ICT4S’24 Zine

While academic papers give us space to express our knowledge and expertise, we also need spaces to express our views, feelings, and creative expressions towards a more sustainable life on this planet. We are therefore very excited to share this call for contributions to the ICT4S Zine 2024!

As an alternative to the official program and traditional, peer-reviewed publications, this track is inspired by zine culture and calls for contributions to a conference zine that will explore alternative visions, ideas and critiques on the topic of sustainability and ICT. It’s a creative format, usually in a paper/booklet format with much freedom to craft, create, write and reflect through imagery, illustrations, cutouts or regular text. You name it! You could for instance do poetry, comics, art, cartoons or write shorter, creative texts.

Our intention is not to have exclusively professional-grade design work in this zine. Instead, we want participants to be inspired by the DIY-nature of zine culture that welcomes all skill levels. For inspiration, we recommend looking up the DIY Methods Conference which is an academic conference in the form of a zine circle. Last years proceedings can be found here: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:60003/

For the zine, we invite you to creatively explore, critique or reflect on or more of the following prompts (not limited to these):

• Research: (alternative) methods; ethics; overlooked places and contexts; radical versions of your own research; radical versions of ICT4S research in general

• Education: pedagogy and methods for teaching sustainability and ICT; skills and competences; climate anxiety, emotions in teaching

• Futures: ICT4S in the future or past; history; narratives around technology; old vs new practices;

• Beyond academia: experiences in industry and society; challenges; ethics of practice; ICT practitioners/professionals; policy; activism;

• Design & art: making, breaking, remixing; tools for creating and reflecting; games; artful expressions; screen-prints; craft;

or anything else

The zine will be co-created, printed, and shared with conference attendees at ICT4S in Stockholm in June. We will also print the zine in A1 and make a collage at the venue, with a zine café setup to allow conference participants to craft their own comments and responses. All contributions will later be scanned and collated into a final, digital version for wider circulation and archiving.

We hope this new addition to the program can spark conversations about what ICT4S is and how ICT4S research can be done otherwise.

Submissions

To participate, send us a pitch via ict4sotherwise@gmail.com, with a title and a pitch describing the proposed topic and format.

The final zine is intended to be in a paper zine format in the size of an A5 paper. The pitch should not be longer than 500 words. We will accept submissions on a rolling basis, with a final deadline 8 March.

Submitted pitches will be curated and accepted based on relevance to the zine theme and the ICT4S conference in general.

If your pitch is accepted, you will be invited to craft your contribution to the zine, with an open submission window until the final deadline on 24 May (In other words, you can submit whenever you want, but no later than the final date to be included in the zine)

For the zine, we aim to be as inclusive as possible and will request you to prepare a plain text version (with image descriptions) of your contribution to be shared alongside the full-format zine.

Timeline

• Rolling acceptance, with a final submission deadline at 8 March
• 24 May: Final deadline for submission
• 24-28 June: Zine printed and shared at ICT4S 2024

Co-creating the zine

We aim to be quite involved in the process of making this zine and hope to foster interactivity with accepted authors during the spring, helping each other and co-create the final version of the zine.

To support this, we will invite authors to a zine circle/meetup in the beginning of May to share, discuss and work on the zine. We will try to cater to different time zones depending on who’s participating.

We will cover the printing costs for zine production.

Print and design requirements

• Length: We expect most submissions to be between 1 and 6 A5 pages, but there is room for more if needed.

• Size: 148 x 210 mm (5.5 x 8.5 in).

If you have any specific requirements or requests, please contact us and we will figure it out!

If you have any questions, contact us via ict4sotherwise@gmail.com.