Send a zine to your MP - help them see what comics can do

There’s a General Election on 4 July. On 9 July, the elected MPs will enter Parliament.?

Let’s welcome them with comics drawn by you, their constituents.

Comics to MPs? But why?!

For two reasons.

First, you can use your comic as a way to tell them what you care about.

Second, it’s a very direct way to show what comics are, and what they can do, at a time when the arts are under attack.

Ok, I’m convinced. When?

Make your comic before the election. See more about timings below.

It needn’t be long or polished - perhaps a one-pager or a quick zine. You can find instructions on how to make a zine out of a single sheet of A4 or A3 paper here.

What should be in my comic?

Tell your new MP what matters to you. MPs - especially if they are brand new - want to hear from their constituents. After all, they are now representing you when they debate or vote in Parliament.

One recent message from the current government is that they don’t see the value of arts and culture, or arts education. They’re cutting funding and pledging to end degrees like Comic Arts.

So that might be one place to start - you’d like to see a world where arts and culture are valued and properly funded.

But it’s up to you, of course. You can include as many things as you like. Perhaps you’d like to see better commitment to the environment and nature, the preservation of a local landmark, or just a wider range of Pot Noodle flavours in the aisles. Keep it silly or go deep - the choice is yours.

On a practical point: make sure you include your address; many MPs require this as proof that you live in their constituency before they'll deal with your correspondence. If you're sharing online, you'll probably want to blur this part out before you upload it.

What should I not include?

One nice thing about this point in time is that there’s no certainty about who your MP will be. That makes it the ideal time to show what matters to you, without including any party political bias or vitriol.?

More about timing?

Although Parliament officially returns on 9 July, the official opening isn’t until the 17th and it’s possible they’ll go to summer recess within a few days (or, if it’s a brand new government, the leader might decide to delay recess so they can find their feet).

Either way, new MPs will be busy learning the ropes of their new arcane workplace, setting up their offices and being sworn in. Let’s be realistic, they probably won’t be reading your zine at this point. So let’s aim to send our comics in September.

How do I send my comic to my new MP?

If you're not sure who got in, check www.writetothem.com where you can input your postcode and it'll tell you who your MP is.

For physical comics: either send it to their local office within your constituency, or their parliamentary address.

You can find your MP’s local office address on their website.

Or address your letter to their name, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA.

For digital comics, you can send them by email. Note that brand new MPs won’t have an email address for a few weeks while they get settled in, but when they do you’ll be able to find it here: https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/.

Or, use writetothem.com to send a message to your MP, but you can't include attachments so if you want to send your comic this way, upload it somewhere else and link to it in your message.

You might also like to include a note along the lines of “Congratulations on the recent election. I’m one of your constituents and, as I make comics, I thought this might be the best way to tell you what matters to me”.

What else?

It’d be a shame if your MP was the only one to see your lovely comic. Please photograph it or share it online with the hashtag #comicsforMPs. If you send it to us at [email protected] (by a file transfer service if necessary) we’ll also share - and add it to our archive for future work lobbying MPs about the power of comics.

THIS JUST IN

The British Library want to collect your comics too, to keep them for posterity. They'll act as a snapshot of what people cared about, and how they expressed it in comics form, at this precise moment in time. Future researchers and readers will see your comics for decades, centuries to come.

So - make sure you don't only make one copy. If your comic is digital, no problem: print it out more than once. If it's hand-drawn, be sure to scan or photograph it.

Timeline

Before July: make your comic, before you know who your MP will be.

Send it to us at [email protected]

4 July: General election

9 July: Parliament returns

17 July: State opening

23 July: possible summer recess

September: Send your comic to your new MP; we'll also be sharing advice from the British Library on how to forward them your comic.

Add the #comicsforMPs hashtag and share it online as well.

Here's a quick example that I rustled up. Once I'd made it, I thought I actually might print out a few, and hand them to any canvassers that come to my door. Neat, eh? They ask me what I care about and I say, "It's all in this comic".