Migrants' comics in London

The last page of "Baz'" story on his Palestinian-Syrian nationality, which is not recognised by the authorities.

A group of migrants in London made comics about life in the UK. The comics were made in a project by the Migrants Resource Centre, an organisation with a vision of a society where migrants are valued and able to contribute. The comics were made at four evening workshops as a part of My Journey, a multimedia storytelling project which also includes photography, radio, audio-visual slideshows and film (see www.my-journey.org.uk). My Journey is run by Migrants Resource Centre and funded by City Bridge Trust.

The stories have a very wide range of approaches as the migrants come from five different continents - the only thing in common is that they are now Londoners. These comics open windows into their lives and their views on the situation of migrants. This is particularly important as the public debate all over Europe has become more anti-immigration in the last years.

The workshops were run by Lindsay Pollock, the artist who co-created the “Meet the Somalis” comic book (see our blog January 14, 2014). Pollock is a part of the Positives Negatives -organisation (www.positivesnegatives.org), which creates comics about social and human rights issues.

I was very excited to see these comics. They clearly show that comics is medium which can stretch quite far and which is readily accessible also to non-artists. If the comics were redrawn and redesigned by a professional comics artist, their poignancy and vibrant street credibility would be lost. 

So, if you have something to say, say it with comics! You can!

(Post by Leif Packalen)

Read the comics on this link: http://myjourneymrc.tumblr.com/tagged/comics

Sandra's story tells about how to battle bureaucracy for a whole year.

World Village Festival 2014

World Comics Finland displayed its giant "Comics Power" logo on its stand.

We took part in the festival with a stand where we showed parts of our new exhibition “Maailman sarjakuvittajat” (comics creators of the world) and in general promoted our grassroots approach to comics. We sold our publications, pins, second-hand comics etc., and made enough to cover the attendance. 

Two days of promoting and networking left us hoarse but happy. As always, it was nice to participate in the festival together with likeminded organisations and people who want to do something for our global common future. We were also happy to see that there are many new, recently formed organisations.

New members to our board

Hanna Arvela

Heidi Leino

In its recent annual general meeting, World Comics Finland elected Hanna Arvela and Heidi Leino into our board. Hanna Arvela is a longtime member and has run workshops in Tanzania and Kenya. Heidi Leino has been very active in the school visitor comics program with Nuorten Akatemia (The Youth Academy) both as a school visitor and a trainer of school visitors. She has also run a workshop in Mali. 

We welcome both Hanna and Heidi to the board, at the same time we thank Tarmo Koivisto and Lidia Kivinen who now leave the board after 17 and 15 years of service. 

Tarmo Koivisto

Lidia Kivinen

Tarmo has been the Vice Chairman since the establishment of our organisation in 1997 and has run workshops in Tanzania and India. Lidia joined the board in 1999 and has been our main exhibition and display architect over the years. Lidia has run workshops in Viljandi and Narva in Estonia. Warm thanks to Tarmo and Lidia for long and dedicated service. 

The current board: 

Leif Packalen, Chairman

Katja Tukiainen, Vice-Chairman

Heidi Leino, Secretary

Hanna Arvela, Member

Maippi Tapanainen, Member

New improved manuals

Basic manual

Trainer's guide

We have improved our basic wallposter comics manual with adding more drawing instruction and enlarged the script-making section. The manual has now 32 pages vs 21 in the old version

At the same time, we have rewritten the step-by-step trainer’s guide for those who run workshops in which our basic comics manual is used as a handout. The two manuals are to be used hand in hand. The trainer’s guide has 40 pages. 

Both manuals are available for download on our website:

How to Make Wallposter Comics - a manual (6.8 MB)

Wallposter Comics Workshop - Trainer’s Guide (4.5 MB)

When you download the manual you can also print it double-sided, if your printer has that option. That will reduce the amount of paper use to half. 

If you have access to both a double-sided printer and Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can open the document in that program and print it as an A5-sized booklet. This reduces the paper use to 25%, but remember the print-out text is rather small. Try it out!

Download the two manuals and you get a quite good idea of how it is to run a workshop. 

We are working on making the improved manuals available also in other languages.

A Guard’s Story - comic on Australian refugee detention centres

The comic was drawn by Sam  Wallman

The Australian refugee detention policy has been forcefully described in the comic A Guard’s Story, published in the Global Mail on their website:

http://serco-story.theglobalmail.org

The administration of the detention centres has been outsourced to multinational companies who run the centres with minimum expense and maximum profit. A humane approach to refugees is not on their agenda.

The creators of the comic interviewed at length an ex-employee of SERCO, a major detention centre contractor. His experiences as well as his diary notes were the base for the comic which was drawn by Sam Wallman, an accomplished counterculture artist from Melbourne.

A Guard’s Story offers a rare and chilling insight into the life inside an Australian immigration detention facility. 

Again we can see the power of comics. It is difficult to imagine telling this story in another medium quite as well as in A Guard’s Story. Thanks to The Global Mail team for publishing it. 

(posted by Leif Packalen)

The guard couldn't cope with the work at the SERCO company for very long.

Comics – a new tool for teachers

A student drawing in deep concentration. 

The University of Eastern Finland organised a grassroots comics workshop as a part of a Master's programme for international students in February. The participants were mainly teachers from Namibia who studied in Joensuu in the Faculty of Education for a few months. The workshop was part of lecturer Raisa Simola's course ”African literature in primary education”. 

The course was open for everyone so also some Finnish and Japanese students had a chance to take part in the comics workshop. The workshop was tutored by Sanna Hukkanen, Artist and World Comics member who lives in Joensuu.

The workshop lasted only for three hours so the time was limited and all participants did not manage to finish inking their comics. But they were very enthusiastic about the subject and asked lots of questions. They also compared the situations in the sample comics from different countries with the situation in their home country. There was a short debate about disabled people's rights, just to mention one subject that came up.

The best part of the workshop, as always, was the discussion on the comics made by the participants. Seeing each others' work, and showing their own comics was inspiring. The students were positively surprised about how easy it was to draw the comics, but also about how well the others understood and interpreted them. The comics were readable and valid a across the cultural boundaries.

For the Namibian participants this was the first time ever that they made comics, for the others the medium was familiar. All participants were very happy to learn about grassroots comics and about the free materials for download in the World Comics website. They were sure that they will be using comics in their work in the future. They came up with many ideas on how comics could be used in teaching.

(posted by Sanna Hukkanen)

Comic by Andreas

Disabled students' comics

A small group of disabled students had a grassroots comics workshop in the VAMLAS student housing unit in Lauttasaari in Helsinki in January. The VAMLAS Foundation promotes inclusion, study and work opportunities for youths with disabilities (read more at www.vamlas.fi ) 

These were also the themes that the participants made comics about. They all had lots of thoughts of what stories they wanted to make. The morning started with frantic discussions, and at the end of the day there were poignant comics on the wall, for all of us to admire. The process seemed almost effortless.  

A few details from the workshop:

Ellu's story is about a severely disabled student that frightened her teacher by her appearance and was then ignored in the class. The student made a very determined effort and got good grades. In the last panel the teacher concludes: “So, even that one seems to learn”.

Kira made her story about a disabled person that, after some doubt, was given a job. She is good at her job and the manager is positively surprised.

Noora's story is about a boy who asks his mother why the disabled person looks so funny. His mother says “get into the car!” and they speed off. The disabled person wonders what explanation the mother gives to the boy in  the car.

SV made a story about the treshold disabled persons face when going for further studies.

Minna’s story gives an example of how a person in a wheelchair can share her reaching aid with a colleague.

World Comics Finland's exhibition "Maailman sarjakuvittajat" now ready

We have now completed our exhibition "Maailman sarjakuvittajat" (loosely translated: comics makers of the world - also alluding to our organisation's name in Finnish).

The exhibition displays nine Finnish comics artists who have been at our comics workshops in different parts of the world.  Their own comics reflect in different ways their experiences from working with development issues and comics. Each artist has chosen a comic from a workshop, where s/he or has been a trainer. In the exhibition the comics are displayed in pairs, showing one by a Finnish artist and one by a Southern trainee. The exhibition, with Finnish texts, will be shown on comics festivals, in city libraries, and in comics schools in Finland during the year 2014.

The exhibition publication (28 pp) with interviews of the Finnish artists was compiled by Maippi Tapanainen.

Martin Luther King’s story in Patua art

A spread from the book

A remarkable publication from Tara Books in Chennai, India! The story of Martin Luther King’s life and the civil rights struggle in the Sixties in the US, drawn by a Patua artist from Bengal, with lyrical prose by an African-American writer.

Patua scroll art is a longtime storytelling tradition in Bengal. The artist paints a scroll with, typically, 20 to 30 panels and tells or sings the story while showing the panels one at a time. He goes from one village to the next and lives primarily on what he can collect from the villagers. His stories are mainly from the religious and the mythological realm, but also contemporary events can be turned into this art form.

Tara Books commissioned  Patua artist Manu Chitrakar to paint the story of Martin Luther King jr and when it was still in a sketch format they engaged  US writer Arthur Flowers to write the text. The text and the art were combined by  Italian graphic designer Gugliemo Rossi into an enjoyable fusion. 

Special thanks go to the Helsinki Library that bought the book for us to read!

Posting by Leif Packalen
………………….

I See the Promised Land: A Life of Martin Luther King Jr. 

by Arthur Flowers (Author) , Manu Chitrakar (Illustrator)

Meet the Somalis - extraordinary comics published by the Open Society Foundation

Meet the Somalis is a collection of 14 illustrated stories depicting the real life experiences of Somalis in seven cities in Europe, one of them Helsinki.

The stories focus on challenges faced by Somali migrants in Europe, such as education, housing, media, employment, political participation, and identity. They were told to author Benjamin Dix and made into comics by artist Lindsay Pollock.

Check it out, it's worthwhile, as the 14 stories paint a vivid and obviously quite true picture of what it means to be a Somali in Europe. The publication is available on:

http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/multimedia/meet-the-somalis

It is also available as a downloadable pdf-file (62 pages).

Grassroots comics workshops in November - December 2013

Deep concentration in the group of teachers in Tampere 

Comics as a multicultural tool for teachers

A comics workshop for teachers started in November and will end in January. In all, the participants will have four days of tuition, with a considerable amount of assignments between the tuition days. The idea is that the teachers will run their own comics workshops in their schools. The workshop is arranged by the Tampere Summer University and funded by the Finnish National Board of Education. It is designed to introduce comics as a tool for a multicultural approach to education. Leif Packalen of World Comics Finland and Eila Isotalus of Unidos, are tutors at the course.

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Grassroots comics for social services students

We were requested to run comics workshops for the social services students at Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Tikkurila campus, in December. 36 students, in two groups, took part in the workshops. The workshops were a part of their studies in how to use visual means in social services. The students made comics about different social issues, such as student welfare, Christmas shopping craze, loneliness, attitude towards socially marginalized people, etc.

Below a detail from a comic made by student Nico Vera:

A detail from Nico Vera's comic about burnout

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Heidi Leino of World Comics Finland (middle) and Anni Pietarinen
(standing) of Nuorten Akatemia were tutors at the workshop.

 Grassroots comics combined with drama for global education in schools

Nuorten Akatemia (The Finnish Youth Academy) has been running a highly appreciated school visitor programme with grassroots comics since 2009 with support from the Foreign Ministry. In 2013 - 2014 the programme was expanded to include a drama workshop, which will precede the comics workshops in the schools.

Heidi Leino and Leif Packalen ran the comics training workshop for 25 school visitors in Helsinki in December. Heidi also worked as a tutor for the drama part of the workshop.