COMICS BEYOND

❖ PROJECT RESUME
“Comics beyond” is the experimentation of a European comics incubator with the aim of strengthening the employability of European comics artists.
European comics artists suffer from a precarious situation; very few of them manage to develop their careers and make a living from their artistic activity. They lack networking spaces, continuous training and development of new skills that would allow them to expand their professional and creative activity at different scales.
Infact this project aims to develop new skills for these artists on a European scale, in particular by implementing a week of training for a number of twelve of them. Forty comics workshops will be set up in Europe with the focus on: the entrepreneurial author posture, the creation of live drawing shows, collaboration with museums or games. Also, throughout the project, attention will be paid to comics workshops and their implementation: guidelines, lectures and webinars will be set up in order to provide training for comics artists, as well as for schools and other interested organizations.
Comics Beyond seeks to foster the creation and circulation of European artists works by overcoming the language barrier associated with books, in particular by launching a call to support the creation, production and international distribution of four transnational comic shows. These will have the possibility to be seen and understood without translation – and the circulation and networking of the four artistic groups behind these works.
The creation of a database of transdisciplinary comics projects will enable to enlarge the networking of artists and of distribution spaces so as to promote and structure comics on a European scale, encouraging transnational and multidisciplinary creation. It would therefore help comics to reach new audiences.

❖ OBJECTIVES
What are the main goals of this project? Certainly, one of them is to train European cartoonists in new skills that can be spent on a European scale.
One problem that often arises when intending to create a dialogue with other artists is the language barrier associated with books; Comics Beyond aims to overcome this limitation by encouraging the creation and circulation of works, promoting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary comics on a European scale. The long-term goal of this project is to strengthen the employability of European cartoonists and structuring the dialogue between the arts and comics on an international scale.

❖ ACTIONS
COORDINATION • ADMINISTRATION • MANAGEMENT of Artists
The purpose of Comics Beyond is to offer itself as an incubator of comic book artists, the first in Europe, to act as their coordination, management and administration so as to make them attractive for the market.