The New Incunable Print Shop

The New Incunable Print Shop combined traditional and cutting-edge processes with creative collaboration, and was the culmination of Affective Digital Histories – an AHRC funded project exploring the heritage of Leicester’s Cultural Quarter.

This co-produced exhibition, run in partnership between Phoenix and artist collective Juneau Projects, featured 3D printed woodblocks designed by members of the public at free drop-in workshops held at venues across the Cultural Quarter in September and October 2014.

The exhibition was also a working print shop, named after one of the earliest forms of printed material – the incunable – designed to echo the small scale industries for which the Cultural Quarter was originally known.

The New Incunable Print Shop invited visitors to design their own woodblock printing stamps and then use them – along with other blocks produced and collected as part of the project – to create original prints at the request of the shop’s ‘customers’.

Throughout the exhibition, a unique collection of prints and posters was formed, recording the creative endeavours of visitors to the project, and reflecting events around the Cultural Quarter and further afield.

The ‘customers’ of the shop were invited to submit digital orders for posters and other print material, which were then co-created by the artists and visitors to the exhibition and returned as a digital copy, with the original displayed as part of the exhibition.