Those who follow our artist’s book-related antics will know that each year a group of us collaborates on a tribute event for World Book Night. This year’s World Book Night fell on Tuesday 23rd April 2013, just two days after our Bristol Artist’s Book Event (BABE) at Arnolfini so we all planned on keeping it simple.

Our tribute this year was to Raymond Carver‘s collection of stories Cathedral (1983), some of which were used as the basis for Robert Altman‘s film Short Cuts (1993). In particular we chose the story A Small, Good Thing as the starting point for this year’s collaboration. An open call this website invited people to do a small, good thing, write it out and send it to us.

All contributions were received by midnight on 22nd April. On World Book Night we made a low-fi, video in a very homemade style of the original film clip for Bob Dylan‘s Subterranean Homesick Blues, using those small, good things. The music was written and played by Simon Butler and Simon Smith.

​

Some Small, Good Things : contributors
Anonymous (quite a few), Craig Atkinson, Annabel Barton, John Bently, Sarah Bodman, Phil Bowden, Angie Butler, Simon Butler, Arthur Buxton, Nancy Campbell, Anna Corbett, Lilla Duignan, Su Fahy, Hazel Grainger, Charlotte Hall, Paul Laidler, Teri Makassih, Imi Maufe, Natalie McGrorty, Allil Nangi-Ud, Anne On, Jeff Rathermel, Gwen Simpson, Simon Smith, Tom Sowden, Tracy Stanton, David Sully, Gail Sully, Tribe, Barrie Tullett, Elizabeth Willow, Mark Wingrave, Philippa Wood. Special thanks to Simon Butler and Simon Smith for the original soundtrack.

Some Small, Good Things. Our collaborative video for World Book Night, can also be viewed at: http://youtu.be/sOueWbr3zBQ

Some Small, Good Things : the zine
Download : to print out and assemble your own copy of the zine of the small, good things people did, there’s also a space for you to add your own small, good thing, which will make your copy unique. Set your printer to double-sided, print out the pages and assemble so that the title page becomes the front cover, and the tribute page becomes the intro page (which will leave the list of contributors at the end) the rest can be assembled in any order inside. Score down the middle of each page, place in a pile in order, and staple.