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An exhibition at SHOP in Preston city centre will celebrate one year of the Pressed Town zine.
The creation of Penwortham native, Jonny Cosmo, Pressed Town is released each season with a limited number of secret drops around the city, while old issues are uploaded to Instagram.
“I’ve lived in Penny nearly all my life, with a brief stint moving around while I was studying – to Ghana, Plungington, Avenham, Ashton and Vietnam,” says Jonny. “But I came back for the weather, obviously.”
Jonny studied politics, philosophy and society at UCLan, followed by a Masters in International Relations. He thought he’d always go into politics but, he says: “Then I met politicians.”
Looking for another way to make a difference in people’s lives, Jonny realised it was within his power to make a change for the better.
“Having freelanced in the third sector and arts and culture while I was studying, I decided to focus on this. I’m not trained in the arts or anything – just interested in the expression of the human soul.”
Last January, Jonny was thinking about how he could do something for the Preston community, “for Preston people, in a creative artsy sort of way”.
“Then one night I had a surge of ADHD inspiration,” says Jonny. “I drafted something up on Canva and then posted it to Instagram… Two days later there was like 150 people following the page and sending in submissions, then it’s just carried on going from there.”
Originally, Jonny framed Pressed Town as a collective – and nearly 100 artists have contributed over the year. But running the socials, collecting submissions, editing the zine, printing it, handing it out, is all just Jonny.
The driving force behind this effort is Jonny’s desire to give people a voice.
“As a student I heard so many people refer to Preston as DePreston and say there was nothing to do. But as a local and a creative I was always stuck with having to choose because there’s so much to do and so many people doing things.
“I wanted to give people a platform to express their negative views on the city as well as the positives, but in every issue there has been more positive than negative.
“What this shows me is that there are so many people who are raising Preston up. They’re blooming in their own beautiful and unique way. All we need is more platforms to see that, more ways to hear it. Perhaps it’s up to each one of us to look.”
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Jonny, who is also involved with Friends of Edith Rigby and Preston Cooperative Development Network, says running Pressed Town has helped him get in touch with what inspires him.
“I find inspiration through people I meet, if it’s a friend, an artist or someone in the pub. I really like to read as well, so books are filled with inspiration whether it’s stories or ideas.
“However, since I started Pressed Town I have been putting more effort into noticing what inspires me. Is it another zine or book. Is it a person’s design. Is it texture or material. Everything and anything inspires me so long as I give it the chance.”
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The exhibition at SHOP Preston will be a celebration of the artists who have submitted work to Pressed Town over the past year. A launch party will mark the beginning of a new subscription model for the zine.
Jonny says: “Everyone who has donated so far deserves a shout out because they’ve helped so much. But it would be better to sustain it as a subscription so that we can send copies directly to people. It would be really cool if Pressed Town could keep going.”
The Pressed Town exhibition at SHOP will take place from Friday 21 to Sunday 23 March.
To see previous issues and the latest call outs, follow @PressedTown on Instagram. You can contact [email protected] with submissions or enquiries, and you can make a donation via Pressed Town on Buy Me a Coffee.
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This story was made possible by you, our readers, and a host of organisations in the city, through our Crowdfund Lancashire appeal, which unlocked support from the Lancashire Culture and Sport Fund provided by Lancashire County Council. You can see all our coverage and, if you know of an arts project or event in the city we should be covering, you can submit it for our event listings and/or send details to [email protected] for us to cover it as a story on the Blog.
