Nourishing Ourselves: A Zine for Creatives and Activists

Inclusive Mosque Initiative is grateful for the opportunity to support Alaa Alsaraji and Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan in the creation of Nourishing Ourselves, a digital zine exploring the importance of using creativity as a way to reconnect with ourselves and our wellbeing. Here’s an excerpt:

“Many artists and creative practitioners of colour carry the responsibility of using our visual, oral, written or other stories to produce counter narratives, to ‘shed light on’, or to ‘represent’. As a result, the open-ended play and joy which brought many of us to love creativity in the first place, is sacrificed to the need to ‘produce’ work under conditions of capitalism which demand constant output.

This zine asks what would happen if we had the time to be creative for the sake of tending to ourselves and each other? What would happen if we reconnected to the love and playfulness which makes creative expression possible, without forcing it to become something with utility? What opportunities, ideas and ways of being might that make possible?

This zine invites you to explore such questions, and to play and think about using your creativity for your own wellbeing. Some of the words, art and feeling in this publication come from a one-day workshop curated by Alaa Alsaraji and Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan upon these themes.

Let these pages gently remind you that we are our most valuable resource, and that our wellbeing is the soil in which the futures we wish to build must take root. For anything to grow, the soil itself needs tending to, not just once, but over and over.” You can find the full zine in pdf format in our resources folder.

• Uncategorised