Fast Forward Project Comic Workshop

Following the success of the Comic Workshop at this year’s Latitude festival for Culture Works East I was contacted by Oliver Payne at Musical Keys (Both organisations are based in the same building!) who thought it would be a great fit for Fast Forward, a project Musical Keys runs in partnership with NANSA and the Open Youth Trust.

Who attended the comic drawing workshop?

Fast Forward is a series of activities being run over 12 months at OPEN, a brilliantly equipped venue in the centre of Norwich.  The project offers a range of activities for young people aged 11 to 25 on the “edge of disability services” – a good cross section of which attended the four weekly comic drawing sessions that I provided.

How the Workshop went

As you’d expect with a group of young people there was a lot of fun and energy during the workshops – manifesting itself at one point in the form of a impromptu rap battle on the relative merits of various first person perspective shoot-em-ups (I can’t recall which was deemed the victor).

A number of innovations took place in this series of workshops – I gave the artists the option of working in teams on multi-page stories (usually everyone creates their own one page story), so we ended up with a couple of 4 page stories which was great! 

With the help of Ian Brownlie, one of Musical Keys regular facilitators, one of the teams (one of whom is partially sighted) experimented with collage and photocopying to create a really exciting piece of post-apocalyptic fiction!

Feedback from the artists

Here are just some of the comments left by artists on the workshop:

What really struck you as interesting or surprising during this workshop?

  • “How many stages there was to creating a comic”
  • “I think how the story came along + planned”
  • “Everyone working together on a comic”

What is the one idea that you will use in future as a result of this workshop?

  • “Do not rush a drawing although there is many stages, it is about the perfection and drawing not the time it takes”
  • “I’ll trace some of my friend Amie’s pictures”

What part of the workshop was most useful to the way you work?

  • “Teamwork – creating a page each to do with the same story”
  • “Getting ideas from other people”

Want to experience a Comic Creation Workshop yourself?

If you’re interested in attending one of my Comic Creation Workshops, or are considering hosting one an at your organisation go ahead and get in touch!

DBS checks, policies and insurances are in place to ensure safety when working with children and vulnerable adults.

Workshop running time, features and price can be configured to suit your organisation or groups needs.