Call for Applications 

In 2025, we are celebrating 60 years of small press collecting at UCL. We are looking for a small press to take up a temporary residency at UCL to help us celebrate and contribute to the programme of events and activities which will run over the course of the year.  

About the residency 

The residency is a collaboration between UCL Special Collections and the Slade School of Fine Art. We are offering a flexible, temporary residency for a small, independent press to develop a publishing project(s), engage with our collections, and feed into our small press anniversary celebrations in 2025.  

The successful press will spend up to 6 weeks or part-time equivalent at UCL, anytime between 1 May and 31 December 2025 (although alternative dates and residency duration might be accommodated, subject to space, staff, and funding availability; the exact schedule will be agreed with UCL Special Collections on appointment.).  

The press will have part-time access to a studio space and the printing workshop at The Slade (including equipment for all forms of intaglio printing, screen printing equipment, an Albion Press, lithography facilities, digital printing suite, a risograph, and bookbinding tools; visit The Slade website for more information about available facilities).  

The press will have freedom to develop a programme of activity, with support from colleagues at UCL Special Collections, but will be expected to:  

• work across the two UCL campuses and engage with staff and student communities at UCL Bloomsbury and UCL East;  

• curate a short programme of activity, feeding into our 60th anniversary celebrations; 

• by the end of the residency, produce a publication (or a group of publications).  

Publications produced during the residency will be acquired by UCL Special Collections and become part of UCL’s Small Press Collections.  

The Small Press in Residence will receive:  

• a grant of £5,000; 

• a part-time studio space at The Slade, on UCL Bloomsbury campus (please note the space might not be available for the duration of the residency, due to other demands on the space; we will discuss space requirements and availability with the appointed press); 

• part-time access to The Slade printing and binding workshop facilities (please note the facilities might not be available for the duration of the residency, due to other demands on the space; we will discuss facilities requirements and availability with the appointed press); 

• mediated access to UCL Special Collections;  

• access to and staff with specialist knowledge of the collections; 

• support in organising and embedding at UCL any proposed programmes of activity.  

The Small Press in residence will be required to provide, as a minimum:  

• a publication, or a set of publications;  

• at least two live public outputs – one at each of the UCL’s two campuses – during or after the residency period, such as talk, event, workshop; 

• a blog post for the UCL Special Collections blog on any aspect of the residency; 

• acknowledgment of the grant in any resulting publications.  

UCL Special Collections will work collaboratively with the Small Press in Residence to develop any programming. We encourage activities with capacity to engage UCL’s diverse staff and student communities in innovative and unexpected ways, showcasing in the process the potential of collections, and our Small Press Collections in particular, for cutting-edge programming. 

About UCL’s Small Press collections  

The UCL Small Press Collections were established in 1965 and now consist of over 4,000 independent literary Little Magazines, artists magazines and counter-cultural newspapers, and over 20,000 poetry pamphlets, artists’ books, and other experimental publications. The collections are global in scope with material having been collected from Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. Strengths of the collections include concrete and visual poetry, Fluxus, and mimeographed magazines. 

Eligibility and Selection Criteria 

The residency programme is open to applicants of any nationality, background, or career stage. Individuals and groups/collectives/communities of interest will all be considered. No affiliation with UCL, past or present, is required.  

Small presses interested in applying will need to ensure that they are eligible to work in the UK before applying. UCL will undertake Right to Work checks for successful candidates. Please us the UK government website to check if you are eligible to apply and what documentation might be required. UCL is unable to support visa applications for this scheme.  

The Selection Committee will consider applications according to the following criteria:  

• suitability of the press and its engagement to date with small press printing and publishing traditions;  

• an interest in engaging with and responding to our collections; 

• the potential of the proposed residency programme to increase visibility and public understanding of small press as a practice and of our Small Press collections;  

• the potential of the project to engage the UCL staff and student community, across the two campuses;  

• the feasibility of the proposal.  

Application process 

Applications should be submitted by Monday, 31 March 2025, 12:00 noon and include:  

• a completed application form;  

• a short CV (up to 2 pages); for group applications, please include a CV for each member of the group involved in the application (uploaded via the application form); 

• a short portfolio of up to 5 pages showcasing the Press’ work to date (uploaded via the application form);  

• a statement of up to 800 words, outlining your proposed publishing project(s), including details of ways in which you plan to engage with our collections and feed into our Small Press Collections anniversary celebrations in 2025 (uploaded via the application form). 

Any evidence submitted after the closing date will not be reviewed by the panels. 

Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact UCL Special Collections before submitting a formal application, to discuss any access, technical, or curatorial requirements that their residency might require. Email: library.spec.coll.rarebooks@ucl.ac.uk. 

Applications will be shortlisted by a panel composed of UCL’s Special Collections experts. Notifications of the award will be made by 16 April 2025. Feedback will be provided to all shortlisted candidates. We regret that we cannot provided detailed feedback to all other applicants.  

 

This post was written by Liz Lawes, Subject Liaison Librarian: Fine Art, History of Art, Film Studies and Collection Manager: Small Press Collections, UCL Special Collections.

UCL’s Small Press Collections, held by UCL Special Collections, are globally important holdings of independently produced and distributed literary little magazines, experimental poetry, avant-garde artists’ and countercultural publications, and supporting bibliographic and archival material.

Established in 1965 by Geoffrey Soar, then the UCL English Librarian, in response to a burgeoning international culture of self-publishing, it was one of the first institutional collections of small press publications anywhere in the world. It was developed despite the myriad challenges presented by such unpredictable, often ephemeral, and bibliographically challenging material.

The collection was intentionally global in scope from the outset with acquisitions being made from across Europe, the Commonwealth, and the United States. As a result, UCL can boast enviable holdings of mid-twentieth century titles published in all corners of the globe, including many originating from Africa and the Caribbean, alongside Black publishers located in the UK and the United States. This includes iconic African titles of the post-independence era such as Black Orpheus, an influential Nigerian literary journal founded to provide a platform for the emerging, independent, West African arts scene. It featured poetry, fiction, and visual art by African and African diaspora writers and artists alongside criticism, commentary and reviews. Black Orpheus was distributed internationally and is considered one of the most important formative influences in Modernist African literature. Transition was published in Kampala, Uganda, as an alternative to the Eurocentric publications that had dominated up to that point. It provided an opportunity for young East African writers to be published for the first time and quickly became the leading intellectual magazine of immediately post-colonial Africa.

Amongst the lesser known titles are Okike, an African journal of new writing published in Nigeria and edited by novelist, poet, and critic Chinua Achebe; Okyeame, found by the Ghana Society of Writers in 1960 as a showcase for Ghanaian poetry, including traditional oral works translated by leading contemporary poets; Busara, an influential Kenyan literary journal; and  Zuka: journal of East African creative writing, affiliated to the University of Nairobi.

The Caribbean is also well represented by titles such as Bim, a pioneering literary journal established in Barbados in the 1940s to provide an opportunity for new writers to appear in print alongside established Caribbean writers, and Savacou (Jamaica), the journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement. US titles such the Journal of Black Poetry, a San Francisco little magazine of the Black Arts era, were also acquired.

In addition to the literary serials, pamphlets, and books, Soar enhanced the collections by including contemporary underground newspapers with a political and counter-cultural emphasis.  We hold, among others, London-based titles such as Black Liberator: theoretical and discussion journal for Black revolution and Black Voice, the journal of the Black Unity and Freedom Party. Black Voice was printed in the form of a tabloid newspaper with pictures and articles documenting British and international political developments from a party perspective. Topics considered included police brutality, apartheid, and the education of African-Caribbean children in British schools. Seen alongside the literary material, these titles provide a synergistic overview of Black cultural and political activity in the second half of the twentieth century.

UCL continues to develop these collections to represent the diversity of the current independent publishing scene. Recently acquired titles include those of New York based BlackMass, an independent press publishing material by Black artists and cultural producers that combines archival photographs and found print material with poetry and jazz music, the Moor’s Head Press On the Blackness of BLACKNUSS pamphlet series, and Blackity: black black black, a poetry zine by queer Black authors published by Cassandra Press.

If you have any suggestions for further additions to the collections, please get in touch!

 

This blog post is the second instalment in the UCL Special Collection Black History Month series exploring Black histories through histories of print and publishing. 

Other posts in the series:

Reprinting Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Kaja Marczewska

The ‘reprint revolution’ and cultures of 20th c. Black publishing, by Kaja Marczewska