A reflective & celebratory zine & multimedia archive
The Garden has been the longest continuously running project of its kind in the UK for a while now, and in 2026 it’s reached a full decade! To reflect on, celebrate and share some of the experiences of the last ten years, we’re going to publish a zine and multimedia archive… could you contribute?
Our vision
A collection of perspectives from many different folks who have been connected to The Garden over the last 10 years! We hope it will be something people can dip into and get a sense of the complicated reality of a self-directed learning community over time.
We’ll create a printed zine so there’s something physical and accessible – and the multimedia archive on The Garden website will let us include more depth and diversity – including longer form writing, audio, images and even video. We hope to include a ‘guide/welcome to the Garden’ zine currently being developed by current young people and mentors within the zine!
The scope and scale of this project will inevitably shift as we get a sense of the responses and contributions folks offer … we hope to share a pre-view draft at the Freedom to Learn Forum in August, and to publish and launch at a celebration in September. We would love to see you at either/both events!
Timeline for contributions
Please submit your contributions by 6th July, or earlier if you would appreciate editorial support.
Who is invited to contribute?
Anyone who attended The Garden as a young person, who was in the community of families, who worked as a mentor (including cover), or who has had other forms of involvement such as offering sessions, professional visits or research.
What forms of contribution are you looking for?
TLDR: Anything! We want this to feel accessible: if you have an idea that inspires and motivates you to contribute, that idea is right!
How to submit:
We’re offering this form as an invitation to share unpolished thoughts and fragments of writing as well as composed pieces! You can submit as many responses as you want, anonymously or with your contact included. We hope to dip into these as material to include in the zine, in creative formats, or extracts grouped together by theme…
This form also works as a portal to submit complete pieces, proposals for ideas you would like our input to develop, and pieces where you are open to being in editorial correspondence. If the form does not work for you for any reason, you can also submit by email to hello@thegardenbristol.org.uk
Our plans for different formats of contributions:
The zine:
The zine will be restricted by format and length to printable media. We’ll have a limited number of pieces of writing printed in full, and we will be in editing correspondence with those who are willing to develop their contribution to a suitable format.
We won’t print long-form (eg anything over 1000words & some 500-1000 words) pieces in full in the zine but where possible will print an excerpt and link by QR code to a complete version of the piece in the multimedia archive.
We’ll include some of the fragments shared via the form in the zine as well
The multimedia archive:
This is for everything that can’t be contained within the zine: long form writing, photos with captions & context, audio, film…
We will include signposts to the multimedia archive in the zine: images or excerpts with QR codes to navigate direct to it.
We intend to make it navigable but not over-presented!
Content & Themes
We don’t want to control these. We invite the contradictory, and the uncertain alongside the beautiful and the celebratory. We’re interested in narratives, reflections and any creative formats that work for you.
We’d love to see your personal experience of and relationship to The Garden in your contribution. We’re interested in the concrete details of your experience of The Garden, and how it connects to broader themes that are present in your life – particularly in relation to deschooling, community, and the messy business of being humans in the societal contexts (school, hierarchy, capitalism, colonialism) we live in!
If you’re looking for a starting point, here are a few prompts:
- Something you have done (beyond The Garden) that was impacted by the influence of The Garden…. how your experience of The Garden influenced it…
- What changed in how I understood [schools/education/learning/career/community/conflict] during my time at The Garden
- A memory that has stayed with me from The Garde
- Something I contributed to The Garden community
- What was challenging about The Garden for me?
- One thing I loved/found difficult to explain about what The Garden was to other people in my life
Our role as editors
We will edit for confidentiality and the privacy of both young people and adults. Any accounts that may be identifiable should have explicit consent from the people concerned, and/or identifying details (names, specific details such as age/gender/specific special interests – bearing in mind we’re an interconnected community) may be changed to protect privacy.
We will consider whether there is anything in the piece that could negatively impact individuals in The Garden community: past, present or future – or The Garden as a childcare organisation – from being publicly available
The zine will be edited for accessibility and to give a broad picture of the 10 years of The Garden
The multimedia archive will share pieces in their original and complete format as much as possible
Thank you so much in advance for getting involved with this project!