Last autumn I had the pleasure to co-teach a one-week practical workshop on making comics and feminism. This practical workshop was attended by young creative women studying at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, and and they were so dedicated and hard-working, that we managed to publish an anthology of our work. My co-teacher, Nikoletta Mihalik took on the role of designing our booklet, which contains a lot of 2-page comics on the experience of being a young woman in Hungary today. Topics include body image, work-life balance, wrestling, and the most popular topic is the weigh of expectations.
My role here was to introduce students to comics by some creative exercises (which seem to be simple but are in fact quite hard) and to introduce some questions of feminism.
Due to the brevity of time (4 hours for 4 days, by day 5 we had the booklet and an exhibition), we did not have the chance to go deep into theory. I also consulted with the students and if they were stuck, I helped them find visual expressions to their ideas.
I got a lot of inspiration from this group, the degree of their interest and openness was something I did not expect, and although I was really tired (due to juggling too many jobs and projects), it was a pleasure to teach this course.
You can buy the anthology from me, and we will be selling it at some comics/zine festivals.
Eszter Szép 