
Seeing the Unzine
Episode 69 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Unzines are expressive art/poetry pieces created by the unhoused population of Nashville.
Utilizing the creativity of its vendors, the Contributor street paper has begun an exciting new project called Unzine. Unzines are art/poetry pieces created by the unhoused population of Nashville to express their thoughts and feelings. Unzine pamphlets can be purchased from participating Contributor street paper vendors.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Arts Break is a local public television program presented by WNPT

Seeing the Unzine
Episode 69 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Utilizing the creativity of its vendors, the Contributor street paper has begun an exciting new project called Unzine. Unzines are art/poetry pieces created by the unhoused population of Nashville to express their thoughts and feelings. Unzine pamphlets can be purchased from participating Contributor street paper vendors.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- We can look for images that have to do with Utopia and dystopia or, oh, yeah, somewhere in between.
Art is accessible to everyone.
Art is inside of everyone.
Anytime anyone says, oh, I'm not really an artist, I, what I want to say to them Every time is you are, you have it in you.
So Unzine is an attempt to collaborate with vendors who sell the street paper for the contributor.
We take their poetry or their writings, whatever they want to talk about, and create illustrations around their words.
Let them purchase it for really cheap and sell it for whatever they want, and that gives them another source of income alongside the contributor street paper.
So a zine is just a pamphlet on anything that you can hand to another person and say, Hey, this is my hot take on this, or this is my poetry.
We're flooded with information on the internet.
We don't know what's real.
We don't have sources.
You know, people are just blurting stuff here and there.
Giving information to another person, in person.
You can talk to them about it.
You can get that information from them.
You can ask them questions.
You have a source.
Unzine is a play on words for Unseen.
We do work with the unhoused, we work with the homeless.
So a lot of those people are unseen.
People learn to disregard them on the streets, and people learn not to make eye contact with them.
This gives them a voice to be heard.
Hey, I, I exist, I'm a person.
Most of the time these people just want to be acknowledged.
Creating together another form of community talking, laughing just about nothing and everything.
Once these people are housed and they have all their basic needs met, they're able to tap into that creativity.
They're able to finally get their voice back.
They're able to get their intuition back and put some of their energy towards a, a creative force, giving them like confidence, a place to be.
When a customer buys a zine from them, they light up.
They, they, they feel so proud.
I don't think that they've realized that they've had that in them, that needed to come out until now, you know, until the poetry writing workshops, until being able to contribute to the paper, being able to contribute to unzine.
The people here are just incredible and they all mean well.
We're all rooting for these vendors.


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Arts Break is a local public television program presented by WNPT

