We are thrilled to be announcing our public and practitioner day program on Wednesday 26th June 2019 as part of the International Comics and Graphic Novels Conference.
‘There’s No Bus Map for Dementia’ Comic Launch and Workshop
Date: Wednesday 26th June 2019
Time: Launch – 1pm – 1.45pm, Workshop – 2pm – 3.30pm
Location: GM335, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond St West, Manchester Met, M15 6LL
Tickets: FREE – Available on Eventbrite
Join us for the launch of ‘There’s No Bus Map for Dementia’, a new mini-comic about the experience of living well with dementia and the condition’s social and emotional impacts. The comic was created through a series of arts workshops in which artists and people living with dementia have worked together to find ways to represent and depict the condition in a comics format. The finished comic aims to improve understanding around what it is like to have dementia and how people with dementia would prefer to be treated.
At the launch event, you can meet the artists involved and also participants from the Beth Johnson Foundation who co-created the comic. There will be an opportunity to hear about their experiences and ask questions, as well as collect your free copy of the comic.
Following the launch of ‘There’s No Bus Map for Dementia’, we’ll be holding a workshop for practitioners and carers who support people living with dementia. The workshop will be an opportunity to find out more about the creation of the comic and to discuss ways it might be used when working with people with dementia and their families and carers. The workshop will be co-facilitated by researchers, artists, people living with dementia and dementia advocates who were involved in the project and there will be opportunities to find out more about all aspects of the project.Book your FREE tickets for ‘There’s No Bus Map for Dementia’ Comic Launch and Workshop here:
dementia-comic-launch-and-workshop.eventbrite.com
Laydeez do Comics Workshop: Your Life Stories as Comics
Date: Wednesday 26th June 2019
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Location: LT5, Geoffrey Manton Building
Tickets: Free – Available on Eventbrite
ALL WELCOME (mixed event)
Rachael Ball, Lou Crosby, Dr Nicola Streeten
This session will begin with a brief illustrated presentation of the possibilities of the comics form. This will be followed by some fun practical exercises to introduce you to drawing comics. No drawing experience or knowledge of comics is required to participate. Please bring something to draw with.
Book your FREE ticket to the Laydeez do Comics Workshop here:
laydeez-do-comics-workshop-your-life-stories.eventbrite.com
Paul Gravett Keynote: The ‘Outside’ World: Isolationism and Interconnectedness in Comics Cultures
Date: Wednesday 26th June 2019
Time: 4.30pm – 5.30pm
Location: Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond St West, Manchester Met
Tickets: £5 – Available here.
In our high-speed, highly connected, ‘borderless’ world, it’s easy to forget that export, exchange and trade have always been part of the global industries of comics.
Since its early newspaper strips began to be syndicated abroad over a century ago, America has long been the most enterprising, if not aggressive exporter of its cartoon properties worldwide. However Britain, France and other centres of comics’ production were also proactive in seeking fresh markets for their products. Even a nation as largely self-isolating for several centuries as Japan owes much in the modern forms of manga to crucial connections with the West.
Manga has evolved in response to its eventual huge success abroad in translation, adjusting from a medium targeted mainly at its own local readership to one increasingly aware of appealing, at least in part, to international audiences.
Paul Gravett explores how the big three – American comics, Franco-Belgian bande dessinée and Japanese manga – as well as other players have been determined to spread their sales abroad and also receptive, in the end, to enriching external content and influences. The more interconnected comics cultures become, is
it more likely that specific national styles, themes and schools are set to vanish and for a stateless, nternationalist ‘world comics’ style to emerge?Book your £5 ticket to Paul Gravett’s lecture here:
https://buyonline.mmu.ac.uk/product-catalogue/events/rah/paul-gravett-keynote-the-outside-world-isolationism-and-interconnectedness-in-comics-cultures
Laydeez Do Comics – Manchester Pop Up
Date: Wednesday 26th June 2019Time: 6.30pm – 8.45pm
Location: Room G34, Business School, Manchester Met
Tickets: Free – Available here
ALL WELCOME (mixed event)Join us for our first Laydeez do Comics event in Manchester. The night promises an LDC special of four short illustrated talks. Hosted by Lou Crosby – Laydeez do Comics, Leeds and SeeingPoetry.com.
Rachael Ball
Rachael is a cartoonist and illustrator. She is the author of ‘The Inflatable Woman’ (Bloomsbury, 2015) which was Guardian Best Graphic Novel 2015.
Rachael will be talking about her second graphic novel, WOLF (Self Made Hero, 2018) and her current project, a third graphic novel ‘The Patsy Papers’. This is based on her experiences of teaching in secondary schools; a political satire which spotlights the effect of austerity and poor management on British schools. She also teaches children’s book and graphic novel courses at the House of Illustration and at The Art Academy, London LDC.
Shromona Das
Shromona is an artist and researcher currently pursuing her Mphil thesis on feminist and queer graphic narratives at, JNU, India. Shroma will talk about her work including #MeToo in India a call out to her abusers in her powerful first graphic narrative.
Sarah Lightman
Sarah is an artist, academic, curator, editor and writer. Talking about her new graphic memoir ‘Book of Sarah’ (Myriad Editions). This is a deeply subversive autobiography set in the Jewish heartlands of north west London, that questions religion, family, motherhood and what it takes to be an artist. Distilled from thousands of diary drawings begun in her parents’ garden shed back in 1996, Sarah Lightman’s The Book of Sarah is an alternative bible to the one she moved away from, along with the religious Jewish lifestyle she followed as a teenager.The Book of Sarah is missing from the bible, so artist Sarah Lightman sets out to make her own: questioning religion, family, motherhood and what it takes to be an artist in this quietly subversive visual autobiography from NW3. Sarah has a PhD in women’s autobiographical comics and is co-founder of Laydeez Do Comics.
With a short intro to LDC “Me and Laydeez do Comics: What next and why” from: Nicola Streeten
Nicola is a speaker, writer and drawer of comics. Her graphic memoir Billy, Me & You (Myriad Editions, 2011) is about her process of bereavement. Nicola co-founded and directs the international forum Laydeez do Comics in 2009 PhD on feminist cartoons and comics in Britain which informed her co-editing of The Inking Woman (Myriad Editions, 2018) the first documented history of women’s cartooning in Britain.Book your FREE ticket to the Laydeez do Comics talks here:
laydeez-do-comics-manchester-pop-up.eventbrite.com
Explorations in British Comics: Adventure, Comedy, and Romance
Date: 24th June – 28th June
Location: Special Collections, MMU Library, All Saints Park, Manchester M15 6BH
Time: While the exhibition will be free to visit all week, time has been allocated on the conference schedule (13:00-14:00, Wednesday 26th June).
This mini exhibition brings together the varied range of British comics held within the MMU Special Collections. The comics on display cross a variety of genres (such as boys adventure, comedy, and romance) from a broad timeframe (featuring comics from as early as 1914, to the swinging ‘60s, and beyond).
The exhibition clusters comics into three distinct themes: 1) the repackaging of American culture found in British-produced Western genre comics, comics based on popular film and television shows, and children’s annuals; 2) the mischievous child character found in comedy comics (from Comic Cuts (1890-1953) to The Beano (from 1938)); and 3) romance comics, which exploits the collection’s full run of Mirabelle (1956-1977) comics. The exhibition pairs comics with other material such as children’s books and zines, creating a unique insight into British comics culture that connects with the Special Collection’s emphasis on Children’s Books, Illustration, and Book Design.
This exhibition has been curated by Dr William Grady, a Senior Library Assistant at MMU, and part of the organising committee for the 2019 International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference.
