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12.20.2005

The Small Presser, No. 21: "Community Outreach"

Comic-creator Bram Meehan is writing this installment of the column. Bram and his wife, Monica, who work on the spy/action comic Raised By Squirrels, were two of the founding members of the D.C. Conspiracy. This summer, the duo moved to Santa Fe, N.M., where they have joined a local comics collaborative and, as you will read, they have done some neat things in the community to promote creating comics.

In a recent Small Presser, Matt discussed getting out into the community and teaching comics and building an appreciation for the art form. Over the past couple weeks, 7000 B.C., the local Santa Fe group, was involved in a couple comic workshops.

The first was at IAIA as a part of an English prep course. The students are using Understanding Comics and Maus as their textbooks, and most of their assignments are sequential art-based. The work we'd seen from them showed a sophisticated understanding of the medium, so we decided that we would introduce them to some "tricks" that we thought could help their work.

We put together a — so help me — Powerpoint of about 45 slides (mostly commercial, but some from the group). We showed and discussed examples of time and how it can pass in a comic; ways of working with panels to achieve different effects; use of visual motifs; integration of typography into illlustration; mixed media; and introduced some thoughts about adapting other forms of communication into comics and approaches to the process of creating. That presentation went on for about an hour, and we left the dozen or so students with an assignment to adapt something from their lives, using three of the "tricks" we'd discussed.

Returning the following week to review and critique the work, we'd gained a few group members and lost a few students; the ratio allowed us to circulate among the students and review their work individually. How closely students followed the assignment varied wildly, but they all had ideas and stories they wanted to tell — and they were willing to push the boundaries of the medium to do it. We tried to pass along some things to think about and work on, and provided all the encouragement we could as they turned this assignment into their final project.

In between those two workshops was the second part of another workshop that a few group members (before there was really a group) ran earlier in the year in Española, the next town north. One of the members is closely involved with the teen center there, which is always looking for events, especially things that encourage creativity,

Five of us ran the four-hour (ran about an hour long) workshop one Saturday afternoon. Turnout was small — maybe ten or so, about half the number of the first workshop, which I still think is pretty amazing, given small population and the remoteness of the location. Mostly teens, a pre-teen or two, and even a couple adults, and what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in dedication. We began by giving a brief (maybe not brief enough) talk on some of the basics of comics. The presentation we gave the week before was probably too advanced, but some of what we put together served as a good jumping-off point. One of our members improvised an amazing 12-panel demonstration on a big pad; he walked everyone through the action, then started blacking out panels to show how the flow and meaning of the story can be altered by how and what is shown.

How much of all we said that the artists took to heart, I'm not sure. A few really embraced some of the more experimental ideas we tossed out, and everyone had a great time and turned out a couple pages of work in the next couple hours. A few folks are due to head back this weekend to show them the basics of actually copying and assembling their books.

I'm not one to let limited experience stand in the way of making sweeping generalizations, so for those looking to take on similar projects, I have a few recommendations:

Find your audience — Our group leader is the manager of the local shop, so he meets plenty of people who are interested in comics — that kind of gives us a head start. But once you're out there, you may be pleasantly surprised by who else is interested; we followed our second English comp workshop with a short presentation to a geometry class on different ways of showing time and space. Two of our members used to run a workshop for their mother's elementary school class. Another member is heavily involved with the art and gallery scene in Albuquerque, and through his network has found several groups interested in hearing us talk. And having someone who already knew the people at the teen center and many of the teens who hang out there really made them feel comfortable inviting us to run a workshop.

Know your audience — It's a good thing that we saw some samples of the IAIA students' work before we started, as our original presentation probably would've been insulting. Seeing how much they knew really pushed us to create a more involved presentation, but we really had no choice but to improvise for the other workshop, as we didn't know who would show up. We probably could've better worked out our central themes, but we'd just put together the first presentation, so had some starting points. In retrospect, we probably could've better solicited input at the beginning of the workshop to help guide us. And, it had been long enough since we'd all been in school — we'd forgotten what it was like to be back in that world, so our homework assignments and requirements were a little vague. Now, we're looking at one or two presentations to groups who don't have the comics background, so we're going back to the drawing board.

Prepare — Putting together a Powerpoint may be overkill for most situations, but assembling it really helped us organize our thoughts and develop the approach we wanted to take. Improvisation may be necessary, but it's good to have some central themes to center the discussion around. A big pad of paper and marker have been key to illustrating points and to the improvisation. And having spent time talking comics and creating with fellow group members made us comfortable to enough to play off each other in our presentation.

Enjoy and be inspired — The range of ideas and approaches to comic creation I saw was just amazing. It's encouraging to see the innovation that's happening, and it's rewarding to be a part of it.

Bram at 7:10 PM  |  link to this     

4 Comments

This definitely inspires me more now as well. Great post and much respect to you for getting out there and making things happen.

It's good to be familiar with the local population--cultural aspects, geography, general interests, and incorporating that somehow into the presentation. Of course visuals are key (especially with art) and preparation is essential, though some room for spontamaiety is important. I recently took a great grad course that emphasized questioning techniques and hands on learning as a means of getting through to kids (or people of any age). I know when Matt and Carol came to teach a comic lesson at my school last year it was very successful because they got the kids involved by asking questions and giving them a voice when it came time to come up and display and discuss their work.

steve at 12/20/2005 10:53 PM   

Good stuff, Bram. As you mentioned, knowing someone on the inside (a school, center, etc.) is key to getting in. I've tried getting a free comic-making workshop set up at a local DC school and even at the Fairfax library but heard nothing back. I plan to persue the Fairfax library part cause I think it'd work (maybe a month-long workshop featuring a member(s) of the DCC each week.)

This is kinda neat: Carol plans to make her students compose a comic based on the Odyssey. The idea being that it'll encourage them to work as team to get through the tougher parts of the story and have some creative fun along the way. If it pans out, perhaps I'll post some of the pages at my blog.

Dembicki at 12/21/2005 12:04 PM   

That's an excellent idea from Carol! Would you ever be able to be a guest in her class/school Matt? That might provide some inspiration for students.

steve at 12/21/2005 2:45 PM   

The Odyssey? That sounds like an amazing idea — there are so many levels that the project can work on. I'd love to see how it goes.

Do you think you can get in with some of the comic store folks? Maybe they can get you in touch with interested parties. Also, maybe they can give you some other ideas; around here, poetry is a big thing (school slam teams, &c.), and we've had some — sorry for using this term — synergies with some poetry organizations.

Bram at 12/22/2005 12:25 AM   

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