Instructions for collective editorial
This exercise, structured as a workshop, is intended to practice editorial activities collectively in a rather small amount of time. It may be used at an advanced stage of the publishing process, especially when individuals aim to bring their personal work or research into perspective with one another. This production format is conceived as an attempt to break an eventual sequential order where individual contributions end up compiling into a communal publication. It requires contributors to engage, in an editorial way, with each other's material.
For a group of 10 people, decide of a minimum of 2 facilitators.
The suggested length of this workshop is about 6 hours.
Prior to the workshop (for everyone): Contributors are instructed to bring a selection of material that has informed their research (text references, image references, etc.) or was produced by their research (text excerpt, text of any kind, diary entries, images or text entries documenting their process, etc.). Contributors are encouraged to think of the relation among the elements they select: this selection, eclectic in the varying format of its elements, may represent an aspect of one's research (ie: A selected external text reference can support a selection of images documenting a process—the material does not need to cover the entire research). All material should be brought printed, formatted and designed upon the contributor's choice: the "collage" nature of the editing process will most likely use the material "as is".
(!) Legibility of text, especially if they are preexisting pdf or scans...
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Prior to workshop day (for facilitators only): The publication's format is defined by the facilitators. The blank pages are laid on the floor or wall of the workshop room as to give an overview of the publication's flatplan. The facilitators bring a dummy on the workshop day in order to help participants to project themselves into the chosen format.
On the day of the workshop:Contributors are invited to briefly present and contextualise their material selection to the rest of the group. (The rest of the group may annotate the material with sticky notes, material for annotation will be provided but participants are also free to bring anything their own editing tools.)
The printed material is "donated" to a "common pool" (In case authorship needs to be tracked back at a later stage, participants should write their name at the back of the printed material).
Activities: The workshop room will be occupied by one group at the time. During transition, a short introduction of the process will be given to the new group entering.
The group is divided in smaller group of at least 2 people.
[Group 1] Sorting (Identifying the different sections that could emerge out of the pool of material. Distributing the material into these different sections.)
[Group 2] Sorting, round 2 (Another group's expertise adjusting (if needed) the decisions made during the previous activity.)
[Group 3] Connecting and ordering (Identifying the connections between the different sections. Deciding on a succeeding order for the publication.)
[Group 4] Formatting (Placing and designing elements of navigation such as title, subtitle, page number, colophon, etc.)
[Whole group] Closing discussion (The entire group is gathered again, final adjustment can be done—define 'final adjustment')
*Annotations may happen through the entire process. Some annotations may directly refer to a specific piece of material OR play a connecting role between several elements, several sections, refer to an entire page, etc.
**This editing process aims at producing this publication collectively: The editing process may result in the production of new meanings from existing material. The focus is placed on the way these gathered elements relate to each other rather than attempting to display a sequence of individual works wrapped in a common format.