This zine is available here in print form in a quantity of 5, as they are meant to be distributed. They come with random-color covers. This zine is also available to read for free or to print yourself here.
Hey Gang, Let’s Put On a Show is a short, cursory guide on how to organize different DIY events, and why now it’s more important than ever to do so.
Interacting with people online is great! It allows you to talk to people across the world, to check in with friends who for whatever reason can’t leave the house, to stay in regular touch with people whose schedules don’t match up with yours, to have entire conversations in the form of gifs of otters. It can be a great way to maintain social ties, but my god people, we need to hang out in person. We need local communities, we need to talk to each other without the mediation of a device made of rare earth minerals extracted by enslaved children and assembled in a massive sweatshop using software owned by a handful of evil billionaires and surveilled by every state and corporate power out there. Not always! But at least sometimes.
This is not just because making friends and hanging out with said friends is fun. Though, turns out, it’s great; people love it. It’s also the basis for actual community, the kind that can show up when someone’s sick, when someone has a baby, when someone’s threatened with deportation, eviction, or prison, or otherwise need support. The kind that can be called on when there’s a project that needs to get done, or art that needs an audience, kids that need 2 to be cared for, a metaphorical (or literal) barn that needs to be raised, or cookies that need to be eaten. Creating these communities involves taking real world action; it even involves doing some work. The first step is getting people together. Where you go from there depends on you and your community, but it sure beats staying home arguing with a bot on a billionaire’s vanity project website.
If there’s already a strong community where you live, that you feel welcomed into, that’s fantastic, and any events you put on will be good for that community. If there isn’t one, this can help you build one, or at least create some space for it to exist. It’s not a one person job, but one person, or a small group of people can help kick things off. You don’t have to wait for other people to put on the events you want to attend. You can just organize them! Most DIY or collective spaces started because the people involved in them felt like the things they wanted weren’t being offered, and so they created them. Maybe you want to put on a show, create an art installation, host a game night, organize a secret tunnel rave, perform a play, or plan an autonomous gathering like a book fair. Some events are going to have a lot more moving pieces than others, but at their core, most events require space, people to help plan it, and the equipment needed to run the event. This zine will cover some tips for organizing different kinds of events, but will focus in more detail on shows and DIY concerts.
This zine is part of the Live Like the World is Dying skills series, an ever-growing collection of zines about basic community preparedness topics. Each will explore different essential skills and are designed to be printed and held on to as reference material. You have our blessing to print and distribute these zines as widely as you are capable, so long as you do not do so for profit and ideally distribute them for free.
This zine is available here in print form in a quantity of 5, as they are meant to be distributed. They come with random-color covers. This zine is also available to read for free or to print yourself here.
Hey Gang, Let’s Put On a Show is a short, cursory guide on how to organize different DIY events, and why now it’s more important than ever to do so.
Interacting with people online is great! It allows you to talk to people across the world, to check in with friends who for whatever reason can’t leave the house, to stay in regular touch with people whose schedules don’t match up with yours, to have entire conversations in the form of gifs of otters. It can be a great way to maintain social ties, but my god people, we need to hang out in person. We need local communities, we need to talk to each other without the mediation of a device made of rare earth minerals extracted by enslaved children and assembled in a massive sweatshop using software owned by a handful of evil billionaires and surveilled by every state and corporate power out there. Not always! But at least sometimes.
This is not just because making friends and hanging out with said friends is fun. Though, turns out, it’s great; people love it. It’s also the basis for actual community, the kind that can show up when someone’s sick, when someone has a baby, when someone’s threatened with deportation, eviction, or prison, or otherwise need support. The kind that can be called on when there’s a project that needs to get done, or art that needs an audience, kids that need 2 to be cared for, a metaphorical (or literal) barn that needs to be raised, or cookies that need to be eaten. Creating these communities involves taking real world action; it even involves doing some work. The first step is getting people together. Where you go from there depends on you and your community, but it sure beats staying home arguing with a bot on a billionaire’s vanity project website.
If there’s already a strong community where you live, that you feel welcomed into, that’s fantastic, and any events you put on will be good for that community. If there isn’t one, this can help you build one, or at least create some space for it to exist. It’s not a one person job, but one person, or a small group of people can help kick things off. You don’t have to wait for other people to put on the events you want to attend. You can just organize them! Most DIY or collective spaces started because the people involved in them felt like the things they wanted weren’t being offered, and so they created them. Maybe you want to put on a show, create an art installation, host a game night, organize a secret tunnel rave, perform a play, or plan an autonomous gathering like a book fair. Some events are going to have a lot more moving pieces than others, but at their core, most events require space, people to help plan it, and the equipment needed to run the event. This zine will cover some tips for organizing different kinds of events, but will focus in more detail on shows and DIY concerts.
This zine is part of the Live Like the World is Dying skills series, an ever-growing collection of zines about basic community preparedness topics. Each will explore different essential skills and are designed to be printed and held on to as reference material. You have our blessing to print and distribute these zines as widely as you are capable, so long as you do not do so for profit and ideally distribute them for free.
