This collaboration with City Sabha (i.e. an urban collective working toward inclusive urban change via research, education, action, and advocacy) was forged during the worst-affected pandemic months of 2021.

As the effects of COVID-19 were ravaging, CS wanted to understand how zines as a creative methodology could be included as a research tool while trying to understand the lives of female informal and migrant workers, primarily street vendors part of SEWA Delhi, they were engaging with in New Delhi’s Raghubir Nagar. Zinedabaad’s contribution was to understand the complexities of these women’s lives and design a workshop series that uses zines as a generative tool to reclaim one’s narrative and break perceptions towards normalised violence and everyday discrimination perpetuated by men and systemic inequalities.

Devashree and Riya designed thematic session plans which covered a spectrum of community-centric issues such as gender-based violence, navigating places of safety and fear, delving into individual oral histories, photographing their everyday lives, among others, for three months, which allowed the CS team to facilitate zine-making spaces.

The zine-making enabled participants to realise that they are valued contributors to the urban informal economy, as females with a voice at the community level and the many hats they dawn as mothers, household bread-earners/care-takers, community leaders, and as women who have dared to dream and continue to aspire for a better future for their children. At the onset, these voices felt hopeless and full of despair. However, through the generative tool, they gained the confidence to reclaim the agency of their past, present, and future imaginations.