News / 28 May 2024
Students collaborate with The Leeds Library to create chapbook
BA (Hons) Creative Writing
BA (Hons) Graphic Design
BA (Hons) Creative Writing and BA (Hons) Graphic Design students collaborated with The Leeds Library to publish 'Margins', a chapbook inspired by the library.
BA (Hons) Creative Writing students were briefed by The Leeds Library to write prose and poetry on the theme of 'margins'. Students visited the library during the project to find inspiration in the library's book collections.
For the brief we arrived at the idea of the margin - and what happens in the side of the things everybody’s supposed to be concentrating on. And that’s a really interesting zone for creative and contradictory responses. We’ve got lots of examples in our collection of annotation. Marginalia, which is people writing back to the official printed versions of the texts. So we thought this would be a really great brief summed up into one word to set the students off working.
Ian Harker, poet and Marketing and Communications manager at The Leeds Library
Final year BA (Hons) Graphic Design students Georgia Crosby and Eve Clayton designed the chapbook. The first print run of the chapbook was produced by Susie Rumsby, Leeds Arts University Print Room Instructor and trustee of The Leeds Library, in our Blenheim Walk print room using our printing and book binding facilities.
Once the book was published, the students had the opportunity to read their work aloud in front of an audience at the launch event held at The Leeds Library.
A copy of 'Margins' is now on the shelves at the library and is available for library members to read.
“I love anything collaborative with other courses, especially visual design. I think sound and literature goes together quite a lot, but visual arts and literature don’t often go together and I think it’s a really nice opportunity. And also the ability to have something published- that’s great."
Xanthe Lowrie, BA (Hons) Creative Writing student