The Rio Hondo College librarian Claudia Rivas was one of the 25 applicants to be part of UCLA’s California Rare Book School’s inaugural Radical Librarianship Institute. More than 300 librarians applied. Rivas was selected. After attending some RLI(Radical Librarianship Institute) for a week, she received 10,000 dollars. It is to have a library project that she has been working on. Rio Hondo College Library’s Zine Outreach Project is intended to target the Río Hondo College campus and Whittier area communities, and especially teen and young adult populations, in encouraging and inspiring them to tell their unique stories

Chosen Applicant

After speaking to Rivas she expressed how she felt being selected as one of 25 applicants, “Pretty good! Out of the 25, 20 of us are actually an art project in connection with zines.”

Rivas was pretty excited to see her project of zines align with the other applicants. 

Rivas talked about the expectations for this project. “It’s a three phase project. The first phase is a zine fest, which will take place over two days Tuesday October 10 2023, and Wednesday October 11, 2023. We are going to have professional Zinesters come and present their work as zinsters and what inspires them.” Claudia went on to say that there will be 11 panelists who will be presenting over those two days. “The second phase will be a series of workshops where students will have the opportunity to make their own zines,” Rivas explained phase two of the zine project. Claudia did say that they will provide all the materials and everything is free. Some of the workshops students will have to register and others are walk-ins. 

Publication for Zines

The third phase for this project will be publication. “In the end we are going to have a printed book of all of the zines that have been made during our workshops and donated to our collection,” Claudia explained about the final phase of the zine project. Rivas said that any student that participates either by attending the zine festival or workshop and also contributes to zine will be getting 25 dollars to spend at the student store. 

Claudia said that they will be working on getting physical zines and digital ones. From a page to a whole booklet students will get to create their own zines. Rivas has been working on this project since 2019 with some workshops. The pandemic put a pause on the project but Rivas will attempt to bring it back. Workshops will begin October 16, 2023 and will go on until November.