Window Zine: The Importance of Preservation & Place

Our Zine Library

Every year, with the help of community members, Indow creates a Window Zine to talk about why place matters. We don’t just save windows, we save the place and history they are attached to. We asked preservationists, photographers, artists—everyone—to share their stories about community and place along with us.

Thank you for taking the time to hear their voices through our zine library. We invite you to join in with your own on social media @indowwindows.

2021 Window Zine

Click here to download the 2021 Zine

Zine Excerpt From 2021 Edition

Solar Dye Experiment by Jessica Chan-Charette

We had a gnarly heatwave come through the PNW and so I decided to not let those hot temperatures and intense beams go to waste! I’ve been reading up about solar dyeing and decided it was the perfect time to do some experimenting.⁠ ⁠

⁠Mama & Papa Chan take a walk every evening on the property when it’s cooler and they love collecting little samples of plant material for me to experiment with. Whenever we use the contents of a jar in the house, it gets set aside for our natural dye “lab” (aka a plastic fold out table on the deck). It’s been fun sourcing material from around us!⁠ ⁠

I’ve been stoked to discover that a lot of local invasive & noxious weeds make great dyestuff. When I forage, I am also getting rid of some pests while I am at it! And no one looks twice when they see me on the side of the road clipping weeds, LOL. ⁠

Zine Excerpt From 202 Edition

Repurposing the Past for the Future by ReclaimNW

Zine Excerpt From 2020 Edition

Mulugeta by Ryan Libby

I had lived in my apartment for a year when Mulugeta showed up outside my window. He was beaming underneath large glasses, dressed in a suit and tie. His black and white image stamped in memoriam on a black street sign topper with Ethiopian script. He was close enough that he became a presence in the living room of my second floor apartment.

Before his memorial arrived I had heard his story in passing years earlier. Mulugeta was a refugee attending school in the area in the late 80’s. One night after getting home from a party, he and a friend were confronted by four white supremacists neighbors who were on their way to distribute recruitment pamphlets downtown. His neighbors had been drinking and were excited at the prospect of acting out the calls for violence in their propaganda. The altercation ended in Mulugeta’s death underneath a baseball bat decorated with racist slogans.

Thirty years later he showed up outside my window. Up until then I had always assumed that things like that occurred somewhere else. But sure enough, Mulugeta had spent his last moments just a block away from my quiet apartment, murdered by a neighbor that lived so close to him that one of the investigating offices commented they could have run tin can phones between the windows of their apartments.

It’s so rare in this country to come across memorials for the victims of white supremacist violence. Why take the time to unpack it, when you can just rewrap it and gentrify it. Seeing him outside my window made the history of my neighborhood come alive. Every day that I saw him I remembered, and every day that I remembered my resolve that this wouldn’t happen here again grew stronger.

Past Editions

Check out our 2018 zine here.

Check out our 2019 zine here

Check out our 2020 zine here

Check out our 2021 zine here

Letter from the Editors

How can you reduce your ecological footprint at home? It can seem like a daunting and pointless question when we’re told over and over that our fate lies in the hands of a relatively small number of corporations. They have the power. They have control. Or do they?

Individual actions add up. And they add up much faster when we turn those into collective action – when we ask our neighbors and community to stand together with us and look at our ecological footprint factors. Suddenly, the footprint becomes much bigger.

This is our fourth zine, and our second that we’ve created through some degree of separation. The world has changed so much and we’ve learned what it really means to protect one another. What it means to be a community. It has also shown the huge amount of power we have.

This zine holds stories of accomplishments. Things saved, from wooden pallets to buildings. Things growing, from gardens to art movements. Things preserved, from building materials to memories. Big or small, all of them matter.

Read the stories and be inspired to create sustainable change. Then ask the people in your world what inspires them. Soon you will have your own movement, or you may find that there’s one already started around you.

Thank you for reading! Join the conversation online: @indowwindows

Together, we waste less.

What is a Zine?

A zine is a collection of art, poems, and articles, usually based on a theme, which is self-published. Our Window Zine is made in collaboration with many other preservationists and community members.

See our online zine submissions page.

Previous themes have included redefining historic preservation and expanding its accessibility, vintage neon signs, widows (it is a window zine) and the importance of historic preservation. You can view them all above in our online zine library.

Want to create your own zine? We have a page full of zine ideas including a downloadable mini zine template that will help you get started.

Group of young preservationists who contributed to the Window Zine to show the importance of historic preservation

Window Zine Collaborators

Our zine library wouldn’t exist without the help and contributions from our amazing community. Preservationists turned artist and artists turned preservatist stitched this online zine together each year. Your voice could be added to the list.

Share your window and preservation art and writing! Tag us @indowwindows and use #windowzine and we might include your work in out next Window Zine. Or, sign up below or follow us on Instagram for updates on the next edition and preservation news.

man weatherizing windows to block cold air

Indow Zines About Importance of Historic Preservation