Your must-read comics article of the weekend! If you are active in comics community you may already be aware of the work of a small group of comics activists have been doing behind the scenes to improve the profile of the form in the UK. With an official name – the Comics Cultural Impact Collective – Nyla Ahmad, Hannah Berry, Karrie Fransman, Rhiannon Griffiths MBE, Sara Kenney, Myfanwy Tristram and Zara Slattery have published a manifesto of sorts, detailing the aims of the initiative. More details below. Please spread information on this far and wide!
The Comics Cultural Impact Collective (CCIC, pronounced ‘seasick’)
- We now have a name and a website: thecomicsculturalimpactcollect
ive.org. We are ‘The Comics Cultural Impact Collective’. You can read our Aims and Objectives here, and meet our team here and join us for updates here.
- We are an independent group that is not affiliated with any single organisation but our supporters from the comics community include comic festivals, publishers, academics, museums, organisations, shops and also organisations in the literacy, data and cultural funding sectors. We hope to bring our community together for the common good- “A rising tide lifts all boats”.
Dates for your Diary
- We are excited to have a front cover and double page leading article on ‘The Power of Comics’ out today in The Bookseller’s September ‘Comics and Graphic Novel’ issue (15/9/12). We hope it will be valuable ammunition in making the case for the value of comics. Please read and share- more info below!
- We will be talking at LICAF at 15:00 on Friday 29th September. The sessions are all being held in the Lake District Boat Club which is venue K on the festival map (just a 3 minute walk from the Marketplace Marquee). We look forward to seeing and chatting to anyone who is there.
- We will also be presenting our work at Thought Bubble on Saturday 6th November from 12:15-13:15 at the Queens Suite, workshop room. Rumour has it there will be snacks!
- We will have a round table online meeting with the UK comics community on January 16th 7-9pm to share ideas on how to come together to raise the value of comics in the UK. We’d love to have you there and hear your thoughts!
Data and Research
- We have been gathering data on the economical, psychological and social impact of comics in the UK and created a short PDF attached here. One of the main headlines of this research is that (unsurprisingly!) both comic audiences and creators are a large and diverse group.
- We presented this research to Arts Council England who said it makes a ‘compelling case for comics funding’ and we will share it here with you all to use in funding applications, pitches and to collectively promote our medium.
- We are currently working with statisticians at The Operational Research Society to better understand these stats and have also been in contact with The Office of National Statistics (ONS) who are interested in working with us on this.
Improving Comics Funding
- One of our aims is to ensure that comics are equitably funded in comparison to other art forms.
- We met with the Arts Council England (ACE) on 6/7/23 to show them our research and the FOI data we pulled on comics funding. We found a large disparity in the amount of comics funding received in comparison to opera, ballet, orchestra and poetry. Only a single comics organisation (LICAF) receives National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) funding in the UK. We’re sharing research and intelligence with Arts Council England as part of our work to develop the case for funding the comics sector. And as some of you may already have seen, following our meeting ACE have formed an internal group and begun reaching out to comics creators and organisations to improve knowledge of the sector and use their funding to support it. We have arranged another meeting with the Arts Council in the next few months.
- We are pleased to say that Thought Bubble has just been funded by the ACE and hope that many more comics organisations will be soon. We are delighted with this progress and hope to use our model with ACE to approach ALL cultural funders with our case for raising awareness of the cultural impact of comics.
- We have created a survey of the comic community’s experience with funding with over 260 respondents. We need to better understand what barriers our community faces in applying for funding. Our survey examines the overall success rate of funding applicants and the reasoning behind decisions not to apply, and we are working with specialists to draw accurate conclusions from the data.
List of Comics Backbone Organisations
- We are putting together a comprehensive list of ALL comics organisations in the UK to build a better picture of our community. This includes community groups, comic cons and festivals, publishers, museums, websites, shops and more. Mapping the industry will help funders provide more targeted support.
- Via John Freeman at downthetubes.net we have a list of the astonishing 119 comic cons that occur in the UK each year https://docs.google.
com/spreadsheets/d/1gEd7J- elT60vzb_ UrTgFGf9pPHpzSpMikqTDoQc81Z8/ edit?usp=sharin. This is further evidence of the large and enthusiastic audience of comic lovers in the UK.
Raising the Profile of Comics in the UK
- Another of our aims is to raise awareness of the impact of comics in the UK. We are working to raise the profile of the medium with booksellers, libraries, distributors, galleries and museums, cultural organisations, educators, the media and the general public; working together to understand how we can better reach new audiences. We hope this is something the whole of the comics community can collaborate in doing together.
- We are excited to have a front cover and double page leading article coming out in The Bookseller’s September ‘Comics and Graphic Novel’ issue (15/9/12). This is based on the PDF of research we gathered and is drawn by Karrie Fransman. We hope this will be a resource we can all share to raise awareness of our medium. The Bookseller is the foremost online/print business magazine of the book industry, read weekly by publishers, retailers, agents, libraries, national media and festivals. We have had conversations with this sector and they are eager to better engage comics’ large and diverse audience.
Infrastructure organisation
- We are laying the groundwork for a non-profit organisation that can help channel funding, opportunities and support towards a greater number of creators, allowing them the time and space to create, as well as working with existing organisations to help achieve common goals.
- Zara Slattery is creating a guide to support D/deaf and disabled access for comic conventions and across the wider comics community. We hope to have similar guides to make our comics events, panels and awards accessible and representative of all minoritised groups in our community.
How to get involved
- We’re so excited with the progress we’ve made in just a short few months and hope that you will join us in getting involved. Our group aims to be representative of the whole of the UK comics community whose aims align with ours. Do join our mail list for updates here, put January 16th 7-9pm in your diaries for our round table online meeting and contact us at helloCCIC@gmail.com with any queries, thoughts or ideas.
