This year 2025, two PhD students, myself and Jin Duan, created CSM’s first ever comic convention!
We packed the schedule into two days featuring students, staff and archives of comics and artwork. Exhibitors included Nathan Cohen and Reiko Kubota (CSM/Institute of Science Tokyo), Kavi Sanghani (Camberwell), Haiqi Yang (LCC), Chris Shepherd (CSM), Finn Kidd (LCC), Anna Slepneva (LCC), Gabrielle Cariolle (LCC), Yu Feng (LCC), Meher Shiblee (LCC), Werther Xu (LCC), Pen Mendonca (CSM), Qianyu Wang (LCC), Geoff Coupland (Camberwell), Godwin Tabala (LCC), Stephen O’Toole (showing the LCC Library small press comics collection) and super lovely Ian Horton (LCC) showing us the beautiful works from the Comics Research Hub and leading on the art exhibition at the Doctoral School.
Workshops on day 1, the 6th of May, were delivered in the CSM Street using moveable wall and mirror structures. Haiqi Yang (LCC) was the first workshop, teaching Building Compelling Characters. Haiqi talked about her graphic novel that focusses on medicine and anxiety. The workshop helped us navigate emotions to build compelling characters. This was followed by a talk and showcase of the extraordinary LCC Library small press comics collection. This was led by the lovely Stephen O’Toole and was the first public showing of the collection. Spread across several tables we read, chatted and asked questions about this new archive of work. A super inspiring moment.
Next we had the charismatic Ian Horton (LCC) delivering a talk entitled Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Genre and Ecopolitics, a European Parliament Public Relations Comic. This was a fascinating talk about including politics in comic books.
After lunch Anna Slepneva (LCC) led a workshop entitled Autobiographical Comics. Anna helped us create a one-page autobiographical comic by reflecting on personal moments. I loved her technique of writing a story backwards. This helped to reconfigure memories and emotions and felt quite cathartic.
After Anna’s workshop, Mark Hibbett (UAL) kicked off his UK tour with part 1: ‘Data and Doctor Doom: who’s Doctor Doom?’ This was a super fun musical performance. Then we had a life drawing session modelled by the beautiful pin artist Miss Sugar Rush. This was taught by artist Alain Poncelet that had come over all the way from Belgium to help us consider life modelling an invaluable technique in art generally, but also how to use life modelling as a basis for creating an A3 comic book page using 8B and 9B (nicely oily) pencils. Loved this session and Alain kindly gave me the page he used as a teaching example, which is now signed and up on my office wall, haha!
After Alain and Miss Sugar, Yiqi Zhang (LCC) taught the culture and comics-making workshop. This session encouraged participants to reflect on how the forms of their comics interact with their perceptions of cultures. Super interesting!
After this session and chatting/sniffing Nathan Cohen and Reiko Kubota’s scented comics/reading from the pop up stands/purchasing art and books, we dashed into the LVMH lecture theatre where Judy Willcocks (CSM) showed us some artwork by our headline speaker Posy Simmonds. This was from when Posy was a student at CSM. You can check it out in the Museums and Contemporary Collections. Then Posy Simmonds, accompanied by Paul Gravett, spoke about her career and work. Posy is a Central School of Art and Design graduate and one of Britain’s best-known satirical cartoonists. She is a much-loved author and artist of widely translated children’s books and graphic novels. This was followed by a film screening of her comic-turned movie Tamara Drewe.
The next day, the 7th May, we all met up at the Doctoral School, Holborn which featured an exhibition of gorgeous artwork on the walls and stickers from artists scattered on the tables. The day started with Mark Hibbett’s musical performance (UAL) Part 2 of ‘Data and Doctor Doom: how do we know?’ This was received with great applause. This was followed by our morning Agents & Publishers Panel featuring Jodie Hodges [United Agents], Claire Wilson [RCW], James Spackman [the BKS Agency], Molly Ker Hawn [the Bent Agency], Emma Hayley [SelfMadeHero], Phoebe Hedges [Titan Comics and Magazines], David Manley-Leach [Titan Comics & Magazines] and Yak El-Droubie [Korero Press]. This was an insightful panel with some great advice from our agents and publishers on how and what to submit if you’re thinking of getting your work published.
This was followed by a fun talk on The life of an artist – Touring European Bande Dessinée Festivals by Alain Poncelet. Alain shared his photographs and insights from touring US and the Franco-Belge Bande Dessinée Festivals. The audience laughed as his comparisons of the food and hotel views from every destination. He also provided stylistic advice on designing for US, Italian, Japanese and Franco-Belgium artbook and comic book styles linking the styles to cultural history.
Gabrielle Cariolle (LCC) then did a reading and presentation of her riso-printed illustrated narratives La Maison. This was beautiful artwork and a dream to get her insights on this project. We then had journalist, curator, writer and broadcaster Paul Gravett who talked about the UK comics scene and why comics matter more than ever. This was beautifully illustrated with artworks that demonstrated comics as not just a fun artform but also socially and culturally important.
In what I will call ‘the board room’, the section of the Doctoral School where you walk in and there is a long table surrounded by books as well as a cosy sofa, we had one-to-one publisher meetings with David Manley-Leach and Phoebe Hedges, both from Titan. They went above and beyond for each student, thank you so much to both David and Phoebe for their time and dedication.
Meanwhile back in the lecture spaces, Lorraine Henry King (LCF) talked about Black Superheroes and Costume. This was a workshop and live PhD that enabled Lorraine to showcase her PhD work, the room was in awe of her research and attention to detail. We also had the brilliant Ivanka Hahnenberger who had come from France to talk about helping expand graphic novel horizons and translating Bande Dessinée Culture to English-speaking audiences. Some fascinating takeaways about the future and what role we can play in shaping it.
We closed the festival with the fantastically fun Chris Shepherd (CSM) talking about his journey from animator to comic books with his graphic novel Anfield Road. His talk also featured his early animation work where tiny creatures with popping eye ate each other, this had us all in stitches. Chris also discussed the context in which he wrote Anfield Road which was recently The Observer’s graphic novel of the month [https://anfieldroadstory.com].
Thank you to CSM, UAL, dream team of David Greene and Sedtin Wan from the postgraduate team for being invaluable support before and during from advice, calming nerves, getting the word out and springing into action to find the exact correct wire at the exact right moment! Also, a thank you to my supervisors for being supportive from the get-go, and a huge thank you to the Catalyst Funding that meant we could include speakers from abroad, life drawing, all the art materials, some snacks and totes for us to hand all the submissions to the agents! We were all really grateful to be able to celebrate our work, as well as meet fellow students across colleges, year groups and generations.
Thank you!
Tessa Ditner Amorosi
Photo credits for the images are: Tessa Ditner Amorosi and Michele Bourgaux. Credits for the posters/artwork are: Jin Duan.
TESSA DITNER AMOROSI 