Introduction

Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism in social movements. While archival studies has already explored the collection and preservation of zines as important cultural artefacts (see Chidgey 2006, 2013; Eichhorn 2013; Fife 2019; Lymn 2013), this article considers the capacity for zines—as product and process—to act as a form of community archive. Community archives involve the participation of communities to create and disseminate heritage narratives on their own terms (Flinn et al. 2009), re-asserting their significance within historical narratives that may seek to exclude them. Similarly, zine-making shares the ethos of collaboration, self-determination and resistance that is central to community archiving.

This article draws on zine-making as a methodological tool in a research project focused on reimagining Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area (also known as KAVHA, Kingston or, in the Norf’k language, Daun’taun), a UNESCO World Heritage listed site on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific Ocean. In this article, we focus on the first zine in the Reimagining KAVHA zine series, See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise (2021), which centres on the former site of the Paradise Hotel in Kingston. The removal of the Paradise—and subsequent community responses to it—provides one example of the broader contestations regarding heritage, politics and cultural identity that are being grappled with on Norfolk Island. The zine draws together policy fragments and archival materials alongside the community’s stories, memories, photographs and reimaginings of the Paradise Hotel site (now a landscaped picnic area) in an effort to document perspectives not captured in the dominant heritage narratives of KAVHA.

Our article unpacks how zines can operate as a community archive and, in doing so, serve as an apparatus for cultural justice that disrupts the authorised heritage discourse underpinning KAVHA’s interpretation and management. We begin with an overview of the key literature on community archives and zines, followed by some background on the historical and political context of Norfolk Island. The article then explores zines as an arts-based, participatory research tool oriented towards cultural justice, outlining how we ran the workshops and created See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise. Reflecting on the zine-making process and the content of the zine, we structure our analysis using Caswell’s (2014, 2020) six key principles of community archive discourse—participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, archival activism, reflexivity, valuing affect—before proposing ‘collaborative reminiscence’ as a seventh principle. We argue that zines, as community archive, work to strengthen the presence of marginalised voices in dominant historical narratives while also offering an important resource for community-building and political resistance.

Literature review

Bastian and Alexander (2009, p xxiii) note that alongside ‘an expanding and expandable view’ of what constitutes a record, there has emerged a more complex understanding of what constitutes an archive. These shifts in understanding have emerged through ‘archival turns’ that have emphasised ‘archiving as a process rather than archives as things’ (Ketelaar 2017, pp 231–232) and a ‘stretching of the meaning of archives’ through a consideration of something ‘as archive’—symbolically, metaphorically, discursively (p 238). Increasingly nuanced definitions of record and archive have ‘challenge[d] archivists to look beyond traditional practice’ and to consider ‘the stuff of minor narratives’ as archival (Bastian and Alexander 2009, p xxiii). Bastian (2013), for instance, suggests that a conceptualisation of ‘cultural archives’ can capture how dynamic living heritage practices and expressions can be understood as important records that exist beyond more traditional archival repositories. While concerns have been voiced that the unrestrained opening up of the concept of ‘archive’ may ultimately reduce its meaning, Ketelaar (2017, p 239) argues: ‘Let anything be “as archive” and let everyone be an archivist. The important question is not “what is an archive”, but how does this particular individual or group perceive and understand an archive?’ With such a broad scope in meaning, archives and records can be framed in a multitude of ways: ‘as an experience’, as ‘an interface with and constituent of the social world’, and in terms of ‘what a record does in social relations’ (Ketelaar 2017, p 260). It is in the spirit articulated by Ketelaar that this article approaches a conceptualisation of zines as community archive.

Community archives

Community archive is a term that ‘characterise[s] a non-traditional archival collection specifically tied to a particular group, often one that may be undocumented or under-documented by traditional archival institutions’ (Bastian and Flinn 2020, p xx). The concept has long been only ‘loosely defined’ and therefore represents a diversity of practices (Bastian and Flinn 2020, p xxii). Gilliland (2017, p 56), in describing a need for the archival multiverse to be open to and tolerant of a multiplicity of traditions and paradigms, notes that community archives ‘exemplify a range of less conventional and hybrid models of record-keeping and memory-keeping, especially for communities who have traditionally been submerged, ignored or silenced through official archives and their practices’. Offering a ‘broad and inclusive’ definition of community archives, Flinn and Stevens (2009, p 5) describe these as ‘the (often) grassroots activities of creating and collecting, processing and curating, preserving and making accessible collections relating to a particular community or specified subject’. These are sites in which ‘communities can make collective decisions about what is of enduring value to them, shape collective memory of their own past and control the means through which stories about their past are constructed’ (Caswell 2020, p 24). As Flinn et al. (2009, p 73, original emphasis) have determined, community archives are predominantly characterised by ‘the active participation of a community in documenting and making accessible the history of their particular group and/or locality on their own terms’.

Community archives, in their efforts to ‘“recast” histories’, are ‘political and subversive’ endeavours that seek to redress ‘distortions and omissions’ in dominant historical narratives and heritage institutions (Flinn and Stevens 2009, pp 3–4). With a purpose to collect, create and own the means to ‘challenge, correct and re-balance’ historical absences and ‘partial narratives’, community archives have been regarded ‘as counter-hegemonic tools for education and weapons in the struggle against discrimination and injustice’ (Flinn and Stevens 2009, pp 6–7). As Cook (2013, p 116) posits when proposing ‘community’ as one of four frameworks of archival identity:

Community archiving, as concept and reality, evidently makes us think differently about ownership of records, replevin, oral and written traditions, the localism-globalism and margins-centre nexus, multiple viewpoints and multiple realities about recordkeeping, and so much else, including evidence, memory, and obviously identity, and, depending on our responses, around deeper ethical issues of control, status, power, and neo-colonialism.

For Cook (2013), this is a framework that brings into view the democratisation of archives to better align with the modes of communication and social connection that have become pervasive in the digital era. Certainly, the literature refers to the democratising potential of community archives in terms of how they may offer an expanded view of a community’s heritage and history (see Flinn 2007).

Zines

Historically, zines were associated with various fandoms (known as ‘fanzines’), but also gained traction in the 1970s punk scene and the Riot Grrrl feminist movement of the 1990s (Watson and Bennett 2020; Duncombe 1997). As part of these social and subcultural movements, zines were able to ‘affectively and materially draw[] the personal and political together on the page’ (Lupton and Watson 2021, p 470). Zines offered marginalised communities a highly visual way ‘to record their stories, share information and organise’ (French and Curd 2021, p 2). The proliferation of digital technologies and online platforms since the 1990s supported the expansion of zine-making tools, networks and possibilities for distribution. Today, zines are highly diverse in themes, form and purpose, but Watson and Bennett (2020, p 118) note that zine cultures often share an ‘opposition to aspects of everyday life that are considered by zine readerships to be mainstream, repressive, exclusionary, technocratic, or a combination of these characteristics’. Brager and Sailor (2012, p 46) observe that many zine-makers ‘imagine themselves as outside of the mainstream’ and ‘desire to be underground’. Fife (2019) comments on the ‘anti-institutional’ ethos (p 228) and DIY approach that has often characterised the intent, production and aesthetics of zines:

A zine may more resemble a photocopied scrapbook rather than anything that we would otherwise consciously identify as a ‘publication’ – creators often appropriate, annotate and re-print copyrighted images, text and other copyrighted materials. This technique illustrates further some of the central politics of zine culture – disrespect for institutional rules, professional techniques and the re-writing of majority and mainstream culture to reflect subcultural and often subversive values. (p 229)

Zines provide a means for ‘cultural revolt’ that work to ‘contest and circumvent’ dominant cultural narratives, with creators shifting from ‘passive observer[s] into active participant[s]’ in the cultural processes that shape their lives (Worley 2015, p 81). As such, zines may ‘counter[] the hegemonic stronghold of cultural production and expression’ (Ramdarshan Bold 2017, p 226) by democratising who has the capacity to document their lives and circulate these stories. As Kress (2021) puts it, ‘zines allow us to tell our own stories, to reclaim our cultures and express the rich nuances of our identities’.

Zines are now well-documented in terms of their value as historical records. In recent years, zine collections have been increasingly commonplace in archives, with Lymn (2013) suggesting that zine anthologies can be considered a distinct archival genre. In particular, there has been a strong focus in scholarly literature on the archiving of zines centred on gender and sexuality. Examining the archiving of Riot Grrrl zines as potent symbols of third wave feminist activism, Eichhorn (2013, p 15) observes that institutional archives can function as an ‘authorizing apparatus’ that legitimises modes of cultural production that have typically been trivialised or disregarded. Deploying a queer lens, Lymn (2014) also proposes that zines can enable us to think differently about the boundaries and functions of the archive. Lymn (2014) notes how zines invite us to reimagine archival spaces not as ‘static sites of fact and record’ (p 7), but as spaces for community, ‘activity and action’ (p 241). However, scholars and zine-makers have raised questions over the ethics of archiving zines given they have not usually been created ‘with the intention of becoming historical records’ (Fife 2019, p 230; see also Chidgey 2006, 2013; Brager and Sailor 2012). Poletti (2019, p 31) points out the uneasy dynamic that can be created by preserving zines in mainstream heritage institutions: ‘Trapped in the amber of institutional collecting, the small, partially anonymous, ephemeral zine made to facilitate a very specific form of sociality in a specific time and place is now available for future readers to interrogate’. At the same time, ‘processes of documenting and memory making’ have been central to zine-making and, in some cases, ‘zines may be the only archival traces of marginalized communities’ (Fife 2019, p 230). Zines can, therefore, be of significant value as primary source material (Chidgey 2013), documenting individual lives, community networks and societal changes.

Our study represents a different perspective to what has been typically discussed in the literature. In our project, zines are an intentional heritage practice being created with the very clear purpose of contributing to public history via being circulated in the community and online as well as being lodged in local repositories and state and national archives. Specifically, the zines we are creating with participants capture multiple understandings of cultural identity, local heritage and sense of place. Below, we argue that when created intentionally as historical record, zines can enable communities to tell their own stories in a form that is accessible to them and representative of their own experiences, while also strengthening the presence of the community’s stories in institutional settings.

Background: Norfolk Island’s Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area

Norfolk Island is located in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,600 km northeast of Sydney, Australia. The island is very small, with an area of about 35 km2 and a population of approximately 1,700 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016). There have been four distinct human settlements on Norfolk Island: a Polynesian settlement (c.1150–1450); a British agricultural settlement (1788–1814); a British penal settlement (1825–1855); and the Pitcairn settlement (1856–present). Pitcairn Settler descendants on Norfolk Island have a distinctive culture and language. These settlers were descended from Tahitian women and British men, including mutineers of the HMS Bounty, who had founded a community on Pitcairn Island in 1789. As this community grew in size, life on Pitcairn became unsustainable, and in the early 1850s, the Pitcairn Islanders were granted occupancy of Norfolk Island by Britain. The 194 inhabitants of Pitcairn arrived on Norfolk Island on 8 June 1856. The Pitcairners were under the impression that the Island had been ceded to them, resulting in tensions between Australia and Norfolk Islanders ever since. The Commonwealth of Australia enacted the Norfolk Island Act 1913, designating the island an Australian External Territory. The revised Norfolk Island Act 1979 returned a degree of self-government to Norfolk Islanders and included a preamble that explicitly recognised the importance of Pitcairn traditions (Wettenhall 2017). However, the Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 removed the preamble and abolished self-government, creating instead a regional council operating under the New South Wales Local Government Act (Wettenhall 2017). This led to the establishment of a tent embassy in Daun’taun to peacefully protest Australia’s political interventions. In 2021, the Commonwealth of Australia suspended the locally elected councillors from office and implemented a public inquiry into the council’s governance. By the end of 2021, the councillors had been dismissed and replaced by an appointed administrator to manage the regional council’s affairs. Given this history of injustice, islanders of Pitcairn descent experience contemporary life as colonial subjects (Nobbs 2019a), voicing concerns that the governance changes threaten the culture and language of Pitcairn Settler descendants and their identity as Norfolk Islanders. Pitcairn Settler descendants, estimated to be 30 percent of the island’s resident population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2019), therefore face ongoing cultural injustices relating to non-recognition and disrespect of their heritage, compounded by marginalisation and disenfranchisement in political processes.

Our study focuses on KAVHA, an area which holds significance for all four settlement periods. KAVHA was listed on the Norfolk Island Heritage Register in 2003, on Australia’s National Heritage List in 2007, and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2010 as one of 11 Australian Convict Sites. Heritage management of KAVHA has overwhelmingly privileged the preservation and interpretation of its convict heritage. Likewise, published scholarly research on Kingston has predominantly focused on the penal settlement. Daun’taun is, however, a dynamic and multifaceted living heritage place, with a working port, private residences, sites of recreation (a golf course, sports grounds, beaches), a church and an active cemetery. It is also the site for significant cultural practices (e.g. Bounty Day, when Pitcairn Settler descendants pay tribute to the arrival of the Pitcairners on Norfolk Island) and political activity (e.g. the tent embassy, the former site of the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly, the Administrator’s residence in Government House). Gibbs et al. (2017, p 96) note that although ‘the Pitcairner occupation and use of Kingston extend[s] for well over a century longer than the convict phase and continu[es] in various forms through to today’, this heritage has ‘limited recognition or visibility’ in KAVHA’s interpretation. In reference to the current KAVHA Heritage Management Plan (Commonwealth of Australia et al. 2016), one Pitcairn Settler descendant has observed ‘There is nothing about the experiences of the settlers themselves, how they saw the world around them or what their experiences in and of the KAVHA area might have been’ (Nobbs 2019b, np). Although the KAVHA Heritage Management Plan is in the process of revision, it is evident from our research that KAVHA continues to be experienced by Pitcairn Settler descendants as a site of cultural injustice and political unrest (see Baker, Cantillon and Evans [eds] 2021).

Zine-making as method

This article emerges from an Australian Research Council-funded project, ‘Reimagining Norfolk Island’s Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area’ (2021–2024). The project explores KAVHA as a living heritage site, with a specific focus on Pitcairn Settler descendants’ relationships with Kingston, as well as that of other residents with long and deep connections to the area. The project also analyses how cultural injustices are reinforced or resisted in relation to the heritage management of KAVHA. In addition to conducting interviews with key stakeholders and community members, the project draws on public history-making as a tool for data collection and generating research outputs. One such method is the co-creation of zines with the people of Norfolk Island, inviting them to reimagine KAVHA in ways that amplify the Pitcairn settlement.

Recently, there has been increasing scholarly interest in arts-based methodologies for participatory research, including zine-making (see French and Curd 2021; Gray et al. 2021; Velasco et al. 2020; Watson et al. [eds] 2018). Reflecting on zine-making in the context of art museums, French and Curd (2021) suggest that zines are useful research tools for their capacity to: (1) support varied, non-uniform aesthetics and different modes of creative expression; (2) foster communities of practice that learn and share through participation; (3) capture counter-narratives and ‘little stories’ that might otherwise be excluded from official narratives; (4) promote principles of plurality and democratisation. Zine-making facilitates active participation and collaboration and offers a creative, affective, embodied way to contribute to research. Being amateur in style, zines do not require any specialist skills—there is no ‘wrong’ way (in terms of aesthetics) to make a zine page, with many forms of creative practice being appropriate and valuable.

Our use of zine-making is informed by cultural justice as a conceptual framework that focuses on ‘the recognition and value of cultural objects, cultural institutions and cultural work, as well as issues of power, participation, access and representation’ (Cantillon et al. 2021, p 75). In a heritage context, cultural justice can be enacted through ‘practices of collection, preservation and archiving; curation, storytelling and heritage interpretation; and mobilising communities for collective action’ (Cantillon et al. 2021, p 73). Beyond its use as an analytical tool, cultural justice can also be deployed as a methodological approach. Below, we demonstrate how zine-making can be used not only to collect data about cultural injustices, but to equip participants with practical tools and processes to reflect on, discuss and resist these injustices. We are striving to implement cultural justice as a methodological approach through zine-making workshops that maximise agency and collaboration to create co-produced public history outputs that have the capacity to act as community archive.

Making See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise

The first zine in the Reimagining KAVHA series focuses on the former site of Kingston’s Paradise Hotel. Originally named Dewville, the Paradise began as a small guest house constructed in the 1930s. Dewville was one of the first commercial accommodation providers on the island, undergoing numerous expansions and name changes—including Oceanside—before becoming known as the Paradise by the late 1950s. It became a popular place for both locals and tourists to socialise, eat, dance and listen to live music. However, over the years, heritage organisations, consultants and the Australian Government had come to view the Paradise unfavourably, suggesting that it was spoiling the heritage value of an area otherwise occupied by an ‘outstanding collection of fine Georgian buildings’ (Richards et al. 2019, p 15). As reported by The Canberra Times in 1972, the Australian Council of National Trusts had labelled the Paradise as ‘one of the worst mistakes made on the island’, saying ‘the building should have been demolished and the site cleared’. By the early 1980s, there was a sense of urgency around the removal of the Paradise: ‘As the conservation and enhancement of the Kingston and Arthur’s Vale area on Norfolk Island proceeds, the incongruity of the existence of the Paradise buildings has become apparent and their removal more urgent’ (Commonwealth of Australia 1985, pp 10–11). By 1988, the buildings had been removed.

Early conversations that Sarah had with Norfolk Islanders about the project suggested the Paradise was underrepresented in official narratives of Kingston, but that its rich social and cultural history deserved to be captured by the project. In May 2021, we put a call out for contributions via the project website, social media and the local paper. We invited the community to come along to zine workshops, participate in an interview, or submit any stories, photographs or documents they had relating to the Paradise. In June 2021, we held two three-hour zine workshops at the Surgeon’s Quarters building in KAVHA. Participants were aged from 12 through to their 80s. Seven participants (Allan, Anona, Edward, Jane, Ken, Russell, Ryan) attended the first workshop and a further five (Clare, Chelsea, Gaye, Merv, Pat) were present at the second workshop. We provided all the necessary zine-making materials, including coloured pens, pencils and paper, highlighters, sticky notes, glue, washi tape, scissors, and print-outs of photos, old newspaper articles and extracts from policy documents. Participants also brought along items from their personal collections.

The research team guided writing exercises, asking participants to respond to prompts such as ‘It was Friday night down at the Paradise and …’ and ‘If there was going to be an interpretive sign at the old Paradise site, what would it say?’ Participants were invited to reflect on multiple stages of the site’s life, from its early days as Dewville to its current form as a picnic area. In between each activity, participants shared what they had written, which prompted further discussions and memories being verbalised to the group. Many participants spoke and wrote in Norf’k, recognised by UNESCO as an endangered language. Following the research team’s provocations, we transitioned into the hands-on zine-making process (see also Lupton and Watson 2021), showing examples of zines to spark inspiration as to how a zine page might be created. What the participants wrote, drew, cut and pasted during that workshop made up the bulk of the finished zine.

In addition to the zine pages made in the workshop, the zine also included transcripts from interviews (‘conversations’) with four community members who were unable to attend the workshop (Robyn, David), or who were at the workshop but had additional stories to share (Russell, Edward). The transcripts were given to the respective interviewees for their feedback and request for any changes. Additional contributions were provided by a staff member of Norfolk Island Museums (Bethany) who points readers to the types of artefacts related to the Paradise that are held by the Norfolk Island Museum Trust, and also the son (Trevor) of a tourist who stayed at the Paradise in 1960, with photographs taken during that trip included in the zine. The research team produced an editorial and acknowledgements and curated the order of pages.

See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise and the principles of community archive discourse

How might the idea of community archive accommodate the zine format? In this section, we draw on Michelle Caswell’s (2020, p 24) powerful work on ‘marginalised identity-based community archives’ to better understand the archival potential of zines and zine-making. As community archive, the See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise zine exhibits many of the principles Caswell identifies as distinguishing community archives from mainstream heritage practice: participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, archival activism, reflexivity (see Caswell 2014) and valuing affect (see Caswell 2020):

These principles draw attention to the ways in which community archives generally encourage participation in archival labour from the communities they serve and represent; conceptualise their relationship to materials as one of mutually responsive caregiving rather than a formal legal transfer of custody; acknowledge multiple and conflicting views, as well as multiplicity of formats; are explicitly political in orientation; and foster a culture of self-reflection and evaluation. (Caswell 2020, p 25)

Each of these principles shape our understanding of the memory-work undertaken by community members in creating See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise in collaboration with us as researchers. Below, we provide examples from the zine and the zine-making process which demonstrate each of these six principles in action, before suggesting the emergence of a seventh principle: collaborative reminiscence.

Participation

Participation emphasises community involvement and self-representation, with community members involved in documenting stories, identifying materials, determining collection priorities and offering culturally appropriate terminology (Caswell 2014, p 311). Recorded conversations were initiated by the researcher in an unstructured interview process which began with a question that allowed the participants to determine priorities: ‘So where should we begin with this story of the Paradise Hotel?’ (Russell and Edward, p 5), ‘Where would you like to begin your story of the Paradise?’ (Robyn, p 40). Likewise, workshop participants determined which items in their personal collections could be shared with others and what materials might then go on to be recorded in the zine. At the first workshop, Anona shared a tourist’s scrapbook from the 1950s. The zine shows the workshop participants perusing the scrapbook, including close-ups of its pages (pp xix, xxiv). At the second workshop, Gaye brought along a photo album featuring images taken at the Paradise in December 1969, with zine pages capturing Gaye talking participants through the photographs in her album (pp xxii, 53; see Fig. 1). Jane and Allan showed photos from their own wedding—the last to be held at the Paradise—with a page in the zine devoted to these artefacts (p xxi). Similarly, participants involved in the interviews provided photographs for inclusion in the zine—Russell offered pictures of himself as a child at Oceanside (p 7; see Fig. 2) and a young man at the Paradise (p 18), while Robyn used her personal photo albums to jog her memory and illustrate her conversation with us (see pp 40, 45–51).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Workshop participants huddle around Gaye to look at a photo album. Photograph (taken by Zelmare Cantillon) appears in the See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise zine (p xxii), published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA

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Fig. 2
figure 2

An excerpt from Sarah’s interview with Russell, along with a photograph of him as a child at Oceanside. Photograph (provided courtesy of Russell Francis) appears in the See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise zine (p 7), published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA

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In this context, participation is mediated (see Benoit and Roeschley 2019) in the sense that the impetus for the zine-making workshops originated in the research project and discussions were guided by prompts from the two authors, both of whom are academics based at higher education institutions. While neither of us is ‘part of the community they are helping to document’ (Sarah is a resident of Norfolk Island but is not a Pitcairn Settler descendant nor do they have a long and deep connection to the island), our role has from the outset been one of ‘facilitator of memory work’ in which the community members are considered the experts (Caswell 2014, p 311). Our approach also informed the decision to decline a request from the Australian Government’s Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (the body responsible for managing Commonwealth interests on Norfolk Island, including KAVHA) for their staff to attend the workshops with the intention of answering participants’ questions about KAVHA. Taking a community archives perspective, expertise relating to heritage does not only reside in institutional settings or official/authorised channels of the site’s management, but also in the broader community’s everyday engagements, living memories and personal historical knowledge of Daun’taun. The participants in workshops and interviews were, therefore, already well-positioned to answer questions about the Paradise.

Shared stewardship

As researchers, our role was to provide ‘space, infrastructure, and other resources’ (Caswell 2020, p 312) that would be conducive to the memory-work of the participants. Caswell emphasises that community archives steward records for the people they serve, with the community maintaining ‘some ongoing autonomy over the records that originated within’ the archive (Caswell 2020, p 312). Contributors to the zine retain copyright of their pages under a Creative Commons licence which enables them to republish their pieces without the need to seek permissions from the research team and also to distribute the work in the zine format as they see fit (see p iv). Shared stewardship is also about ensuring the zine remains available to the community through a commitment to its ongoing availability, including as a digital resource online and as a limited print run that will enable it to: (1) circulate among community members on the island, (2) be deposited in repositories on the island as reference copies, and (3) be legally deposited in the National Library of Australia.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity refers to ‘both format and perspective’ (Caswell 2014, p 313). The zine format already points to a move away from traditional archival practice to ‘reflect the culture, epistemologies, and values’ of the community being documented (Caswell 2014, p 313), encouraging a creative reimagining of the record that brings photos, drawings, words and cut and pasted materials together, in some cases all on the one page. On one of Jane’s pages, for example, a photograph of the present-day Paradise site is accompanied by a drawing of hibiscus flowers and sticky notes with the written words ‘Just can’t imagine a hotel being here!!’ (p 31). This is contrasted with Anona’s page (p 33), which more simply offers a handwritten fictional account, unaccompanied by images, of her mother attending the Paradise on a Friday night with friends and meeting Anona’s father.

In addition to these different forms of expression, the zine also accommodates ‘the inclusion of diverse—and often conflicting—viewpoints’ (Caswell 2014, p 313). Participants were situated on various points on the island’s political spectrum, spanning support for the Commonwealth of Australia’s interventions on the island to desires for greater independence and self-determination. Within and across those different perspectives, pages capture different understandings of the Paradise’s past and positions on its removal. David points to it being felt as a ‘huge’ loss by the community when the Paradise was ‘taken down’ (p 61), whereas Russell recalled that ‘it’s time ha[d] come’ and that there was not enough strength of feeling around the Paradise for people to ‘picket[] the place’ and fight its removal (p 17). While the zine’s participants and contributors ‘coalesce around commonalities’ in terms of remembering the Paradise fondly, the zine also records differences and enables these to coexist (Caswell 2014, p 313).

Activism

As researchers approaching the project as heritage activists, our role as stewards of the community’s records is one that seeks to address past and present cultural injustices experienced by the community to assist their ‘work toward a more just future’ (Caswell 2014, p 318). The zine’s editorial begins with an observation of how KAVHA foregrounds British colonial heritage, introducing the reader to Laurajane Smith’s (2006) concept of the authorised heritage discourse. It then reflects on the absence of heritage interpretation at the site of the former Paradise Hotel, followed by a brief history of the Paradise and the reasons for its removal. Drawing on heritage management plans and government reports, we acknowledge the various ways heritage bodies, consultants and representatives of the Commonwealth Government were scornful of the hotel’s presence, with its buildings viewed as impacting negatively on the heritage value of Quality Row. The editorial then notes the social and cultural significance of the Paradise in the everyday lives of Norfolk Islanders, as evident in how the zine pages ‘point to the value of the Paradise as a twentieth-century heritage place in the Pitcairn Settlement which, if it were still standing, may today have been afforded the kinds of protections and respect that were bestowed on the penal settlement buildings of Quality Row’ (p xviii). In this way, the editorial is rooted in the present realities of the island’s contested political landscape. In remembering the Paradise’s past, the zine becomes part of ‘the activation of records for community-centred political goals’ in the present (Caswell 2014, p 318).

The contributors also take on the role of heritage activists through their memory-work. As Caswell (2014, p 314) notes, ‘The seemingly simple act of collecting records that affirm the existence of communities that have been silenced, erased, or marginalized is a political act’. Caswell’s concept of ‘representational belonging’ resonates with the zine-making process in this regard. This concept refers to the ways in which community archives can enable marginalised individuals and groups to ‘have the autonomy and authority to establish, enact and reflect on their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, substantive and positive to them in a variety of symbolic contexts’ (Caswell 2020, p 25). As an example, we might consider a page created by workshop participant Gaye, a member of the Norfolk Island Council of Elders. Her zine page begins with: ‘Huge thanks for allowing us to tell our stories. It’s so important and we have never been encouraged to do so. What marvellous memories of happy carefree days and summer nights’ (p 55; see Fig. 3). In the next section of Gaye’s zine page, she goes on to write, ‘TRAVELODGE had architectural plans drawn up for a hotel in the beautiful [Georgian] style of Kingston buildings. It would have been great but it wasn’t allowed’ (p 55; see Fig. 3). This comment was accompanied by a pasted extract from the current KAVHA Heritage Management Plan (Commonwealth of Australia et al. 2016) emphasising different elements of value or significance—heritage, historical, local, social. Like community archives, zines can put forth the kinds of ‘micro-histories and situated knowledges’ (Chidgey 2013, p 669) that act as ‘counter-narratives’ which challenge ‘official’, dominant narratives and represent othered or marginalised groups and experiences (French and Curd 2021, p 8). In this way, Gaye’s page invites the reader to reflect on the decisions the Commonwealth Government made around the Paradise (not approving the refurbishment of the site, demolishing it) in reference to the social significance of the Paradise for the community (‘marvellous memories’, ‘happy carefree days’), and the silencing of this significance (never having been encouraged to tell these stories). In this sense, the zine is not just a space for nostalgia or recording the past, but for representational belonging and political statements.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Gaye’s zine page with a thank you note and commentary on text from the KAVHA management plan. Text (by Gaye Evans) appears in the See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise zine (p 55), published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA

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Merv and Clare were also explicitly political in their content. Merv exclaims on one of his pages ‘Dem se get et rorng!’ (p 27; see Fig. 4), arguing that, while the Paradise was slated for removal by the Commonwealth Government because it did not conform with the convict buildings on Quality Row, it actually stood on Bloody Bridge Road. Similarly, Clare’s suggested text for an interpretive sign at the Paradise site included the words: ‘Closed by the Commonwealth of Australia because they could not read a map’ (p 66). The culmination of these ‘little stories’ offered by multiple voices enables the presentation of a counter-narrative emerging from the community. These counter-narratives are not just representative of the individual contributor; they also reflect a collective effort to document not only the Paradise’s place in the history of the Pitcairn Settlement, but also the experiences of marginalisation and erasure as a community.

Fig. 4
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Writing in Norf’k, Merv shares his memories of the Paradise and perspectives on its removal. Text (by Merv Buffett) appears in the See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise zine (p 27), published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA

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Reflexivity

Participants and researchers exercised reflexivity at all stages of the zine-making process. Caswell (2014, p 318) notes that, on one level, reflexivity is necessary to monitor how archival practice can affect one’s ‘own physical and mental well-being’, particularly when dealing with sensitive or traumatic histories. For the workshop participants, reflexivity was present in their internal processes of self-reflection and how this impacted on their external expressions and, subsequently, the final product of the zine. For instance, not all of the materials created during the writing exercises component of the workshop were chosen by participants for inclusion on the zine pages, indicating a selective process of acquisition or documentation. Russell decided that his ‘Friday night at the Paradise’ story, which began with an encounter with a policeman and evolved into a story about the hotel’s entertainers, was too risque for inclusion, a decision that was supported by Ken. Further, there were memories shared verbally during the workshops that participants actively decided not to record in writing, determining that they were not appropriate to include as they referred to encounters with law enforcement or unseemly behaviours involving others not present at the workshop. Clare, making reference to Merv, remarked ‘There’s some stories that you’ve told me, but I better not write them down’, noting that ‘The island is too small’ and ‘They’ll know’. The participants therefore understood that the zine would be preserved and read by others, and showed concern for protecting the well-being of members in the community. This example highlights the extent to which the zine-making was not just about addressing absences in historical narratives, but also collaboratively working together to compose desired narratives and intervene on the storytelling process of their own histories.

The researchers, as co-collaborators and stewards, must also exercise internal reflexivity to engage in ‘a mutually beneficial dialog with community members to ensure that needs are being met, problems are addressed, and priorities are aligned’ (Caswell 2014, p 314). As outsider researchers working in a colonial context and from institutional positions, we recognise the potential for ‘experienc[ing] misunderstanding, mis-steps and failures’ in these community archiving efforts (Caswell 2014, p 319). Our positionality is addressed through our endeavour to adopt a cultural justice approach which demands ongoing self-reflection. This has involved an emphasis on building trust through having informal conversations about the project and seeking advice from key gatekeepers in the community. Importantly, we aim to not only seek guidance and feedback, but to actively address or implement these suggestions. The idea for a zine on the Paradise emerged from conversations with community members, and its title came from an email from one participant (Russell). Indeed, on the zine’s soft-launch on three local Facebook pages, feedback from a member of the community enabled the title page to subsequently be modified to also incorporate the Norf’k language (Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise). A cultural justice approach also informs the project’s appointment of a Pitcairn Settler descendant—Chelsea Evans, one of the participants in the second zine workshop—to the research team. Chelsea will be involved in editing and compiling future Reimagining KAVHA zines and facilitating the respective zine-making workshops.

Affect

More recently, Caswell added ‘valuing affect’ as a sixth principle of community heritage discourse. The interest here is in ‘the way in which community archives explicitly foreground the emotional impact of materials on the communities they serve and represent’ (Caswell 2020, p 37). The zine-making workshops held a powerful affective atmosphere borne of the conviviality, laughter and wonderment that arose from telling and listening to stories that, for participants, were deeply connected to place, family and culture. The emotional resonance that punctuated the workshops is captured in the zine by photographs of the participants. For example, Anona and Ken are pictured sitting side by side, with Anona leaning in toward Ken and showing him a photograph brought along to the workshop by Jane (p vii). Referring back to the workshop transcript, we better understand this exchange: ‘Wahoo’ exclaims Ken, as Anona, with a look of joy on her face, says: ‘Oh, is that Aunty Jane there!?’.

Affect is also evident in the written contributions, some of which explicitly refer to participants’ feelings in relation to the Paradise. Zines are imbued with ‘emotional credentials’ (Robinson 2018, p 40) that can leave a reader ‘awestruck’ from their ‘honesty, kindness, anger, the beautiful inarticulate articulateness’ they contain (Duncombe 1997, p 1). In See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise, there are expressions of sadness felt at the time the Paradise closed and into the present (Clare, p 25; Gaye, p 56). Anona ends her contribution with a symbol of a love heart, referencing both the love stories reflected in the four couples named in her contribution, and the love she feels for her parents who feature as one of the couples in the story (p 33). As Flinn and Stevens (2009, p 16) powerfully state, ‘the archival act can be highly charged and loaded with emotional as well as political significance—especially when those acts of recovery rescue personal and social, collective histories from deliberate and physical erasure’. Providing feedback on a draft of this article, participant Chelsea reflected on Flinn and Stevens’ quote in the context of her participation in the workshop, observing: ‘that’s a really powerful statement around the consequences of zine-making being an act of preservation for the memories, people, stories and feelings related to the [Paradise] … Saving them from being lost in a very personal and quite intimate way. Beautiful’.

Collaborative reminiscence

In thinking through the various ways in which the zine—as product and process—reflects the principles of community archive discourse set out by Caswell (2014, 2020), we observe a seventh principle at play: collaborative reminiscence. In the workshops, collaborative reminiscence emerges from the ‘community of practice’ (Wenger 1998) that develops among participants. The participants undertake memory-work that involves not just a nostalgic looking back on the past, but ‘participatory learning and critical thinking’ (French and Curd 2021, p 8) that contextualises the past in the present and the future. The three hours of each workshop were punctuated by intergenerational sharing of knowledge, experiences and stories which served to foster and strengthen connections between participants. For some, hearing others share memories supported their own capacity to remember: ‘You stirred my memory … That’s right, yeah, I can remember that now’ (Ken), ‘It triggers memories’ (Gaye). The workshop dialogue presents a web of remembrance: a memory shared, another memory triggered, a moment of recognition of a place or person remembered, a realisation that the person in a memory is a relative, a point of connection between workshop participants.

Although these qualities of collaborative reminiscence transcend what can be represented in the materiality of the zines, the pages produced nonetheless capture the collectivity that was experienced in the room as the participants set about remembering the Paradise. The pages also reflect that the act of collaborative reminiscence is not limited to the community of practice formed in the time and space of the workshop. In fact, participants bring earlier experiences of memory-work to the zine-making process. One workshop participant, Chelsea, had no direct experiences of the Paradise, having been born after the hotel was demolished. Chelsea’s contributions to the zine incorporated memories of the Paradise that had been imparted by others over the years, particularly in relation to the hotel’s band (see pp 58, 60): ‘that was obviously a big thing that I have heard a lot about from down at the Paradise, particularly from Mum and from George playing the piano … [I’ve] spent a lot of time with [George]’. The web of collaborative reminiscence is thus constructed by the entanglement of personal and collective memories of participants and, potentially, instances of reminiscence that may be spurred when the finished zine circulates among the community. As such, collaborative reminiscence is observed in the process of making the zine, but is also a capacity afforded by the zine’s distribution and subsequent engagements with it. The soft launch of the zine on the community Facebook pages prompted others to share their own memories or to comment on how much certain people who had passed away would have enjoyed the zine had they been alive today. Collaborative reminiscence does not end at the close of the zine-making workshops, and is not confined to the lived experiences of the zine’s contributors.

Conclusion

Zines, like community archives, are not just about the end product (the collection), but also about the process of making them. As the example of See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise demonstrates, the Reimagining KAVHA zine series brings researchers and community members together in an act of community archiving that is geared toward producing cultural justice outcomes for those with long and deep connections to the Pitcairn settlement. The zines amplify community voices while the zine-making workshops provide an affective space for the convivial exchange of memories and the strengthening of community ties. Our analysis highlights not only that the zine—as product and process—reflects the six principles of community archive discourse proposed by Caswell (2014, 2020), but is also suggestive of a seventh principle, collaborative reminiscence, which captures the collective and dialogic memory-work enabled by creating, sharing and reading zines. Together, the seven principles provide a structuring framework to guide the design, process and outcomes of future zines in the Reimagining KAVHA series. With a commitment to reflexivity and participation, however, we acknowledge that the purpose, foci and outcomes of future zines will be adapted according to the desires and feedback of the Norfolk Island community.

The meaning and impact of See You at the Paradise/Ketch Yorlye Daun Paradise—its capacity to continue to reflect the principles of community archive discourse—will be shaped by its ‘afterlives’ (Eichhorn 2013; Poletti 2019; Radway 2011). Considering the afterlives of records involves recognising that they matter not just for what they reveal about the time and circumstances in which they were created, but for how they can be mobilised as a resource for action in the present and into the future. The afterlives of the zine will encompass not just the collaborative reminiscence it elicits, but also its ongoing potential for activism. Indeed, in the fraught political context of Norfolk Island—characterised by disenfranchisement and the erasure of heritage from the Pitcairn settlement by institutional and governmental authorities—zines have the potential to disrupt existing power dynamics. Through lodging a community-made document in ‘official’ repositories, the zine increases the presence of community voices within these spaces. As an intentional historical record, the zine ‘authorises’ community experiences that, historically, have been marginalised in KAVHA’s heritage management and interpretation. In this sense, the zine and its afterlives may make visible and challenge important issues of ‘control, status, power, and neo-colonialism’ (Cook 2013, p 116). It is our hope that this zine, as community archive, might provide evidence of the special place that the Paradise held in the Norfolk Island community in ways that will continue to spark further discussions among residents and other stakeholders about ‘the effects of history, as experienced by its living participants’ (Chidgey 2006, p 12).