In what ways can we articulate community? What platforms are available for artists, writers, community members to engage with a community; to bear witness and participate? Perhaps, more crucially, what artistic platforms exist for communities to articulate their own visions, their own narratives and experiences?

In Free City Paper, Jp King will build one such platform in the gallery space of Whippersnapper. A prolific printmak…er, writer, poet and publisher, King will direct his efforts over the course of this month towards the creation of a newspaper to be distributed freely.

The content of the paper will develop collaboratively though a series of organized reading sessions, film screenings, writing workshops, creative time and discussion groups. There will be public postering campaigns and walk-abouts, exploring the local neighbourhood as well as tools, paper, a photocopier, tea kettle and other resources available in the gallery for public use. As part of Free City Press, King will also be including his ongoing Nomadesk; a portable writer’s residency that can be booked by appointment and that will function as an off-site component of Free City Paper (to apply for the Nomadesk Residency, please visit www.nomadicresidency.com).

The Free City Paper asks us to reconsider the gallery space, to see it as a creative site and with the potential to facilitate relationships between audience and place. The project hinges on participation and in this way King is constantly balancing between the role of artist, editor and coordinator.

The project promises to be one of experimentation and inclusivity, and in this process it is hoped that one form of an answer to those initial questions emerges; that there are ways for a community to take the ambiguity but creative potential of a space and articulate a vision of itself.

King (1985) is an artist, writer, & printer living in Montreal. His books & collages have been exhibited throughout Canada, in Brooklyn, Minnesota, & Stockholm. He currently runs Paper Pusher Print Works, an experimental micro-press dedicated to visual & text collaborations. The fall will find him at a Yukon Residency.