‘Whitton Small Press’ was an artist in residence project for Whitton Library, London Borough of Richmond. The project was funded by Arts Council England Art in Libraries fund. The project took place as a part of Richmond Literature festival.
The artists responded to the unique environment of this small library by setting up residence from a cupboard at the back of the reference section. Filling the library with typewriters, rubber stamps and a photocopier they set about creating a set of small edition self published books which were presented to the library as a permanent new addition to the library.
The project started with an Arts Award Explore project with local children from Nelson Primary school. Each week they visited the library and took part in making pop up books, zines, zoetrope strips and a ‘walking book’ of the local high street. During the month long residency Emily and Lizzy offered printmaking, simple book binding, collage and other print based workshops to adults which explored artists books and bespoke books. A giant Praxinoscope was built for the project which was used to explore the meeting of books and animation.
Photos by Hydar Dewachi.
