When she first heard about the Great Salt Lake drying up, 18-year-old Eddie Memmott thought it was bad, but “didn’t care too much.”
But, as she told KRCL’s RadioACTive program recently, she kept learning. “The more I looked into it I was like, ‘Oh, this affects me. It affects our food industry, it affects skiing, it affects our water and I think thinking about these things makes it feel a lot more urgent.”
She and several other teens learned about the lake through a partnership between Great Salt Lake Collaborative and Spy Hop, where the teens were zine design apprentices.
Spy Hop is a nonprofit youth media arts organization that received a grant from Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Wake the Great Salt Lake program aimed at commissioning temporary public art about the lake.
The Great Salt Lake Collaborative was paid via the grant to provide information to Spy Hop students about the lake as they created zines, videos and audio-scapes to inform and inspire their fellow teens.
The news collaborative held a panel discussion with experts on the lake, including staff from the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office, which is charged with getting more water the lake; and the advocacy organizations the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake and Grow the Flow. It also provided its journalism to the students to explain how the lake affects Utahns and potential solutions.
(Photo courtesy of Brie Pereboom) Spy Hop students displayed their zines at Grid Zine Fest in Salt Lake City in March. The zines are currently available at the downtown Salt Lake City library.
Memmott’s zine is called “How the Great Salt Lake Drying Up Affects You.” It prods the reader to care about the lake if they eat fish or almonds, ski, have a cell phone or breathe local air. The lake is important to the ski, fertilizer, lithium and fish food industries and its shrinking threatens public health as more dry lakebed is exposed.
She told the Great Salt Lake Collaborative that she wanted people to know "there are real stakes involved in protecting our lake. Things will change if this problem doesn’t get solved."
(Photo courtesy Mason Fetzer, Spy Hop). Eddie Memmott, a design apprentice at Spy Hop, holds her zine that she made about the Great Salt Lake.
When asked how learning about the lake affected her, she said in an email that it "reminded me that there are more issues than what is popularly talked about in media. I knew about global warming, but finding out about environmental issues so close to home really brought me back to reality. Since then I’ve payed more attention to issues in my community."
Fellow zine apprentice Josie Callahan’s zine is called “So Your Great Salt Lake is Drying Up… What Do You Do Now?”
“I’m very aware of the Great Salt Lake and it’s decline but I get stuck in these anxiety loops of, 'I can't do anything without dedicating a lot of energy or time to it,’” she told KRCL, a partner in the Great Salt Lake Collaborative. She offered five tips and provided QR codes in the zine for further information, including to get educated by following the news, conserve water by ripping out your lawn, cutting back on dairy and beef, and informing others.
Other zines explored birds of the lake, the lake’s connection to the ancient Lake Bonneville and brine shrimp.
This was the first time zine apprentices at Spy Hop focused on a policy topic. Lead design mentor Liz Schulte said the process of thinking critically about the lake and drawing about it has led the apprentices to become advocates.
"I really loved having the teens' perspective on an issue deepen when they were challenged to communicate to others what they have learned," she wrote in an email. "Zines are a fantastic way to get teens to think deeper about an issue that needs to inform the public, gives access to teens making a cool thing they can be proud of, is distributed in a financially responsible way and is a vehicle for teens to interact with other artists by swapping zines."
Here are the nine zines created by students, some of whom didn't use their names:
Eddie Memmott's zine:
Josie Callahan's zine:
Aud Belka's zine:
Arlo Bevan's zine:
Amy Flores' zine:
Holley Duncan's zine:
Arlo Bevan's zine:
Masahi Williams' zine:
