Zines from a bunch of different collaborative projects. Some images link to flip books so you can look inside!
Tomato seed saving poster
Feo de Riogordo tomatoes throughout the 2025 growing season at Ally Park Kitchen Garden. Saved seeds available from Glasgow Seed Library
Zine coming soon!
A Year in the Life of the Food Forest
Ally Park Food Forest is a much-loved community growing space in the east end of Glasgow. The trees were planted by over a hundred local residents and primary school kids in March 2016. A team of volunteers maintains the area, which is full of fruit and nut trees, berries, herbs, fire pit, wildflower meadows, willow dome, and biodiversity habitats.
This zine was created by a group of Food Forest volunteers (many of whom are artists and makers) who came together every Thursday to grow veggies, cook over a fire, share good food, and care for this beautiful space for all to enjoy.
Sow a Seed, Grow a World
Design & illustration by Josie Vallely. Photography, text & workshop facilitation by Clem Sandison.
The Women in Farming Group aimed to empower women who are marginalised because of race, ethnicity, or immigration status to develop skills in ecological farming and social enterprise.
The project was developed by Central and West Integration Network, Glasgow Community Food Network, and artist Clem Sandison. The group met weekly (Sep 2021 – Jun 2022) to enjoy food together, attend workshops and travel outside the city to visit regenerative small farms. The programme provided tasters in different aspects of livestock farming, horticulture, herbal medicine, business skills and more, to enable BPOC women to form their own food growing co-op or social enterprises.
Soil City + Soil Memory / Suelo de la ciudad + Memoria del suelo
Hannah Brackston, Clem Sandison and Alex Wilde from Open Jar Collective spent two weeks in Madrid investigating the soil ecosystems around the river in collaboration with INLAND and Huerta Matadero. We hosted walks, talks, community meals and a series of workshops. Participants were invited to work with plant specimens and soil samples collected along El Rio Manzanares to create a series of prints, hand-made papers and books.
At the closing event people gathered for a meal at Huerta Matadero to share research findings and explore actions that can be taken for the future of the soil and river ecosystem in Madrid. We created a dual language zine in Spanish and English with a collection of the work created during the residency, including conversations with scientists and urban planners from Madrid.
Zine design by Hannah Brackston. Editing by Clem Sandison and Alex Wilde. Translation by Daniela Pascual.
Soil City
Launched at Glasgow International 2016, Soil City was a long term project by Open Jar Collective, engaging with the citizens of Glasgow and a wider community of scientists, artists and activists, to reimagine the city as if soil matters. We created a newsprint zine with writing, illustrations, photos and contributions from other artists and collaborators.
Commonwealth Home Cooking
A cookbook project with a group of women from Central & West Integration Network, who came together to share the flavours of their childhood. Almost all the recipes in this book have been passed down by mothers, grandmothers and aunties, through the ritual of women preparing family meals together in the kitchen.
Design & illustration by Josie Vallely. Photography and workshop facilitation by Clem Sandison.
Lentils, ladies’ fingers & Imperial biscuits
The Empire Cafe was an exploration of Scotland’s relationship with the North Atlantic Slave trade through tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, music, visual art, lectures, poetry, debate, workshops, historical walks, film and literature. The cafe was based at The Briggait (home of the Merchant’s Steeple) in Glasgow during the Commonwealth Games 2014.
The Empire Cafe served a changing daily menu developed through a series of workshops with community cooks and migrant women’s groups in Glasgow. We looked at how the food we eat has been shaped by colonialism, and how this violent extractive history continues to impact on food and farming systems in Scotland and in the Global South. We also celebrated the sheer joy and connection that comes from cooking and sharing a meal.
Zine design & illustration by Emily Chappell. Photography, text and workshop facilitation by Clem Sandison
Land Dialogues 