Call for contributors! for another print project

this time on bullying. 🙃

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking very often, “wait, those adults were bullies. They called it demanding respect from us childhood but it was bullying.” Very often.

The frequency of this realisation is partly because I’m finally an adult (as in the age my mum was when she had what was meant to be her last/fifth child ). And having arrived at adulthood, I’m surprised by the many things I do not incline to do kids around me: have them acknowledge my presence, carry my stuff, do things for me, forbid their questions… just because I’m older.

So many of Restful’s readers are between 25 and 34, which means most of you lot are currently reckoning with your childhoods in life-defining ways, and not just yours but also that of the new children you and your agemates are raising, teaching or just watching around you. My sense of Restful’s readers is that you’re the kind of people who have wondered at some point: what can authority look like without cruelty?

And more broadly: how do children experience power (and powerlessness)?

a fundamental question every generation faces in its past and its future, simultaneously.

So! I’m itching to work with paper again! I want to run a smaller print project than the Restful anthology. Scrappier in material quality but weightier.

This time: around Benjamin Clementine’s ‘Phantom of Aleppoville’ and Danez Smith’s ‘Rose’.

‘Phantom of Aleppoville’ is one of the things that got me together in the famous 2017. And the last lines in Rose stunned my head to silence the first time I read it. And reminded me of times that I, too, have chosen ease and convenience over kindness and compassion. I am deeply grateful that these two pieces exist and would love to work with them as a ‘point of contact’, so to speak.

So what am I calling for?

People interested in thinking out loud and in a virtual community, about children bullying at home and in school. Children bullying children. Adults bullying children. Children bullying adults.

Most of my readers are Nigerian but I’m open to experiences from any African country. As usual, you don’t have to identify as a writer or artist.

I want to make a print zine out of our collective thinking about children’s agency exercised, denied and punished.

Writing, photography, sketches, paintings, something sculpted, something cooked, a conversation, anything made. If 3d, we’ll find a way to translate it to 2d.

I’m thinking:

We’ll meet for 1-2 hours for 4-6 weekends to discuss the matter (bullying) and workshop our entries for the zine.

A small print run. Maybe 50. Printed and assembled by me. I’ll see if I can get Mr Segun in Lagos to bind for me.

Contributors get a copy each. Whatever I manage to sell, after printing and project management fees deducted, we will share the money evenly among contributors. Details will be collectively decided.

I kiki, but I know this is heavy stuff and I will do my best to create a soft space where you share only as much as you feel safe and comfortable with. Silence is welcome. (In fact, that’s a major part of this whole thing, isn’t it?)

💡 If interested, email me at hello@studiostyles.org by 22 July (two weeks from now) with:

• a sense of what you would like to contribute (form: an essay, a poem, a photograph?) + (angle: what about bullying or the song or the poem are you thinking about?)

• a sample of previous work

Also, if you’d like to sponsor this project as an advertiser or otherwise, please lmk too.