This is the Small Stories comics corner at Greenbelt festival, including drawing supplies, a small comics exhibition next to it, and a small press comics reading library, for inspiration!
The comics presence was fantastic this year. Mike Maddox was running a collaborative comic, with a script by Mike and character designs by myself, which festivalgoers could draw a panel for - and tons of people did, of all ages! One of each panel was put together to form a comic that was printed in the Greenbelt newspaper produced on-site. You can see the fantastic results here.
We moved indoors for a comics cafe on the Saturday evening, with drawing supplies, the reading library, music, snacks, and artists tips and advice available - and had to restock on paper and snacks during the evening due to the amazing response. My estimate is over 60 people came, including a few who had come because they thought it involved comedians but stayed anyway.
Amazing thanks to Sammy Borras, an amazing comic artist with a fresh style who contributed work to the exhibition and spent the weekend offering visitors her comics wisdom. Go check out her site! Also to Si Smith, who also let me steal a fantastic comic for the exhibition and did a tremendous amount of work organizing the vis arts program for greenbelt. And to my poor husband who spent the weekend running around finding extra paper and carrying heavy things in the name of art, and took some fantastic photos while doing so.
The reading library exists thanks to donations from Sammy Borras, Faye Yong, Fehed Said, Factor Fiction, Naniiebim, Ushio (if I forgot anyone, forgive me, and thank you!) Thank you! I hope it'll get bigger for each event!
Next place to catch Small Stories: The Big Draw events around Derby in October! See you there!