Surfacing interpretations of economic regeneration and community development needs – employing a zine creation methodology

Introduction
The research project is designed to creatively surface interpretations of local economic regeneration and community development. The research project is co-led by Aberystwyth University and the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt in Austria. The research has been undertaken by holding two zine creation events running concurrently one at Aberystwyth University and another at the Mürzzuschlag Gemeinderat (a local authority in Austria) facilitated in partnership with the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt. Collaborative Workshop A1- was held in Aberystwyth with Aberystwyth and Holywell based local business owner/managers, staff from Aberystwyth University, and members of Holywell town council, Aberystwyth Town Council and staff from Ceredigion County Council. Collaborative Workshop A2 - was held in Mürzzuschlag with local business owner/managers, staff from the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt and members of the local economic development teams from the Mürzzuschlag Gemeinderat.

Research methods
The events ran concurrently involving the use of zine creation (Melik et al, 2024; Sou and Hall, 2024) to help surface interpretations of the challenges facing economic regeneration and community development activities in the towns of Aberystwyth, Holywell, and Mürzzuschlag.

The use of zines to creatively analyse and evaluate economic regeneration is a comparatively recently adopted phenomenon. Zine making is a research method which enables participation and helps surface conversations which may not emerge from traditional interview led research methods or focus groups (Melik et al, 2024). The Aberystwyth and Mürzzuschlag based workshops employed zine creation to explore local narratives, cultural identity, socio-economic issues. Inspired by initiatives like "Madzines" (Spandler and Poursanidou, 2019) both workshops encouraged participants to creatively express their experiences, particularly focused on their experiences of economic regeneration and community development.

Research outcomes
By creating the zines as cultural texts, we analysed how business owner/managers, local authority officers, and residents depict their socio-economic realities, values, and challenges. The workshops served as a platform for an ongoing creative dialogue. This approach has provided new insights into the economic regeneration and community development in Aberystwyth, Holywell, and Mürzzuschlag while empowering participants through creative expression. Feedback from the workshop events has been received via a participatory dissemination exercise (Valli, 2012) where project stakeholders used zines to provide their interpretations of the outcomes emerging from Workshops A1 and A2. This exercise helped interpret whether the activities have achieved the aim of building and maintaining collaborative relationships and scoping out the research project parameters.

References
Sou, G. & Hall, S. (2023). Comics and Zines for Creative Research Impact: Ethics, Politics and Praxis in Geographical Research. ACME, 22(1), 817–841.
Spandler, H. and Poursanidou, D. (2019) Who’s included in the Mad Studies Project? Journal of Ethics in Mental Health. V1
Van Melik, R., Kofi, J. & Landau-Donnelly, F. (2024) Studying and stimulating a sense of community through co-productive zine-making in public libraries. Area, 56.
Valli, C. (2021) Participatory dissemination: bridging in-depth interviews, participation, and creative visual methods through Interview-Based ZineMaking (IBZM). Fennia 199(1).