Dreamscapes
This one-off free zine is not only a glorious piece of print, it’s also promoting a brilliant charity initiative.
Created by The Face and Burberry, Dreamscapes builds on the luxury brand’s partnership with Marcus Rashford, the National Literary Trust and Macmillan Children’s Books, launched last year.
The partnership was set up to transform the UK’s school libraries by providing books and teacher training. The aim is to encourage disadvantaged children to develop their reading, broaden their imaginations and improve their opportunties.
Such a fantastic cause deserves a brilliant campaign to support it. The zine delivers exaxctly that, showcasing the work of children at Holmleigh Primary School in north London, whose library has already received support from the initiative.
Working with artist Tegen Williams, The Face and Burberry ran workshops with students from years three and six at the school. Each child was asked to imagine themselves as a hero of their own future. The resulting drawings and handwritten notes appear in the zine alongside collages by Williams and photography by Campbell Addy.
The collection of mixed media is enhanced by clever print and production. Slip the zine out of its card envelope and the reader finds a loose-bound set of pages and a page of stickers (above). Bound by elastic, the pages can first be flicked through like a regular magazine but it’s soon clear there is more going on.
Most pages are covered edge to edge in glossy colour imagery: a mix of the children’s drawings and Williams’s collages (above). The dreams. Inserted inbetween these on matt stock are Addy’s portraits, adding a little reality. Shot in front of oversized blank book pages, the children are shown dressed for their imagined future.
The centre spread presents a reproduction of a mural that has been painted near the school in Tottenham (above).
Remove the binding and the entire zine opens up to become even richer, a series of foldout posters mixing all the visual elements from the workshops (video, above).
It’s just a lovely, bright optimistic thing, a perfect expression of the aim noted on the opening page, ‘The first step to changing the world is to imagine it can be different.’
Only 1,000 copies have been produced, and are primarily being distributed to art and community spaces around the children’s school.
A few have also been sent to shops in London and Manchester—we have a very limited number available free at magCulture on a first come basis to visitors to the Shop.