Climate Action in the library: a Zine Workshop
Promotional poster for the Climate Action Zine workshop at UTSC Library.
In March 2025, I facilitated a collaborative zine-making workshop in partnership with the UTSC Sustainability Office, that brought together students, staff, and faculty to reflect on climate action within academic libraries. Participants were invited to create their own page for a collaborative climate action zine by drawing, writing, or responding to the workshop prompt and theme.
The workshop explored the question: How can our library imagine a sustainable future that responds to the hopes, fears, and lived realities of our communities in the context of climate change? Through this collective making and discussion, participants engaged with climate action in academic libraries in ways that felt personal, imaginative, and community-oriented.
Grounded in participatory making, zine pedagogies, and open scholarship approaches, the workshop aimed to create an inclusive space that valued different ways of learning, communicating, and sharing knowledge.
Workshop handout featuring project background, participation instructions, and a climate action reflection prompt, alongside a blank space where participants could draw, collage, write, and create their individual contributions to the collaborative zine.
The Climate Action Zine workshop explored zine-making as both a pedagogical tool and a form of scholarly expression that encourages reflection while valuing diverse ways of knowing, learning, and communicating.
The 2-hour workshop included:
A brief presentation and discussion on climate change, community resilience, climate research and scholarship, and the role of academic libraries in supporting environmental engagement.
A short introduction to the history of zine-making, including conversations about zines as accessible, community-driven tools for creativity, resistance, and knowledge sharing.
Dedicated time for participants to create, draw, collage, write, and discuss their individual zine pages as part of the collaborative publication.
My slide deck and materials were developed as open educational resources, designed to be used, adapted and remixed by librarians, facilitators or educators.
I hope to provided a flexible framework for running participatory zine-making workshops that engage students in climate action, academic libraries, and community-based knowledge creation.
You are welcome to download and adapt the slides and handouts for your own use, using the link below.
This work is licensed by Nicole Slattery (2025) under CC BY-NC.
After gathering feedback from participants and reflecting on the experience, I came to see workshops like this as meaningful spaces for shared learning, creativity, and community knowledge creation.
The workshop demonstrated how collaborative, arts-based approaches can foster environmental engagement, encourage conversation and connection, and help academic libraries imagine more responsive, caring, and justice-oriented futures.
