From February to April 2010 I taught five comic workshops with the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre Youth Steering Committee. The participants’ ages ranged from 12-18. These were general comic workshops that covered the basics of writing, story boarding, pencilling and inking. Out of all the activities, this group of youth enjoyed inking the most which, unfortunately, got rather messy at times. Note to comic art instructors: always be prepared for clean up duty.

From what I saw, the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre has strong support from the local Inuit community and is frequently used by its members. Every time I arrived for a workshop the building was full in one area or another with people of all ages. The youth at the Centre were energetic and a pleasure to work with.

As with all my workshop participants, I hope that some will leave the workshops knowing how to use comics for self-expression, personal empowerment or positive change within their communities.

The print outs in this picture are the pencils of page 15 from Fear Agent #1 drawn by Tony Moore. He has an “Artist Resource” section of pencilled and inked pages on his website for inkers and colourists to practice on. Tony Moore is one of my favourite mainstream comic artists.

The pencils can be found here.

The Canadian AIDS Society (CAS) is a national organization working to improve the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS and Canadian society’s awareness and response to it through advocacy, education, programming and services.

CAS held The 6th Canadian HIV/AIDS Skills Building Symposium in early March 2010, drawing a myriad of people implicated in the Canadian HIV/AIDS community including researchers, academics, health care professionals and so on. The symposium’s purpose was to gather a diverse range of people involved with HIV/AIDS to exchange information, skills and experiences to formulate a renewed strategy for HIV/AIDS in Canada.

Among the numerous plenaries, poster presentations and networking, I facilitated one of over 60 workshops at the symposium. My workshop was entitled Educational Comics and HIV/AIDS Awareness. In the workshop I explained how comics can be used as educational tools in campaigns and in programs to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. In the workshop, I provided a brief overview of HIV/AIDS comics, explained why comics are good educational tools, gave some criteria on how to make a good educational comic and outlined how comic workshops can be used in activity-based programs to help people living with HIV/AIDS. The audience, of course, was asked to draw some comics. The workshop was well-attended and well-received.

This was the first time I met individuals who are HIV+ and its stunning to see how healthy and optimistic they are. I grew up being bombarded with the notion that once diagnosed with HIV, you would immediately progress to AIDS and die. Today, in developed countries, HIV is mostly a chronic infection because of advancements in drug therapies. Continuing medical advancements inform the HIV/AIDS community’s optimistic outlook that the virus will eventually be cured.

Visit the Skills Building Symposium website or the Canadian AIDS Society for more information.

Throughout February and March 2010, The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) of Ottawa agreed to run a pilot project involving a comics workshop program for youth in care. I facilitated 5 workshops with a small group of teenagers, teaching them the basics of making comics which included writing, storyboarding, graphic design, penciling and inking. The youth were encouraged to draw from their personal experiences as youth in care to create their stories and characters.

A longer workshop program with a book compilation is being evaluated. If accepted, the workshop participants’ comics will be published and used as a CAS training tool for new foster and adaptive parents, youth care workers and other youth in care. Outside of the CAS, the book will be sold as an educational tool to raise awareness and, hopefully, engagement with youth in care.