Analysis of ten grassroots comics made by female participants with disabilties in workshops in Mwanza, Tanzania

The cover of the book with a grassroot comic on secondary education for the deaf.

In 2010 Sanna Hukkanen and Sunday Ngakama conducted four grassroots comics workshops in Mwanza in collaboration with some Tanzanian NGOs that work with people with disabilities. The workshop was organised by SHIVYAWATA (an umbrella organisation) and funded by Abilis Foundation from Finland.

Adjunct professor Elina Lehtomäki of the University of Helsinki is an activist for education rights of persons with disabilities. She has written together with Sanna Hukkanen, a longtime member of World Comics Finland and an accomplished comics trainer, an article called “Tanzanian Girls and Women with (Dis)abilities Claim Their Right to Education" in the book "Inclusive Education Twenty Years After Salamanca" (Salamanca, Spain was the venue for a landmark conference on special needs education in 1994). The book was published by Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. of New York, U.S in a series called Disability Studies in Education.

Ten grassroots comics and their messages are analyzed thoroughly in the article, which concludes that the comics provide critical insights of what the girls and their families see as important in their education and learning in Tanzania.

The authors make it clear that grassroots comics can contribute with empowering tools to uncover abilities and voices, and they could therefore be used on the ground to help finding out the views and experiences of girls and women with (dis)abilities.

Posted by Leif Packalen

Comics journalism on crack cocaine and Guinea Bissau by Benjamin Dix and Tayo Fatunla

Follow this comic on BBC, see link below.

Tayo Fatunla, Britain-based Nigerian Comics Artist and long-time friend, sent me this message:

“I am so proud to announce, the launch of the Digital comic which I produced in conjunction with Positive Negatives, titled HOOKED, and produced by the BBC. HOOKED begins on 18th May and will run daily on TV and online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32740687 until 22nd May.

Earlier this year, PosNeg conducted interviews around crack cocaine addiction in the small West African state of Guinea-Bissau.

Written by my new friend since January, Benjamin Dix, I was called upon as a Comic Artist to illustrate the comic. I worked with loads of pictures Benjamin submitted to me.

Guinea-Bissau has been a key centre for smuggling cocaine from South America to lucrative markets in Europe and has often been referred to as Africa's first 'narco-state'. 

HOOKED is based on reportage that tells the story of Buba, a young man growing up in the neighbourhoods of Bissau and the consequences of selling and taking drugs and how it is a struggle to opt out of it. 

All names in the comic were changed to protect identities of the many PosNeg met with.

Feel free to tweet or share on FB - Spread the news"

Tayo Fatunla

I have written about Benjamin Dix in this blog before, and about his cooperation with artist Lindsay Pollock. Dix’ approach to comics journalism is groundbreaking and the concept deserves to be spread and emulated.

Tayo Fatunla was featured in the first ever African Comics exhibition in Finland, in the Kemi Comics Festival in 1993. Tayo also visited Finland in 1999 at the “World Village” event.

Posted by Leif Packalen  

Russia: Karelian language survives – in Comics!

The workshop participants at the Periodika Publishing house in Petrozavodsk

Finnish comics artist and tutor Sanna Hukkanen travelled to Petrozavodsk in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, last summer. There she visited Karjalan Rahvahan Liitto ('Karelian People's Union') – an NGO revitalising and preserving the endangered Karelian language, and realised for the first time how close it was to her own Eastern Finnish dialect. She took language courses and headed back to Petrozavodsk in April 2015 to run a grassroots comics workshop together with Karjalan Rahvahan Liitto.

The workshop took place at Periodika Publishers on the 23rd of April. The participants were journalists working in Karelian and Veps languages, Karelian-speaking day care staff and Finnish language students from Petrozavodsk State University. Most of the students had a minority language background. The theme of the comics, ‘Own Language’ was chosen by the participants. The subjects for their comics were: passing the language to the next generation, personal experience as a minority language speaker, and losing and rediscovering one’s own language. The participants’ deeply emotional relationship to the subject is clearly visible in the comics made during the workshop. Some of the comics make really good advertisements for language courses!

Drawing exercise - from stick figure to body

The participants had very little experience about comics and their expectations for the workshop were not clear. Many worried about their drawing skills. However, during the day they realised how simple it is to make comics, and how efficient tools comics can be. All participants were positively surprised about the new skills and ideas they gained. They were also motivated to continue with comics in the future. Plans were set to organise an advanced workshop next October.

At the end of the workshop the participants got a chance to brainstorm ideas for how the comics could be used. The target groups were defined to be both Russian and minority language speakers. An exhibition including all the comics was immediately put up at Periodika Publishers. Karjalan Rahvahan Liitto will distribute the exhibition to different places and events. In addition, the comics will be published as a booklet that will be distributed to schools and different Karelian language and culture events. 

Also the local media showed interest in the workshop. The comics got into TV news on the local Petrozavodsk channel SampoTV and the Karelian national TV. Also the Karelian language weekly, Oma Mua, and the Finnish language weekly Karjalan Sanomat wrote articles about the workshop, and published some of the comics too. Comics are not very popular in Russia. Basically only the well known superhero characters are familiar to the public.

The workshop was based on the grassroots comics format developed by World Comics Finland. The idea was to show how comics could be used a a tool for preserving and revitalising an endangered language. In this case the method met its goals perfectly! 

Without contemporary channels for endangered languages, they might easily die with the last people who still speak them -  the old generation. There are still about 40 000 people, who speak Karelian, and less than 2000 who speak Veps in the Karelian Republic. Most of them are old people.

The Petrozavodsk comics workshop received funding from Karjalan sivistysseura (Karelian Culture Society) and Taiteen edistämiskeskus (Art Promotion Centre Finland).

See also: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHT8k5X56To (in Finnish and Karelian)

Posted by Sanna Hukkanen

Translation of one of the workshop's comics: 

Living Language

Baju baju my little girl/ I speak Karelian/ I always remember my own language/ Own language – Living language/ Mama

The training material was available both in Finnish and in Russian.

Comics in the Palestinian Camps in Lebanon

Ms. Sirkku Kivistö of the Finnish Psychologists for Social Responsibility returned recently from a project visit to Lebanon. We had requested her to see what kind of comics the children in the camps make. The Palestinian Refugee Organisation Beit Atfal Assomoud runs different types of leisure activities for the youngsters, and making comics is one of them.

Imad Mazen Abdullah leads the comics group in 
the Family Guidance Center in Ein el-Helweh.

The comics are from the camp Ein el-Helweh (Saida), where Imad Mazen Abdullah is responsible for comics activities. Imad is a student in a vocational school and volunteers at the Family Guidance Center in his free time.

World Comics Finland and the Finnish Psychologists for Social Responsibility ran a comics training workshop jointly in Lebanon in 2005. Imad was not taking part in the training, but he has learned how to make comics from those who participated. This proves our motto: to make grassroots comics is a skill you can easily share. 

Take a look below at some of the comics Sirkku brought back with her:

(posted by Leif Packalen)

1. Yousef Alareed (13 years). The story is about the conflicts that surround the children and states that if you don’t talk to each other there will be fighting and homes will be destroyed. It ends with the words: Talk to each other, life is good, buildings are good and everyone has a friend.

2. Mostafa Zeidan (14 years). This comic depicts the introduction of a traffic police and traffic signs in a busy intersection, where traffic used to be chaotic.

3. Also by Mostafa Zeidan: Khaled, a shepherd, feels lonely and calls for his friend to come and accompany him. His friend joins him for the whole day, as weather is nice. They enjoy each other's company.

4. Amal Baroumi, 11 years, made this drawing, which depicts the lost Palestine as a tear.