New website finally ready!

Opening image in our new slideshow.

We have revamped our website www.worldcomics.fi   It is now much more compact than before, and it should be  easy to find our manuals in several languages as well as samples of comics from different parts of the world.

As a completely new item we have a slide show with pictures from workshops and distribution of wallposter comics.  Our latest downloadable manuals are in Estonian and Russian.

Please visit the site, and let us have your comments.  Our news will continue on this blog.

Comics trainers for global education in eastern part of Estonia

Tatiana inking her comic.

Knowledge of the grassroots comics method expands  in Estonia as the cooperation between the Estonian NGO Mondo (www.mondo.org.ee) and World Comics Finland continues. After conducting a workshop in Tallinn in November 2012 we were asked to go to Narva, a town located in the very eastern part of Estonia.

A training of comic trainers (ToT) for global education was held in Narva at the end of January 2013.  The workshop was facilitated by Heidi Leino and Lidia Kivinen from World Comics Finland. In this special workshop, developed together with Finnish Youth Academy (Nuorten Akatemia),  the participants are sensitised to global issues like injustice, world trade, and women's and childrens rights.

In  similar workshops held mainly in Finnish schools, grassroots comics made by activists in Africa have been used as demonstration material. These comics are an excellent tool to illustrate several things:

1) to familiarize the participants with the every-day problems people can have in developing countries.

2) to show that the local people are often very active in finding solutions to their problems

3) to describe how grassroots comics are used as a means of communication in developing countries.

In Narva, the participants at the training were youth workers and students. Their mother tongue was Russian.

The workshop participants in Narva. In front: Lidia Kivinen and Heidi Leino

Comics produced in the workshop were about about drug abuse, corruption, racism and human rights, importance of learning and going to school, and helping the poor. One of the comics advertised the youth center as a far better place to be in than drinking and smoking in the street with "the bad guys".

Druzhba (Friendship)

1. Hello guys!     Go away!

2. But why? According to the international convention of human rights,

all people are equal!!! 

3. Since when? We are people who follow the law! So let’s be friends?

Narva January 28, 2013. Story and Art by Igor

The feedback  from the participants was very positive and we look forward to seeing how the grassroots comics method works with the youngsters in Narva area. The basic grassroots comics manual was translated into Russian and it is now available on our website www.worldcomics.fi
post by Heidi Leino

Young people’s voices... grassroots comics from Kenya

Mtazamo wa Vijana - Young people’s voices on current issues in Kenya is a publication compiled by Youth Alive! Kenya in Nairobi. It contains some of the grassroots comics which were produced at comics workshops in Nairobi in 2011 -12. Participating organizations were Kamukunji Paralegal Trust (KAPLET), Gay Kenya Trust, Undungu Society of Kenya, Kamukunji Community Based Organizations Network (KCBONET), U-TENA and Youth Alive! Kenya.  18 activists from these organizations were trained to make grassroots comics and thereafter to run comics workshops themselves.

The comics in the publication are a reflection of the issues the Kenyan society is grappling with, and more specifically, the youth in the society.

The cooperation betwen World Comics Finland and the Kenyan organizations received funds from the Finnish Foreign Ministry.

For more information about the publication please get in touch with Youth Alive! Kenya, email info@youthalivekenya.org

Finland: Collection of comics by the Open Minds -group

"This is our home" - "It is a boy".  Detail from a comic made by Anna S.

Västra Nylands Folkhögskola is a Swedish-language Open College in the western part of Finland.  Together with Kårkulla, a resource center for mentally handicapped, they run a program called Open Minds. As part of the program, World Comics Finland was invited to arrange a two-day workshop for a group of mentally handicapped women.

The workshop took place in Karis in October 23-24, 2012 with 12 participants. They were enthusiastic about the possibility to express their views and tell their stories in grassrooots comics, and they grasped the idea of the medium quickly.

Leif Packalen ran the workshop together with coordinator Kia Orama. In addition, the participants had personal assistants who helped them with things like spelling. But they did not need any help with their stories which were based on true and moving experiences, and hopes for the future.

Grassroots comics can be used in a number of ways. This was a very promising opening.

Have a look at the collection: download the pdf-file (2,8 MB)

1001 Comics you must read before you die

The covers of the UK (left) and the US (right) editions of the book.

This impressive book (960 pages!)  was first published in English in 2011. The book’s editor Paul Gravett describes it as an attempt at an historical survey of the best or most significant works in the medium.

1001 Comics came out in 2012 in French (Flammarion), with an intro by Benoît Peeters and with around 100 entries substituted by Nicolas Finet and his team with French titles. It also came out in Spanish from Grijalbo, using all the original entries from the English-language version.

In October 2012, Olms in Germany published their version of 1001 Comics, edited and with a foreword by Andreas Knigge who also replaced some 100 entries with German comics. 

This year, editions are being planned in Italy, the Czech Republic and Brazil, hopefully by the autumn. 

As it reaches more and more people in more and more languages, 1001 Comics is proving a valuable tool to open readers' minds to the wonders out there in the wider world of comics, past and present. 

Get hold of the book and enjoy reading about the medium of comics from a global perspective. More on: http://www.paulgravett.com/index.php/books/detail/category/1001_guide/

Comics from Inside the Prisons (US)

American activist Lois Ahrens is our long-time pen-pal who has tirelessly worked for the Real Cost of Prisons Project in the U.S.A. We admire her work, and strongly recommend a visit to the project’s website http://www.realcostofprisons.org/ See how comics can be used in mobilizing opinion against an unjust prison system and also how prisoners themselves make comics about their lives.

The Real Cost of Prisons Project seeks to broaden and deepen the organizing capacity of prison/justice activists working to end mass incarceration. The Real Cost of Prisons Project brings together justice activists, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to create popular education materials and other resources which explore the immediate and long-term costs of incarceration on the individual, her/his family, community and the nation.



Artist: Carnell Hunnicutt

Two comic books are available from Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented. As of February 2010, 125,000 copies of the comic books have been printed and more than 115,000 have been sent to families of people who are incarcerated, people who are incarcerated and to organizers and activists throughout the country. The demand for them is constant and the ways in which they are being used is inspiring.

The books are free to prisoners, organizers against mass incarceration and educators in the U.S., but they cannot be sent free of charge outside the country. However, they are available on-line at http://www.realcostofprisons.org/comics.html

Lois Ahrens has also started something she calls ”Comix from Inside”  http://www.realcostofprisons.org/comix/  These comics are made by women and men who are incarcerated, some of them for life.
 

Artist: Marcus J. Bedford Jr.

Estonia: Comics trainers for global education



The workshop was held at Mondo’s office in Tallinn. To the right Heidi Leino and Johanna Helin.

Mondo (www.mondo.org.ee) is one of the few NGOs in Estonia that is active in development cooperation. Mondo has project work in Afghanistan, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda. Mondo is also in charge of several development education projects in Estonia. 

Mondo wanted to replicate in Estonia the successful Finnish global education project run by Nuorten akatemia (Youth Academy) since 2009 in schools. In the project, school visitors run 3-hour comics workshops on such global themes as climate change, fair trade, justice issues, and development advocacy. World Comics Finland has trained the Finnish school visitors in how to conduct workshops in schools, and now we were requested to train their Estonian colleagues.

The two-day workshop was held in early November and was facilitated by Heidi Leino and Leif Packalen from World Comics Finland. For the training, our basic grassroots comics manual was translated into Estonian. It will later be made available on our website.

As always, the participants in the workshop were delighted to learn the method of grassroots comics and they were eager to put their new skills into practice in their own projects. Johanna Helin, Manager for Mondo’s Global Education Centre, described its activities as ”very alternative” in the Estonian society.

A detail from Ivi Sutt’s comic on Estonian migrant labour below: A husband must go to Finland to find work and his children call him "uncle" when he visits Estonia on vacations. At the end of the story he decides to remain home, whatever it takes.

The comics of the workshop were put up in the corridor outside Mondo's office. 
Here the participants prepare themselves for the review session.

Comics to engage youth in society

Grassroots comics workshop at City Hall in Helsinki. Photograph: Hanna Arvela.
 

Helsinki City Hall was invaded by 2600 youngsters on UN Day (24.10). The "RuutiExpo"-event was arranged by the Youth Department of the City to promote different ways for the youth to get involved in matters of society. City authorities, political youth organisations, and NGOs participated. There were political discussions, rap workshops, drama studios, info stands etc., and also a grassroots comics workshop, which was led by Hanna Arvela of World Comics Finland. The workshop was arranged jointly with CIMO (the European Youth Exchange organisation).

The comics took up mainly school issues, such as the battle between study time and fun time, pressure to achieve good grades, etc.

Below Heidi Heiskanen’s comic ”When sleep doesn’t come...”, in which a young girl thinks about her home work, friends, money, pet, sisters and school tests, so that she is wide awake. She writes an entry in her diary, which calms her down and she goes to sleep.

Genuine life-stories drawn by mentally handicapped in the Open Minds -program.

The comics are pasted up for the review session

Open Minds is a cooperation program between Karkulla, an organization working for the welfare of Swedish-language mentally handicapped in Finland, and VNF Folk High School in Karis, Finland.

About a dozen participants from the program attended a two-day grassroots comics workshop at the VNF School in October. They described in their comics events in their daily lives, and told about their dreams for the future. The medium of comics was familiar to them but they had never attempted to make comics themselves. 

All participants made great comics and were happy to take copies to show at home and in their group accommodations. A set of the comics was also pasted up at the school, which has about 200 students.

The comics tell very vividly, and often with humour, about how the group members look at their own lives. There are stories about love and marriage, hobbies and leisure time, the routines of the group accommodations, and some philosophical stories. Below are a few details from some of the comics.

Again, grassroots comics proved to be a great tool for communication. The method is easy and it helps people to express themselves in a way that gives them great satisfaction.

Leif Packalen was facilitator at the workshop.

- Now I am ready to get married!  from a love story by J.

- One has to think of how to move on, in order to have the best life possible… 

detail from a story on diagnosis by S.

- You are now declared man and wife! from a love story by A.

 -Strike!  from a bowling hall story by M. who uses a wheelchair.

Comics workshop at the Megapolis festival in Helsinki

 

Grassroots comics workshop in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki.


The Finnish NGO Dodo organised an urban environmental festival ”Megapolis” in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in October 2012 in Helsinki. As a part of the program, two grassroots comics workshops were held where comics were introduced as a medium for advocacy and communication.

The participants were inspired by videos and photos showing the use of grassroots comics around the world. After this, they made comics on climate change, on renewable energy, on immigration, and on global and local justice issues.

The festival also displayed grassroots comics posters made in Mali by Dodo’s partner organisation MFC Nyetaa. The facilitators of the workshop were Hilkka Jokinen and Heidi Leino who conduct grassroots comics workshops in Finnish schools in a global education project ”Maailman kuvat” (Images of the World), implemented by Nuorten akatemia (Academy of the Youth) and partner NGOs, of which World Comics Finland is one.

AMWCY making comics in Senegal

From the comics workshop in Thies, Senegal

The African Movement of Working Children and Youth (AMWCY) held an international meeting of its commission group from 08 to 18 October, 2012, in Thies (Senegal).

After the meeting, communicators of the Movement met to work on the AMWCY’s annual newsletter and to produce Comics on violence against children. The comics will be published in a separate publication. The participants in the workshop came from several West and Central African countries and the main languages used were French, English and Portuguese.

Ayenu Edoh Komlan (Togo), worked as a facilitator at the comics workshop and sent us some pictures and samples of comics. Ayenu had recently ran a comics workshop in Baguida, Togo on the theme of flood risks.

We were very happy to receive these news and to see that AMWCY are actively using grassroots comics in their campaigning activities. Comics power to them all!

If you would like to see more of AMWCY's comics go to their website: 
http://www.maejt.org/Page_activite_Dessins_animees.htm (in French), and http://www.maejt.org/page%20anglais/PAGE_ACTIVITIES_CARTOON_DRAWINGS.htm (in English)

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The workshop Hall in Thies.

Grassroots comics workshop in Nhamatanda, Mozambique

The comics were pasted up on the walls of the college for the critique session.

Jamisse Ofisse, a teacher in Nhamatanda Escuela de Profesores por Futuro (a teacher training college near Beira in Mozambique), has been active with grassroots comics for some years now. We asked him if he could arrange a comics workshop at his college, which he agreed to eagerly, and so we sent to the school a small grant to cover the immediate expenses, such as pencils, pens, paper, copying, etc.

Ms. Alice Elias Madondo showing her wallposter comic.

The three-day workshop was held in August and fifteen EPF students (8 men and 7 women) participated and produced about fifty wallposter comics. The themes of the comics were cholera prevention, hiv/aids, malaria control, and education for girls.

Jamisse told us the students were very positive about their workshop experience and he would be happy to continue to arrange grassroots comics workshops if there would be a partner organisation that could support the EPF, like World Comics Finland did. There would be no shortage of interested participants for comics workshops, Jamisse concludes. Below one of the comics made at the workshop, with a summary of the story: 

A community with malaria. Dona Ana goes to the Health Centre and gets nets to prevent her from  mosquito attacks. In the last frame, the author exclaims: Follow the example of Dona Ana! Story and artwork by Ms. Rosete da Graca Titosse.