry publications on commission through the Edge of the Universe Printing Press.
Who are the workshop tutors?
Sarah Christie graduated from the University of East Anglia’s English Literature with Creative Writing BA (Hons) in 2009 with a Starred First degree, and was awarded the UEA Jarrold Creative Writing Prize for the highest achieving creative writing student in her graduating year. She completed her Creative Writing MA at the University of Manchester, and is currently writing her second novel.
David Gasi graduated in 2011 from Leeds College of Art with a BA Graphic Design degree with First Class Honours. He graduated in 2001 from Monash University in his native Australia with a BA Computing degree. He has worked as designer with studios throughout Australia, The Netherlands and the UK. His creative practice spans between fine art and graphic design, and he is currently an artist in residence at Sheffield Institute of Arts as part of the nationwide AA2A program.
Who is it suitable for?
Complete beginners are very welcome! Never written a poem before? Never fear! The workshop is intended as an introduction to erasure poetry, and you’ll have lots of one-to-one time with the Edge of the Universe Printing Press tutors as you create and publish your erasure poetry collection.
Ticket payment is taken via PayPal, unless an alternate payment method is arranged. Your place at the workshop is only reserved once your ticket payment has been processed.
Tickets may be purchased on the day. However spaces on the workshop are strictly limited, so we’d recommend booking in advance to secure your place.
In the case of event cancellation, refunds on ticket costs will be made after 21 April 2016.
+ a day of free creative workshops! Drop into the Showroom Cinema any time between 11am - 4pm on Saturday 15 August to try your hand at screen printing, Mexican paper craft, zine-making, and making DIY paper garlands.
An exhibition of art and writing created by young people in South Yorkshire.
Our We Can Be Heroes project, funded by Think Big, is now well under way! And we're celebrating all the brilliant stuff created by the young people we're working with by holding a free, public exhibition of their work.
Young people at The Link Community during one a We Can Be Heroes workshop
The We Can Be Heroes exhibition will be held at the Showroom Cinema, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield from Friday 14 - Sunday 23 August 2015. Drop in during the cinema's opening hours to take a look at the amazing prints, posters and publications that the young people have created!
And we'll be launching the exhibition with a whole day of free, creative workshops.
On Saturday 15 August, there will be a day of drop-in workshops taking place in the Showroom cafe. All the workshops are completely free, and are suitable for all ages and abilities!
Drop in any time between 11am - 4pm to have a go at...
And while you're there, you can check out the incredible creative work of over 300 local young people, which will be on display throughout the Showroom.
Are you part of a youth group or organisation based in South
Yorkshire or the north of England? Want to take part in an exciting creative
project that will see your group learn to design and publish your own magazine?
Want to do all this for free? Then read on…
The Edge of the Universe Printing Press are excited to
announce that we’ve won level 2 funding from O2 Think Big. We’re using this money to
fund a project called We Can Be Heroes, which will see us team up with youth
groups and organisations to help them each design, print and distribute their
own magazine.
Each group’s magazine will be themed around the idea of
heroes: personal role models, local leaders, and people whose lives and careers
the group aspire to. The Edge of the Universe team will help the youth group
members to arrange and conduct interviews with their role models, which will be
included in their magazine alongside pages about people’s personal heroes. All
the young people taking part will be given the equipment and skills they need
to write, draw, doodle and screen print their own pages for the magazine.
Each participating youth group will take part in two linked workshops
that will guide them through the creation of their magazine, from planning to
printing. These workshops will take place between May – July 2015. We’ll come
to you – all our equipment is totally portable! – and we can run our ‘shops
during your usual group meeting times. After these workshops the Edge of the
Universe team will collect your group’s finished pages and turn these into
professionally printed magazines. Each group will receive fifty copies of their
own We Can Be Heroes magazine, which the participants can share with their
friends, families, schools and communities.
In August 2015 all the youth groups’ work will be showcased
in a public exhibition, where all the participants can come together, swap
skills, and share their creative talents with members of the public.
And you know what else? It’s entirely FREE to take part!
We’ve run these kinds of magazine-making workshops before
with lots of different groups. The publications they made might give you an
idea of the kind of thing your group might create: I’m interested in taking part! What do I do next?
Drop us an email at edgeoftheuniverseprintingpress@gmail.com,
letting us know who you are, who your group is, and when/where you normally meet,
and we’ll explain more about the details of the project. We can’t wait to hear
from you!
Sarah spent 15 – 21 March 2015 in Iaşi, Romania, on an
exchange programme that saw young people from four European countries come
together to learn about sustainability and social entrepreneurship. Here’s what
she got up to…
When I applied to go on this exchange, it was with very
little idea of what I was actually signing up for. However, since the
birth of the Edge of the Universe Printing Press I’ve come to learn that it
nearly always pays off to say yes to whatever opportunities come our way – even
if we don’t always initially understand exactly what those opportunities are…
And so it was when Rachel from Youth Discovery Ventures (a
really great Sheffield-based social enterprise, who we had worked with before)
let me know that YDV was recruiting the UK participants to a Youth
Entrepreneurship for Sustainability (soon shortened to ‘YES’) exchange, which
would take place in Romania, and asked me if I would like to apply to take
part.
As usual, saying yes turned out to be the right decision, as
my time in Romania was one of the best weeks EVERRRRRR!!!!1!1!1! (Seriously –
it really was)
The exchange was overseen by Suportis, a Romanian social
enterprise focused on youth action, and was attended by groups of five participants each
(one facilitator, who co-led the week, and four participants) from the UK,
Romania, Estonia and Turkey, respectively. Here are some of the things I learned on it:
Things I learned about Romania:
Iaşi (pronounced “yash”) is a city in eastern Romania. Its
population is about the same size as Coventry’s, but Iaşi has far more dogs and
far less intimidatingly gigantic Ikeas. It was a really cool, welcoming city –
not least because the GBP-RON exchange rate meant that a gourmet two course meal
in a scenic sky bar cost about £6 – and being there taught me masses about
Romania’s awesome culture. Here are just three key things:
1. Dancing
Every Romanian I became friends with on the exchange was a
really, REALLY good dancer. One of them told me that dancing was the Romanian
national pastime, and this certainly appeared to be true: every time we were at
a bar and a Romanian song came on, loads of people would immediately leap to
their feet and start doing these (to my eyes) impossibly complicated routines. Fortunately Akif, one of the UK team, was also an incredibly good dancer, which meant that he distracted
attention away from the rest of us Brits as we jerked along to the music,
gamely yet horrendously arrhythmically.
Iaşi being pretty, plus the #sayyes team
2. Singing
In Romania, they take karaoke seriously. We learned this to
our cost: on the first night out we went to a local bar, where we picked a “fun” karaoke song (Britney
Spears’ ‘Hit Me Baby (One More Time)’) to perform as a group. It was only after
making this choice that we realised everyone else in the bar was not only
singing heartfelt ballads, but singing them staggeringly well.
There was actually quite a lot of singing on the trip, as
music served as a great window onto other people’s cultures. Ion, who was part
of the Suportis team and co-ordinated the logistics of the exchange, played
some beautiful, sad folk songs for us, whilst Cristian (Romanian participant)
and Louis (UK facilitator) treated us to a somewhat less moving, although very
enthusiastic, performance of Romanian gangsta rap group B.U.G. Mafia’s seminal
hit ‘Cine E Cu Noi’:
3. Positivity
Partly, I would think, as a result of their recent political
and economic history (Romania only became independent right at the very end of
1989, and became a full member of the EU in 2007), the Romanian team were all
really un-cynical, ambitious and optimistic about what we, as young people, can
achieve. This was in stark contrast to the relatively downbeat, disengaged attitudes that seem to characterise my generation in the UK. It was
really refreshing and empowering to be around that kind of mindset, and to start
to believe that, yes, we do actually have the power to achieve some really
great stuff.
Things I learned about making friends:
I should start by saying that I was very fortunate in that everyone on the exchange was really, really lovely. Here are some ways in
which we became pals:
1. I’m wary of overpraising alcohol – but nonetheless, it does
seem like there are few things that brings people together as effectively as drinking multiple steins of Romanian beer. Drinking was also a great way to get a taste
(har har) of the different participating countries, as every nation apart from
the UK* brought some of their national booze for us all to share: raki from
Turkey; incredibly strong homebrewed wine, incredibly strong homebrewed vodka,
and incredibly strong (are you noticing a theme here?) not-homebrewed palincă
from Romania; and a drink that I can’t remember the name of from Estonia, but
that Wikipedia suggests might be called ‘kali’, that the Estonians miraculously
managed to brew at the hostel (how?!), and which definitely contained
bread (what?! They amaze me).
* Before the trip we
spent a looooong time discussing what we should bring to our intercultural
evening – an event where we were to share our country’s traditions and pastimes with the others – but ended up massively overthinking everything (‘but Cadbury’s and Terry’s
are technically American companies now, aren’t they!?’ ‘I feel like we’re not
giving a very contemporary perspective on British life, here’, etc.). In the
end we were too overwhelmed by choice to actually make a decision, and brought
nothing with us to share except Yorkshire tea. In hindsight, this decision-making
process does seem very fittingly British.
Cheers! / Noroc! / Teviseks! / Serefe!
2. If there was anything that could finally convince me to
ditch my (very) long-suffering Nokia 3220 and enter the twenty-first
century by getting a smartphone, it was this trip. Much as I generally spend my
time get annoyed at my friends for being on Facebook / Twitter at all hours, even when
their real-life pals are stood right next to them, IT’S REALLY RUDE,
GUYS, HOW DO YOU NOT REALISE THAT?!, the YES exchange did open my eyes up to
some of the incredibly positive things social media can also be used for.
Namely, services like Snapchat and Instagram, which are primarily visual, are a
really, really great way for people that don’t (fully!) share a common language
to communicate. And modern technology can be helpfully utilised in other ways,
too – one of the Turkish girls had an ace translation app on her
phone, which was really useful in helping us understand each other.
3. Humour is (obviously) a great way to make friends – much
more so than discussing inter-cultural differences, or your respective
countries’ political issues (very interesting as this stuff is).
'Weird British humour' - the Sheffield-based members of the UK team
But this isn’t to say that humour is a universal language. ‘Your
weird British humour’ was a phrase the UK team heard a lot during the week – and
justifiably so, as I and most of the rest of the British group reached such a
level of sleep-deprived delirium that we did repeatedly enter into very weird states of hysteria during the exchange. And there is also some comedy that
just doesn’t translate that well. In our intercultural evening presentation –
the one we drastically overthought – we made the decision (possibly not a wise
one, in hindsight…) to not tell people things they might already know about the
UK, but to instead give an ‘alternative perspective’ on British cultural life.
Hence why, to exemplify the British sense of humour, we chose to play the
following clip from I’m Alan Partridge to a room full of non-native English
speakers:
The reasons behind exactly why we chose to show this are now lost to the mists of time. Hindsight, once again, is a fine thing.
Nevertheless, joking around was the best way to make pals, I
think. This reached its peak on the last night of the exchange, when Louis and
I spent ages (and ages) telling “knock knock”, “doctor doctor” and “man walks
into a bar”-type jokes to the Estonian group. Somewhat surprisingly, this went
down incredibly well (though seriously, who can fail to be charmed by “Who’s
there?” “The interrupting cow”? Best joke everrr!) Karolin, the Estonian facilitator, then treated us to her own, unique, style of joke-telling, which
consisted of making very surreal, matter-of-fact, totally pointless statements,
and then laughing uproariously until everyone else felt compelled to join in.
These were genuinely some of the funniest jokes I have ever heard.
4. To me, there was a genuine advantage to us not all speaking
the same language to the same level. I realise I’m making this statement from a
position of very naïve privilege – the exchange was conducted in English, and a
lot of the other participants talked about their frustration at not being able
to find the right words to express themselves when speaking in this language –
but because we were all actively working to understand each other, it made
those moments of connection and understanding much more meaningful and
rewarding (or it did to me, anyway). That it was harder for all of us to
communicate than usual made me value that communication much, much more.
And because we had a limited range of
language in which to express ourselves, there was no room to be shy, reserved, or subtle. The restrictions of language forced me to be way
more open, direct, and enthusiastic than I normally would be, and I found this
an incredibly rewarding way to be.
Things I learned about social enterprise:
The YES exchange was part of Erasmus+, which apparently is a
catch-all term that encompasses a huuuuge number of European Union funding
programmes: all of those covering education, training, youth and sport, in fact.
There were three different, themed, weeks to the YES exchange, and
our week looked at ‘sustainability and social entrepreneurship’ – sustainable
development being development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The week started off with activities that saw us identifying
different sustainability issues and examining case studies around different
entrepreneurial leaders. We then used Augusto Boal’s concept of ‘forum theatre’
(yeah, I had no idea what this was either) to explore how we might fix some of
these issues, before filming awareness-raising videos and drawing up business
plans to tackle several specific problems more directly.
We also went on a couple of site visits to social
enterprises in Iaşi. Veggie/vegan café CUIB was like a
home from home – with its racks of bikes outside, cacao-packed cakes, and
Pinterest-worthy coloured pencil lampshades, I could easily imagine CUIB
nestled in Sheffield’s leafy Nether Edge. Guided by principles like slow food,
zero waste and fair trade , CUIB also sold locally and
ethnically made gifts, including this dope magpie badge which is produced by
the Romanian version of the RSPB:
We also visited Util Deco, a large social enterprise on the
outskirts of Iaşi that gives education, training, counselling and (primarily,
and most importantly) work to people with disabilities. A large population of
their staff were people who had been infected with the HIV virus as infants
during 1989-1992 (this was a period when, tragically, blood transfusions caused
a huge number of infections). The work they were doing included garment making,
printing (wahey!!), arts and crafts, and archiving.
A couple of things that really stood out were, firstly, that
this social enterprise very effectively utilised a fillip in the law: Romanian
businesses legally have to employ a certain percentage of disabled people, and
businesses would get around actually doing this by outsourcing their work to
Util Deco. Second was the fact that they had hit upon archiving (maybe not very
cool, but once again legally necessary, and also very labour-intensive) as a
form of job creation.
A bit sadly, if understandably for such a small-scale
operation, Util Deco wasn’t self-sustaining, as they were in a large part reliant on grants
from various European funding bodies in order to keep going. That is to say, the profit they made through the various services they offered was not enough to keep them financially viable; they needed grant money, too.
Things I learned about everything else:
If I had any vague expectations of YES when going into the
exchange, it was that it might improve my technical knowledge about social
enterprises: I thought I might learn about business planning, or the legal
issues governing these kinds of businesses. As it turns out I did learn some of
this technical stuff, though not as much as I initially expected – but I
learned a heck of other, much more important, stuff instead.
As it turns out, social enterprises don’t exist in quite the
way they do in the UK (where we have around 70,000 social enterprises!) in other European countries – in Turkey, for example, they don’t
seem to really exist at all in the way they do here. As such, the exchange had to take us right back to basics, so we could all understand what a social
enterprise is and what it does.
Rather than causing me to think “I already know this” (it’s
very unlikely I would ever think this about anything enterprise-related, as my
business knowledge is worryingly minimal), looking at social enterprise and
sustainability from a position of not knowing was incredibly eye-opening. Going
through the process of questioning core concepts and learning together and from each other was amazing. It meant that, unlike pretty much any
other training course I have ever been on, this exchange actually caused a
profound shift in my, and other people’s, thinking. It was amazing watching
people go from being quiet or even timid at the start of the week to being
articulate, confident and full of ideas by the exchange’s end.
Spending a week in such an intense atmosphere of positivity,
optimism, and co-learning really opened my eyes up to how much we, as
individuals, can actively do in order to help make the world better. It helped
me try to be more open and less cynical, and made me even surer that by leaving
one of my part-time jobs and committing to making the Edge of the Universe
Printing Press a going concern I’ve made the right choice.
I’ve travelled a fair bit in Europe before, but I see now
that I was just skimming the surface of other countries. By the end of the
exchange I was totally fascinated by the various cultures of the other
participants – and really amazed, and heartened, by how well we all managed to
bridge language barriers in order to work together and become friends. It made
me much more aware, and glad of, my own European-ness!
It also made me really appreciate how ridiculously lucky I am
to have been born in the United Kingdom towards the end of the twentieth
century (even if it might not always feel that way!), as well as how embarrassing /
awful it is that I don’t know any other languages, beyond secondary
school-level French. The English levels of the other participants were
astoundingly good, and put the few words I picked up from their languages to
shame (FYI, these were: ‘thank you’ in Romanian; ‘thank you’, ‘cheers’, and a
seemingly taboo swear word that I was taught by semi-accident and then not
explained the meaning of in Estonian; and a love poem in Turkish, which, albeit
somewhat impressive, isn’t particularly practical). This made it feel even
more outrageously presumptuous that the whole exchange was conducted in English.
At the end of the exchange we wrote messages to each other - and these are the ones written to me
What next:
First up, saying a big thank you to Youth Discovery
Ventures, Suportis and the rest of the participants for an awesome week
Secondly, fix my glasses, which I broke, spectacularly, on the first day of the exchange
I loved this whole exchange so much that I definitely want
to go on more of them. There’s so much Europe to see! So many new friends to
meet! So much world to change!
I also really, really enjoyed the process of overcoming
language barriers to have meaningful communication, and also felt like I was
quite good at facilitating this kind of thing – to the extent that I would love, one day, to
be a facilitator on these kinds of projects
Linked to this, I'm hopefully going to start going to a local conversation club in Sheffield, which is aimed at helping develop the language skills of people who can't yet legally access formal English language courses (e.g. refugees)
In terms of the Edge of the Universe, the exchange defined
some key tasks we can do to help focus and improve our social enterprise –
including writing a proper business plan!
I would really like to start doing projects that help
facilitate communication between people from different language / cultural
groups. I think we could make a really big positive impact with these kind of
activities.
Related to this: I’m now dead interested in the experiences
of people who are regularly not communicating in their native language (such as
expats now living in the UK) and their experience of that (how it feels; if it
causes them to communicate differently; if they miss their native language;
etc.). So I want to start making a series of bilingual zines that feature the
stories of these kinds of people
Keep doing more good stuff. Be positive and open. Help change the
world. Say yes!
