ComEdu: Comics for Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

ComEdu: Comics for Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Creativity and culture; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project “ComEdu: Comics for Education” established a strategic partnership among three organisations Grafiskie Stāsti in Latvia, Mondo in Estonia and Rota Jovem in Portugal for 25 month from 1.10.2018 until 30.11.2020.

The aim of the project was to improve and expand international youth work in the partner countries by bringing together comic artists and youth workers and educators in youth work and developing comic as a learning and communication tool in education.

Objectives set and reached:
1) we built an international network of youth workers, educators and comic artists, illustrators for educational purposes;
2) we developed competences to design and implement educational programs for youth using comic as a learning tool;
3) we created comics and developed educational materials for youth on different topics relevant to youth and non-formal education using comic as an expression form (environment, critical thinking, media literacy, life in rural areas, global education, bullying, gender roles, stereotypes, intercultural learning, Youthpass and life-learning competences).

We used comics as a learning and communication tool as it is a messenger bridging generations – from a traditional printed-on-paper book to the digital era of visual media nowadays. A comic is a visual narrative and its ingredients – an image and a story – that allow us to communicate complex ideas in a clear way, draw attention and increase understanding of important topics by using accessible and simple means – a story, paper and a pen. Thus, easy to create, easy to read, easy to facilitate, easy to express oneself, comics are strong in delivering the message, especially for the young generation who are growing up in a visually saturated world. Besides the fact that comics as a form of expression is easily accessible to anyone, it is also a visually compressed narrative tool that develops one’s imagination and practical abilities to express ideas in metaphors and condensed images, therefore it develops also young people’s visual literacy skills.

The activities and outcomes of the project were:
1) 2 transnational team meetings in which 40 youth workers, educators, comic artists and illustrators were trained to create comics, learning materials and to deliver comics workshops on different topics for young people;
In the 1st meeting “ComEDU:Creating Comics for Education” (28.01. to 03.02.19 in Talsu novalds, Latvia) we established an international network among partner organizations and the educators, youth workers and artists who worked together to select topics and contents for the educational comics, set up co-working teams and created comics.
In the 2nd meeting “ComEDU: Comics as a Method in Education” (22.10.-28.10.19 in Cascais, Portugal) we shared the created comics, developed and evaluated the educational materials and developed facilitators’ competences to use the methods in working with youth, and planned the dissemination activities.
2) Educational comics materials (e-book) in 4 languages (Latvian, Estonian, Portuguese, English) as the intellectual output including 11 new comics (in total we created 103 pages of comics), complemented with relevant non-formal methodology. Based on each comic we developed educational tools – 20 methods and activity plans, ice-breaking and warming up exercises and comics creating tips. All of the activity descriptions include step by step guide, notes on materials, time and tips for the facilitators. All materials are free and available to download online via partner’s websites and EU project dissemination platform: http://komikss.lv/comedu/, http://home.rotajovem.com/comedu-comics-for-education.html, https://maailmakool.ee/comedu/.
3) 6 comics exhibitions, 6 workshops for young people and 3 seminars for educators and youth workers. The created comics and educational tools were disseminated in 3 partner countries in comics exhibitions showcasing the created content for the educational comics reaching more than 1000 visitors; Educational comics workshops for local youth and methodology seminars for youth workers and educators, in total 87 young people and 32 educators, youth workers took part.

Despite the unexpected obstacles due to Covid-19 pandemic, the project has reached a much wider interested and audience than we expected. To begin with, we received 97 applications for 40 places at translational meetings, we were able to organize more exhibitions and workshops for youth than planned. Participants of the transnational meetings organized additional events to share the created comics, methods and skills they had learned. Several participants of educators’ seminar are implementing our methods in their daily work and are planning to organize workshops for their colleagues in libraries, NGOs, schools and are developing new projects inspired and based on our materials and discovery of comics as a powerful tool in education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 57545 Eur

Project Coordinator

Grafiskie stasti & Country: LV

Project Partners

• ASSOCIACAO JUVENIL DA LINHA DE CASCAIS ROTA JOVEM
• MONDO MTU – NGO MONDO