The Scottish Comics Unconference Meet-up – open to any and all with an interest in engaging seriously with the medium – will take place on Saturday 28th February 2015 in Glasgow, Scotland and a call has just gone out for participants.
An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as fees, sponsored presentations, and top-down organization.
Organised in conjunction with The Comics Grid, the Journal of Comics Scholarship, this Scottish Comics Unconference Meet-up is open to any and all with an interest in engaging seriously with the medium we study and love: students, teachers, librarians, academics, artists, publishers, critics, readers and collectors.
Like a conference, there will be moderators facilitating discussion. Unlike a conference, there won’t be a pre-decided programme and there will be no keynote lectures or paper presentations.
Instead, the programme will be decided collectively and openly and the event will consist of collective work sessions facilitated by moderators. This means that the agenda will be set by the participants, not by the organisers.
The first session of the day will see a vote on which topics, submitted by participants prior to the meet-up, will be discussed in break-out sessions.
“We would like to start exploring in advance what kind of activities, session topics, tutorials, or workshops you would like to lead, or what kind of topics which you know little about, but on which you would like someone else to lead a session,” say the organisers in an appeal for participants.
(If you propose a tutorial, then you are specifically volunteering to (co-)facilitate – if you are the only one who knows how to teach your topic, and you don’t show up, people will be disappointed).
The organising team are researcher and artist Damon Herd (on Twitter @tickingboy); PhD candidates Hattie Kennedy (@HattieK) and Kat Lombard-Cook (@KatLombardCook and Lise Tannahill (@francopopfille); and lecturer Ernesto Priego (@ernestopriego). To find out more about the Organising Committee, click here.
What to do:
- Please register your initial interest to attend using this form
- To carry on conversations about what sort of content a session might have or to learn more about unconferences please use our open planning document here
- Feel free to leave comments on this page and on the posts on the Unconference blog
- Show up!
This unconference is inspired in previous international events in a variety of academic disciplines. To find out more about what an unconference is and how the format can work, check out these links:
- How to (un)prepare for an unconference
- Characteristics of an unconference
• The Scottish Comics Unconference, 28th February 2015, Dundasvale Residents’ Hall, 12 Dundasvale Court, G4OJS. The Unconference web site is at www.comicsunconference.co.uk. Follow the event on Twitter @comicsunconf. The hashtag for the unconference will be #ComicsUnconf15
- About the Author
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, Comics Education News, Comics Studies, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, Events
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