Mental Health Zine Library
The Mental Health Zine Library was founded in 2020 in Sunderland, England, as part of the DIY art project strange things? Collective. It focuses on collecting and sharing mental health related zines, and cataloguing them on their website. The collection contains mostly perzines, but also compilation zines and DIY published poetry collections, short stories and comics/graphic novels.
The library began as a project on Kickstarter, as it's aim was to share stories with the local community in the North East.
History
The Mental Health Zine Library forms part of the DIY art collective strange things?, which works in partnership with the mental health charity Washington Mind and their Young People's Project, a counselling and creative wellbeing service for young people in Sunderland, Washington and surrounding areas in Tyne & Wear. They run workshops and work creatively with 11-25 year olds, making art, writing and collaborating on zines as well as making their own.
MHZL now serves as a pop up collection and will soon be moving to the new Young People's Project venue at PopRecs in Sunderland's city centre.
The catalogue
The collection contains a variety of mental health related zines and all that includes, with zines that look at feminism, LGBT and gender identities, race and other topics and themes. MHZL accept donations on a rolling basis via their website.
