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IMPRINT #1


event SUMMARY

A publishing fair exploring the city through printed matter and independent publications.

Dates

31 November - 01 December, 2019

Location

The Building Center, London, United Kingdom

Supported By



> The EYESORE stall at Imprint featuring prints from A. Kurunis and P. Walker


“We wanted Imprint to be intimate with plenty of time and space to read, chat, meet and build relationships”


When Theo and David proposed the idea for Imprint to the rest of the team, we knew it had to be done. A publishing fair which explores how people are using print to talk about cities!

We wanted Imprint to be intimate with plenty of time and space to read, chat, meet and build relationships. We had a small list of names who we knew and who we wanted to be there. Bucket-list names such as Urban Lab, We Made That, Theatrum Mundi and Columbia Books, Latin Village, Save Ridley Road, ROMP, MonoRhetorik, City Strips and Midge Press. We also knew there were loads of names out there who we didn't know and who needed to be involved. The open call - that ever-reliable friend - did the magic in that respect, giving us the fortune and pleasure of meeting Natassa (Desired Landscapes), Noam (Activating Cities) and Kyriakos (und.), Liam (Design Unlikely Futures), Giorgia & Lorenzo (Unsent Postcards) and the Solidspace team. In the end, we had twenty seven independent publishers from eight different countries with us over the weekend.

Over the last few years we had developed a nice public programme (see Culture Clash & London in Limbo). We wanted to bring that to Imprint and use the opportunity to try new formats. Less talking, more action! Desired Landscapes took us for a walk around Bloomsbury and Alex de Little taught us how to listen to buildings. Resolve and Coram Field's Youth Group collaborated to build a mobile DIY printing press and produce some wicked posters.Afterparti and We Made That encouraged us to print, rip it up and start again. Setareh Noorani evoked memories of our favourite buildings, lost forever to the trauma of redevelopment. We knew a healthy, active public programme would be important for Imprint and with a healthy dose of hindsight now in our minds, the programme did more than we expected. Favourite moment? A number of over-65s with no direct link to us coming down and joining the walking tour. They turned up in full walking gear, sticks and all, after hearing about the tour on an online forum some of them use. "I am really into experimental walking tours on the weekend", was how one lady put it to us.

Imprint captured an atmosphere which has been developing over the last few years. A lot has been said about the resurgence of independent publishing in the last ten years (see Print! Tearing It Up - which we were humbled to be a part of). In our eyes, an under-appreciated subplot to this story has been the embrace of the medium by inter-disciplinary practitioners engaging with the built environment. This has been the story of EYESORE and every single participant who was involved with Imprint. We felt a need to celebrate this by bringing together this diverse mix of groups and individuals in the same place. The hope, and achievement, being that through conversation and interaction we can strengthen this network, and imprint the unprintable in our collective consciousness.
> Participants of Alex De Little's Spacial Listening Workshop > Resolve Collective's DIY youth Print Workshop