We said farewell to the Voice of the Fans exhibition on August 10 – hopefully you were able to visit our Central Library to see this free exhibition exploring the past, present, and future of football fanzine culture during its run. A Leeds Libraries and British Library co-production, Voice of the Fans was seen by more than 10,000 visitors.

To wrap things up, this week on the Secret Library Leeds blog we bring you a first XI of facts, anecdotes and pieces of information to commemorate an exhibition and programme of events that was two years in the making.

1.

The exhibition launch took place on May 8 and saw a galaxy of fanzine creators past and present in attendance – including representatives from City Gent, The Square Ball, View from the Allotment End, A Love Supreme, the Football Supporter’s Association, Season Zine, and The Crooked Spireite. We also welcomed singer Ellen Smith, who performed moving pieces including a song in remembrance of David Oluwale.

2.

Alongside the exhibition proper, we ran a full and varied events programme, kicking things off on May 14 with some personal reminiscences about punk and punk fanzines from Steve Hyland, before welcoming Matt Lidbury from the independent publishers Lower Block for a Q&A about the legacy of the fanzine movement later that month. In June we hosted two particularly popular panel events – one exploring the place of zines in the digital era, and the other offering a platform for researchers to promote projects looking at different aspects of football history and football fan culture.

3.

July was a particularly busy month for our events programme. We finished on July 30 with a fascinating and genuinely emotive Q&A session with author and Caryl Phillips, who spoke about his love for Leeds United and the identity of the city he grew up. Before that, earlier in the month, we welcomed photographer Richard Davis (several of whose images could be seen in Voice of the Fans) for an engaging talk about football fan culture in the 1990s; figures from the intersecting world of football, fanzines and music – including the legendary Peter Hooton – for a well-attended panel event; and Tony Harcup (former Leeds Other Paper journalist) and Mick Ward (of Marching Out Together) for a Q&A that organically developed into an audience participation discussion about the role of local, independent media.

4.

In July we also hosted a talk by John Boocock and Claire Warwick about the weird and wonderful subculture of online Leeds United fans in the 1990s….but you can read more about that elsewhere on the Secret Library Leeds.

5.

During the course of the exhibition, our volunteer Pete – whose articles you can read on the Secret Library Leeds or via his own blog – worked out that the Middlesbrough fanzine Fly Me to the Moon had become the UK football fanzine with the most issues published with issue 655. we were delighted to welcome editor Robert Nichols for our final day, private viewing of the exhibition – Rob gifted us a copy of the latest edition of FMTTM and gave us some fascinating background to their recent efforts to honour Don Revie with a mosaic in his hometown.

6.

We were pleased to see Voice of the Fans get so much local and national press coverage – including reviews in When Saturday Comes and on the Football Heritage website.

7.

That Football Heritage article makes pleasing reference to football fanzines becoming legitimate material for study and research, collected by archives, libraries, museums and universities. Football writer Dan Gray’s excellent book Saturday, 3pm similarly includes some wonderful passages on the collector mindset of the football fan, ones that speak to the themes of Voice of the Fans but also, beyond that, the importance of archives everywhere:

In sheds, lofts and box rooms, museums are made. Open a cupboard door in one of these places, and you will find cardboard boxes, warping so that they rest at an italicised angle. Inside are items loosely connected to one football club. They have been stashed in there, loved of course, but piled up unthinkingly, a child’s toy box rather than a time capsule. There will be programme bundles, scraps of paper with autographs on them, club mugs, pennants and retractable biros, portrait photos of players, old match tickets and concertina-folded fixture lists.

This is the haphazard, hoarding end of the scale, of items unthinkingly accrued over many years, the ramshackle volunteer-run town museum…[T]here is, perhaps surprisingly for the stereotype of the collector, something punk about their pursuits – it is ‘do it yourself’ history, not owned by the club or those who claim to run the game. In piling up third kits or signed team posters, they are making sure we retain ownership of one element of our game at least: that which went before…[C]ollectors are not merely storing up ephemera for a rainy day. They are cultivating continuity and belonging.

8.

If you missed the exhibition, or wish to view any of the items again, do get in touch with our Local and Family History team. We’re putting together an archive of materials collected during the project, including all the item labels and photographs of the exhibition as it was between May 9 and August 10.

But we’d also urge you to subscribe to Pete Slater’s new blog exploring all things football fanzine – Pete was part of the exhibition volunteer team but has taken his research far beyond that now, becoming (we think) Britain’s foremost expert in football fanzine culture. We’ll be working more with Pete in the future – subscribe to our newsletter to find out more.

9.

Alongside the main exhibition, our amazing team of volunteers curated a spin-off cabinet display upstairs in our Local and Family History department. Featuring materials from our archives, but mainly treasures loaned to us by Martyn, Chris, Rob, Pete, Paul and Steve, the display focuses on Leeds United memorabilia alongside selections from across the wider fan and fanzine movement. The display has been extended to the end of August to coincide with the return of Premier League football to Leeds. Come along and see it on the 2nd Floor of the Central Library.

10.

Finally, we want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who was involved in making the exhibition happen – staff at Leeds Libraries and the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Football Museum; our team of volunteers; all the fanzine creators past and present we’ve engaged with and who’ve offered support, advice, and donations of fanzines; the exhibition design team (Instruct) and the technicians, painters and couriers who’ve done the kinds of physical labour that largely goes unseen in exhibitions and gallery spaces; and, of course, you, the public, the visitors to the exhibition, everyone who’s given us feedback and attended events, and engaged us in conversation, or told us their stories. We cannot thank you enough.

11.

If you enjoyed the exhibition and the events programme, we’d appreciate it if you could complete a new survey to help shape the future of Leeds Libraries. We’re asking people to share their views on our city’s libraries to help the library service create a new strategic plan. Complete the 5-10 minute survey by 31 October at https://surveys.leeds.gov.uk/s/LLC2025. Printed copies are available at community hubs and libraries. 

Featured image on this page – credit: Tracey Welch