Page Text: About Sticky
We are ardent defenders of zine culture.
Sticky Institute is a shop and resource devoted entirely to zines. We sell zines on behalf of zinemakers, and since opening in 2001 have stocked over 12,000 zine titles.
We have space to create and copy zines. Zinemakers are welcome to use the photocopier, long-armed staplers, typewriters and other resources provided.
Sticky also runs and curates the annual zine celebration Festival Of The Photocopier, which includes the largest zine fair in Australia, held at Melbourne Town Hall.
Sticky is a 100% volunteer-run space.
In 2013 Sticky celebrated stocking its 10,000th zine title (Love Like Pop #10 by Rachael K ), while 2015 marked the millionth photocopy taking place in-store.
Sticky acknowledges that its premises is on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and that Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded.
Below is a history of Sticky written by Luke You back in 2011, when Sticky became a fully volunteer-run operation.
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False Diary: A Zine Column by Luke You.
Column #44: Vive la Sticky.
The end of 2011 marks some big changes for Sticky. With Eloise Peace stepping down as coordinator I thought a brief Sticky history lesson might be useful. So much of what happens in zines, in the zine world, in zine shops, in small arts organisations, in artist run spaces goes un-documented and all the blood sweat and tears (and I mean actual blood, actual sweat and actual tears) that happen behind the scenes only really exist in the minds of the handful of people who were there.
So the end of 2011 kind of marks the beginning of the fourth generation of Sticky. I mean both in terms of the volunteers as well as with the people who frequent the space. The first generation was made up of Simone Ewenson and Luke Sinclair who over-saw the Sticky side of things with Richard Holt and Andrew Seward who were the coordinators of Platform at the time. There was also Alex Dalglish who ran a space called CUSP inside the Sticky window for the first twelve months of the space’s existence. Alex moved on after a year and Sticky re-claimed the space inside Shop 10 that CUSP had been using. This generation kind of spans 2001 to mid 2002.
After about 18 months of Sticky’s existence Richard and Andrew moved on from Platform and Simone and Luke took over as coordinators of both Sticky and Platform. This was kind of the second generation of Sticky. More volunteers started to come on board. John Stevens started to volunteer as did Kate Mitchell. Anna Poletti started to volunteer and there started to be something of a Sticky team. More customers started to come to Sticky during this time and more zinesters started to stock their zines at Sticky. This generation kind of spans mid 2002 to 2006.
Eloise Peace started volunteering at Sticky in 2006 and came on board as a coordinator with Luke in 2007 after Simone moved on. Eloise brought many more volunteers to Sticky with Candace, Androniki, Melissa, Adam all starting to volunteer during this time. There was Matt and Jimmy and Pat and Jo and Aaron and Beck and Thomas and Lilly and so many great people that it all starts to become a blur. There was a proper board put together during this time and suddenly there was David and Julia and Sallyanne and Des and Nick. More customers started to come to Sticky during this time and more zinesters started to stock their zines at Sticky. This generation spans 2007 to the end of 2011.
The new generation begins when the shop opens its doors on January 18th 2012. The current goal is to spread the workload between three coordinators and a web-master. In the ten years since Sticky opened its doors the project has grown up from fifteen publications on a shelf to eight thousand zines moving through a shop plus an on-line distro and the workload associated with all this growth needs to be spread.
It might be corny but I think Sticky is something of a magic place. A place that should never really have existed in the first place and could never have survived if it wasn’t for surviving rent and bill free for seven years with Platform. My dream for Sticky is that it never loses that magic and I am happy to give more of my actual blood, actual sweat and actual tears to help to keep it alive. So let us raise our glasses to Eloise. Vive la Sticky!!!
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