Why pay an-arm-and-a-leg-and-maybe-a-bit-more for a return ticket to London to go to an overpriced zine fair made by and for Londoners, when we have a thriving zine community at home? That’s the question that got the Cambridge Zine Fair started.

The Cambridge Zine Fair is designed to fill a gap in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire more widely for accessible, community-oriented creativity and independent publishing. Whilst other cities across the UK regularly host independent publishing and zine fairs, we noticed that despite Cambridge’s long and rich history of creative publishing, there has been little opportunity to bring everyone together to share their projects, endeavours and ambitions. Our goal was, and continues to be, to host an accessible, local zine fair which reflects all facets of Cambridgeshire communit(ies), offering the opportunity for creators to meet like-minded and nearby new friends, to discover the rich creative culture bubbling beneath our fens, and emphasise the importance of free, creative third spaces in the city and beyond. 

The organising collective behind the Cambridge Zine Fair is formed of a mixture of born-and-bred locals and bred-but-not-born transplants, representing a full spectrum of Cambridgeshire walks-of-life. Our shared interest in zines and building creative community drew us together to develop this project from nearly nothing to a growing collective of zine-lovers. Those involved in organising the Zine Fair do so around multiple jobs, caregiving commitments, education and more - meaning that the time and contributions vary, but the enthusiasm for our work doesn’t!

If you would like to volunteer time or resources to the Cambridge Zine Fair, email us at cambridgezinefair@gmail.com - we’d love to have you on board. 

The initial funding for the Cambridge Zine Fair stems from an award of £500 from the University of Cambridge’s University Library Rose Book Prize. This Prize was awarded to member of the organising collective, Atlanta Tsiaoukkas, for her extensive collection of Cambridgeshire and London zines, and is the first time the Prize has been awarded to a collection of zines and independently published magazines. However, running a Zine Fair can be an expensive endeavour, and our goal to ensure our Fair and workshops are completely free to participants means we are effectively a community-funded project. If you would like to contribute to the Zine Fair, please consider donating a small sum. Donations help pay for workshop supplies, resources for stallholders and administrative costs - as well as increasing the possibility that we can do this all again next year!