Collective Publishing Practices is a programme hosted by the Cubitt Community Distribution Centre (CDC), centering on work by community publishers, artists, writers, translators and organisers working through print, collective methodology and community distribution as modes of social action. 

CDC understands publishing as more than producing printed matter. It is the act of making things public together: sharing knowledge, amplifying stories, building connections across languages, borders and contexts, and creating autonomous infrastructures for collective expression in increasingly hostile landscapes for community infrastructure. 

Building on Cubitt Community Press’ work making community newspapers, Collective Publishing Practices is a space to build skills in collective work and share approaches to making community resources, whether zines, maps, flyers, posters, or radio shows. 

PROGRAMME INFO: 

Cubitt Community Book and Zine Fair | Sunday 13 September 2026

 
Cubitt will be hosting our second community book and zine fair, our last at our current venue in Angel, Islington. Focusing on local islington based makers and socially engaged publishers. Open Call for the fair to open in July 2026. 

Risograph Inductions and Open Sessions | June - Sept 2026

 
CDC is open for monthly risograph inductions and open use sessions, come learn how to use the risograph and print your projects! Free workshops, low cost printing for community projects. 

Dates: Sun 28 June, Sat 25 July, Sat 29 August, Sun 20 September
More info + how to book HERE.

 

Our Workshops & Events:

Each event and workshop will co-produce a printed resource, bringing together learnings, readings, collective writing, and more in the form of posters, bootlegged texts, and zines. These will be free to pick up at Cubitt!

Saturday 1st  August

14:00 - 16:30

Les Mots sont Des Murs/ Words are Walls/ Palabras son Paredes

What does it mean to inhabit a hybrid, multilingual space in our publishing work? How can translation become a collective, creative, and experimental process?

Exercises in collective translation led by Seán Elder, Sam Castro & Anahí Saravia Herrera In this workshop, we will work with archival materials (from Cubitt and beyond) to explore how DIY and grassroots approaches can inform translation practices. Through a series of playful collective exercises, we will experiment with different ways of approaching text, poetics, language, and meaning across multiple languages.

[TBC] August

Collective Writing with common/play\grounds

How do we write together? What does it mean to produce something collectively?

This workshop explores collaborative writing as a practice of shared thinking. Through a series of collective exercises using words, drawings, and conversation, we will experiment with different ways of composing together and explore what becomes possible when a text is shaped by multiple voices.

common/play\grounds is a reciprocal project of workshops, experimental performance, and publishing, initiated by Yasamin Ghalehnoie and Sass Popoli. Their collaborative prints respond to the uncertainties of everyday life, scattered memories, their respective artistic practices and points of convergence, and experiences within their bodies. Vowels, letters, and drawings of moments fold into paragraphs of steps and notes, tracing common warmth and neighbouring shades.

Sunday 13th September 

5 - 7 PM 

Distribution Models with Clara Balaguer 

Publishing can be a radical redistribution of cultural resources and capital. Central to this is distribution: ensuring that information, knowledge, and connection circulate within the communities and spaces where they are most needed.

Community publishing pushes against the hoarding of resources and opens up access to information, platforms and reach. It becomes a way of circulating stories, building connections, and expanding who participates in cultural production.

Taking place alongside the Cubitt Community Book and Zine Fair, this discussion and presentation led by Clara Balaguer explores distribution, asking: What does it mean to treat distribution as a core part of our publishing practice?

Clara Balaguer is a cultural worker interested in the decolonisation of cultural production most especially through the lens of the contemporary vernacular. She founded The Office of Culture and Design in 2010, a platform through which she articulates research, residencies, and social practice projects in the Philippines. She explores collaborative authorship through the clandestine publishing of Hardworking Goodlooking, a cottage-industry fuelled imprint she co-founded in 2013.

Wednesday 4th November

5 - 8 PM

Collective Editing with fisherwxmen 

What does it mean to edit together as a shared practice? This workshop explores collective editing as a way of undoing fixed roles in publishing and moving towards more collaborative forms of making, shaping, and deciding through conversation. Led by fisherwxmen, this session brings a hands-on, DIY approach to editing as collective practice.

fisherwxmen is a collaborative project formed through encounters in diaspora, shaped by the tension between staying connected to home and the impulse to leave it. Working with this in-between condition, they use publishing, reading, writing, and translation as collective tools for thinking and making. Grounded in Cyprus and extending toward the Eastern Mediterranean, their practice looks to regional exchange and critiques Eurocentric cultural hegemonies through feminist and anti-colonial perspectives. They approach collective work as a way of holding shared questions, building connections, and imagining forms of refuge and relation together.

Saturday 21 November 

2 - 5 PM 

Why self-publish under fascism? A reading group 

This session will host a collective reading on self-publishing as a tool in increasingly hostile informational landscapes, where control over platforms, narratives, and speech is intensifying in the UK and around the world.

Together we will think about why we publish now, and what self-publishing opens up beyond digital infrastructures, exploring the assumptions about reach and visibility produced by social media platform economies. Alongside this, we will consider community alternatives and begin to map ways of printing with and for our communities. What forms of publishing become possible when we shift our infrastructures? How might these be useful as we organise now and in the future? 

The session takes the form of a reading and discussion space, drawing on Public Collector’s archive of radical texts on the infrastructures of self-publishing:

• Why self-publish under fascism? by Marc Fischer (Public Collectors, 2022)

• How to Prepare Yourself for the Collapse of the Industrial Publishing System by Eric Schierloh (Public Collectors, 2022)

• ISBN? No Thanks and Other Notes Before Starting a Publishing House by Barba de Abejas (Public Collectors, 2023)

Invited guest contributors to be confirmed.

ABOUT CUBITT COMMUNITY DISTRIBUTION CENTRE

Cubitt is building on Islington’s history of radical publishing with our community press: a place to gather, share stories, record our neighbourhood and support local justice projects. The Community Distribution Centre is a space to amplify stories from our borough across London (and beyond). We are working with print (via a MH9350 Risograph Machine) and radio to support local organising, creative resistance, and collective storytelling as tools for radical imagination. We’re open to everyone, but are especially interested in supporting local projects and community groups who would benefit from access to radio and print tools.