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| The comics festival in full swing. |
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| The artist Thomas Holm teaches the art of drawing Bamse. |
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| The science fiction-like exhibitions of creations by the comics art students of Malmö Kulturskola. |
We started ISV as a biannual children's comics festival in 2001 to promote children's comics in all ways possible, from creating comics for children, to publishing them, keeping them at libraries, teaching them at schools and of course the basic fact that children actually read comics. We have done this in many ways, by hosting a contest for creators of comics for children, by making exhibitions, workshops, lectures, debates and so on - and it has made a difference helping many new artists getting started, promoting new publishers and so on.
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| Catarina Batista leading the Nosebleed Studio comics battle. |
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| Niklas Asker and Pater Madsen painting live. |
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| Niklas Asker with his finished painting. |
This year's version of the festival was a by far the best, due to the energy of project manager Lovisa Witt, an artist herself with a genuine interest in kids. This meant that the festival, actually for the first time, really felt like it was not only about kids, but for kids. Especially the workshops that were held continuous in the innermost part of the main room of the festival, was always full of kids creating everything from Bamse comics to tattoos. I left my own son there for almost two hours and he had a ball.
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| From the award ceremony. |
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| Anna Åhlén receives her award in the comics competition for professional artists. |
I took part in several different events of the festival. As President of the Comics Association, which is responsible for the festival, I helped inaugurate the festival on Friday evening, with Lovisa and we also handed out the awards in the comics competitions, both the ones for kids and for professional creators. The winner of the professional competition, Valentin Schönbeck, was not present but we contacted him on Skype and projected that on a wall so he was able to take part in a way.
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| Artist talk with Julien Neel. |
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| The debate on the state of children's comics, with, Daniel Carlsson (Egmont), Natalia Batista (Mjau!), Jennie Warg (Positiv Förlag) and Annika Giannini (Tivoli med vänner). |
I also lead an artist talk with international guest Julien Neel (Lou!) and a debate on the state of the children's comics market in Sweden, with a knowledgeable and interesting panel.
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| The exhibition on French children's comics. |
I had also made a big exhibition on French children's comics, which made its debut on the festival. This was based on the image section of last issue of Bild & Bubbla, and is still present at Form/Design Center for another two weeks, for those of you who missed out on the week end activities.
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| Julien Neel discussing comics in my library. |
Finally I hosted a small soaré at my place for the international guests on Saturday night, with Kattarina Baekmark making sure that food and drinks were plentyful and my son challenging everyone on Wii Sports... This was a relaxed event, with opportunity to actually sit down and talk to several of our guests. Among other things, I found out that Julien Neel owned several of my books and liked them, even though it took him almost the whole evening to realize that it was I who had written them.
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| Julien Neel drawing in the "comics battle". |
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| The audience was following the development in the live drawing event closely. |
The most magic moment, for me, though, was the comics battle that was held on Friday night, when Norwegian artist Arild Midthun were conferencie and led a team consisting of, among others, French artist Juilen Neel and Danish artists Peter Madsen, Allan Haverholm and Martin Flink, drawing a comic one panel at a time with the process projected on a wall for the audience to see, daring each other to be able to follow what had gone before. At the very front sat Josef, five years old, eager not to miss a thing and always taking part in the conversation with Arild about what was going on. After a while, when Arild started to invite artists from the audience to take part, and there were quite a few comics artists present, Josef, started to say that he was also very good at drawing and could he have a go? Of course he was allowed, and of course he was the best of the lot. That is what it is all about!
