Earlier in 2025, I was invited to join the Creative Labour & Digital Futures research cluster and Skagen Institute Transgressive Methods for a two-part workshop on visual practices in research. For the first part of the workshop, I live illustrated a roundtable, where the participants discussed their orientation towards (and away from) transgressive methods. Then, in conversation with ME Luka, I shared my journey from academic research to visual practice.

Danielle Taschereau Mamers live illustrating graphic recording a visual summary of roundtable discussion on transgressive methods with Skagen Institute and Creative Labour Critical Futures cluster at University of Toronto. — *Danielle live illustrating roundtable discussion at Skagen Institute on Transgressive Methods*

To put the work part into the workshop, I shared an invitation with the participants.

An Invitation

I invited the participants to take the writing they were working on during the Institute and distill it into six ideas — the interior pages of a simple, one-page folded zine. Simplifying research into a its core ideas is no small task, and often one completed when the stakes are high, from conference presentations to abstracts to publicity materials for books.

But what if we took up this project from a more joyful space?

Enter the six-idea-zine. A zine is self-published, can be handmade, and is decidedly non-professional. I look to zines as small spaces to experiment, to reflect, to share, and —most of all — to delight.

The invitation is simple:

Generate a list of all of the key ideas and examples in your research or project. Ideally, do this by hand with pen and paper. Don’t re-read what you’ve written — trust your instincts.
Read your list and ask: What are the most interesting ideas? What ideas prompt excitement? Put a little star by 4-6 ideas.
From your starred list, start some visual brainstorming. What images come to mind? What colours pop out? How might you combine words and images to share your ideas concisely?
Start your zine. Using whichever media you feel drawn to, start your visual experiments. I gravitate to pen and markers, but stamps, collage, or any other mark-making tools also work.

My Contribution: An Idea Zine about “Vocational Awe”

Rather than create a six-idea zine from a writing project of my own, I used my zine to think through an idea that has been on my mind for some time. I first read about Fobazi Ettarh’s concept of “vocational awe” in The Good Enough Job (2023) by Simone Stolzoff. Ettarh’s reflection on vocation as a method of exploitation in librarianship gave me new tools to process my own experience in academia.

My zine, put together in the same brief window of time I had given the Skagen Institute participants (a few hours), shares Ettarh’s idea and connects it to my observations from academic precarity.

It’s imperfect, but it’s also something to share and the start of a longer conversation: my goal for every zine I make.