Aims and Goals

24HR Comic Etc.'s main aim was to deliver the inspirational message that great things can be produced in twenty four hours.

We also wanted the project to be a fun and accessible way of sharing the creative process with a wide audience, encouraging interest in the arts and community story-telling in general.   

It was also important that all we involved a varied group creative practitioners who would be able to gain something valuable from taking part. These participants, working in different mediums and at different stages in their career, would then provide us with the projects main physical outcome: twenty four separate pieces of work inspired by Cornwall.

Six months on we are able, as organisers, to reflect back on all three events and decide whether we achieved those aims.

There can be know doubt that we demonstrated that great things are possible in  twenty fours.

The range and quality of the comics you can find on our website are proof of that. Everyone who participated in the project, including  volunteers and writers as well as the artists, approached the challenge with such energy, enthusiasm and talent that it would have been hard to fail that particular challenge. I think even the participants, those who had not taken part before, were surprised by what they achieved.

To see if we had the same success  with the rest of our goals we need to look at different areas of the project.

Audience Response





Although we imaged that most of audience would fit into the young adults age bracket (16-25) we also wanted to attract different ages, especially if they weren't comic fans or art aficionados. 

We chose out three venues because of the audiences they might attract. Wadebridge Town hall is a central location with a passing trade of, mostly, older members of the public. Eden Project received hundreds of visitors everyday and we hoped that we'd get a lot of families on the Saturday morning. The Liskerett Centre is home to an active creative community and we wanted to get as many of the groups that met there involved.

After all three events we'd had 157 people of all ages through the 24HR Comic door. This is a great number but less than we expected. It rained ridiculously heavily on our first day in Wadebridge our final hour the next morning  was by far out busiest with a fifth of out total audience visiting when the sun came out. 

Our first plans at Eden Project was for 24HR Comic Etc. to be part of one of their Arts Café event, which was sadly cancelled. Whilst we lost out of that audience we still had a staggering 105 people come and see us at The Hub, despite being open to the public for only nine hours – three of them after we'd finished!

Even though we got a lot of visitors at Eden Project we saw a great difference in the way they got involved with the project. There is definitely a difference between quantity and quality of audience engagement.

At Eden most visitors were content to have a quick look at what we were doing and children were mostly excited by the piles of felt tips and paper on our activity tables. A notable exception was one girl who was upset to arrive after we'd finished and started packing away. Marcel O'Leary stepped up to the table and drew her a personal comic, despite having been awake for more than twenty six hours by this point. 

At Wadebridge and The Liskerett Centre we found that less visitors was almost a blessing. The majority of people who came in spent a significant amount of time with us, talking to each of the artists and thoroughly reading all the comics produced so far. We were able to chat to them and found that they were genuinely interested and inspired. They had enjoyed themselves and were in admiration of what had been achieved. It was hard to be sure of this kind of response with the large numbers at Eden Project

Whilst the Eden Project had a lot of great events, and people go there expecting to be entertained, events like these are scarce in towns like Wadebridge and Liskeard. On both places one of the most common reactions was how great it was to have something like 24hr Comic Etc. happening there.

We are particularly proud of our website. In places like Cornwall it can be really difficult to travel to events, especially any that are over in twenty four hours. We wanted the live blogs to be a way for anyone who couldn't visit us to feel involved. They could read about what was going on, see what was being produced and offer support. 

Whilst we'd hoped that more people would have got involved in our 'Join In' campaign or left us comments we can appreciate that a blank text box can be intimidating. We were pleased that all our blogs got hundreds of hits during each event, and in the six months since each blog has received over a thousand visits globally according to Google Analytics. The number of hits is even more when counted by Posterous, which includes RSS feeds. 

Participants and Artists

One of the big surprises in this project was how important the experiences of those taking part became to success of the project. We always knew they would get something valuable from it but had focused a lot of out attention on the community and audience benefit, without realising that it was those who would be most affected by 24hr Comic Etc. that should have been getting the majority of our attention.

The artistic challenge rewards and enlightens most those who are eager to engage. You must bring something to it, either a willingness to learn, to not view non-completion as a failure, to stretch the creative muscles and test new waters. We had all range of artistic perspectives, from young “amateurs”, to lecturers, to practising artists.

The results of the events for each individual have been varied. Examples of the legacy and work can be found later in this report, but here are some comments from the participants themselves after the fact.

The 24 hour comic event was great fun. A great challenge. And a great learning experience. The act of compacting the entire design process, and producing such a lot of work in to just 24 hours really teaches you a lot about what works for you when when working. Having the added time pressure of finishing so much in a small amount of time really allows you to let go of any inhibitions and create something purer. It also gives you the chance to experiment, the fact that you have a short amount of time means you can't over think anything. If you have an idea, you go for it, and it usually works out.
Joe Lyward

24HR Comic Etc. was fantastic! It built my confidence, working amongst very talented and traditional illustrators. I discovered what I am capable of, working over a 24hour period. I proved my dedication and how my art is integral to how I function and process my ideas and frustrations.
Charlotte Williams

A positive experience, a liberation in terms of creativity from the regimentation of a tradition photo journalistic approach to photography, a great meeting of creative bodies, inspired, lateral thinking that was a joy to witness. I re-established an enjoyment of creative photography and the experience gave me the confidence in myself that I can produce work under a time restriction.

Jules Barford

You become much more aware of who you are creatively after doing the draw, and that then very quickly squeaks in your ear the next time you pick up a pencil, you'll see what you like and what you don't like and then you can make a point of bettering the downers and become more self-aware of your style as it develops. 
Jake Rowlinson

In the heat of an intense 24hr period of work your mind seems to go to some other place and only after you've come out of it can you really appreciate the small surprises you managed to implant at the time, subconsciously. Being a part of that event was something I'll always remember and gives me a thirst to do more things like that. It was a fun challenge and a nice way of bringing people with different creative approaches together.
Rebecca Nash

Both events I have taken part in where experiences I think about very positively and talk about often.  I think the event is an excellent challenge for creatives and I think the short narrative form generally produces work that the public is able to engage with.  I also felt very well looked after at each event.  Something which I think is important if you are trying to push the limits of your endurance.

Creatively I have mixed reflections on Eden.  I am not terribly happy with what I made.  But I am happy that I pushed myself to take a risk and attempt something more subtle and sincere than I had made previously. Creatively I found it very rewarding.  Any piece of work that you commit to helps to move your practice forward, helps you to define your questions and interests a little more, hones your skills and underlines your limitations.”
Richard Dinnis

Here follows a selection of anonymous quotes from the surveys the particapants filled out very soon after the events.





 There was a good community feeling. Everyone was dedicated to their project, yet still happy to look away and chat at any point. It was great that people from the town came in to talk to us and were interested. I was interested in what they thought, too.   

Working alongside the other artists was wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever met as many lovely, incredibly talented people in such a short period of time as I did within the first ten minutes of arriving on Friday morning. Also, the unquestioning support of Tom when, at 2AM, I resorted to recording my Yamaha Portasound’s pre-programmed ‘auto-accompaniment’ tracks.  

The whole event was really positive. I really enjoyed the challenge of creating the work within the 24 hours, and it was also a real eye opener as to how much people can achieve within a short time, and the quality of the work not suffer, but gain qualities from not being over-thought.  It is great to have the public mixing through, especially when they are interested enough to ask questions on what the artists were doing. The hosts in Liskeard were great, and Tom, Phil and co were as entertaining as ever and the whole experience was very warming and positive.

The blogging and presence online seemed to work very well, although only got to see it after finishing.

I was impressed by the very substantial online presence given to this event and in particular the work carried out by artists.  The following week, when finding a dancer to collaborate with I mentioned 24 Hour Comic to her.  She got back to me the next day later: “I like your poems…”

I saw a lot of press in papers leading up to it, the website and the blog look and work great and everything was very efficient.

This was an intense and profound experience.

I was impressed that there was a steady stream of visitors during the daylight hours.  I really enjoyed their interest in what we were doing and this made the link to the location (Liskeard) suddenly come alive for me.

The process was more important than the final product, which I think everyone appreciated in their own way.

Everything was so well-organised and the location (Eden Project) so inspirational, that I felt good about it right from the beginning. I was impressed with how involved the other participants were also in their work, but also with the good humour of the organisers.

It gave me an insight into my practice that I haven’t seen before. How utterly schizophrenic it is and how at some stage I need to decide which way to jump.




I especially appreciate the chance to work alongside artists and people from other creative paths. Art is often separated from photography or illustration (for example) but in 24HR Comic Etc. an environment is created where we can all see process and outcomes of different ways of working. To identify similarities and differences in the act of creating gives opportunity for incorporating, changing or experimenting for future practices.

The event was an incredible extreme learning experience. A finished item HAD to be produced, no matter how I felt about it. This was a very gutsy and brave approach to working, which was something I will always reflect on now.

It sends a very encouraging message to artists, particularly those facing the double challenge of trying to get themselves established while living in such an isolated part of the country, to keep working hard because things do happen down here.”

It is just so exciting to see more projects like this happening in Cornwall.

The Eden project is an inspiring place to be.  It did very genuinely feel like a privilege to be able to make work there.

It would be very difficult to push yourself, particularly creatively which always involved a degree of vulnerability, without the feeling of being in a safe mental environment.  And it would be difficult to want to bother without the meaning generate by the organisers of the project.


Workshops and Learning





24HR Comic Etc. led six workshops during the course of the project, three with community groups at The Liskerett Centre and three in partnership with ProjectBase for school age Children in Newquay.

The focus of all the workshops was to use comics to teach the skill of visual communication and story-telling in a fun and inspiring way.  The workshops also allowed us to provide work and experience for some of our participants namely Charlotte Williams, Jack Teagle, Sam Bradbury and the FOTONOW team. This also meant that the workshop leaders could share their first hand experience of the 24HR comic experience with those taking part.

At The Liskerett Centre we provided workshops for a group of young mums, a group of teenage girls and the Artworks social group for adults with learning difficulties. All three of these were one off workshops that aimed to get the groups excited about creating and the project in general. 

The three workshops with ProjectBase however were intended to feed into longer term projects. On the first day of our Eden Project Event we were joined by 30 school Children from Trenance Learning Acadamy, Newquay Junior Acadamy, and Newquey Tretherris who were working together with ProjectBase to create a mobile app. about contemporary art in Cornwall. The workshop gave helped them construct short stories and experiment with panelling and character design, skills that will directly feed into their project.

We also ran two workshops in November 2011 with Shout About the Youth, a community action group and youth forum whose members all attend secondary school in Newquay. Over the two workshops we explored the power of images as a communication tool and helped them create a visual manifesto, or set of guidelines, for their organisation. Not only does the group now have new skills and confidence in their creative abilities but at the end of the two afternoons they were left with a physical document they can use to promote what they do. Because of these outcomes you could argue that, despite a delay in running them, they were our most successful workshops. It was interesting due to the application of the visual language on a wholly different subject; social responsibility and community issues, rather than the “fiction” that is commonly produced by the participants.

It was really great to see children being given a voice in Newquay, I know it can be a pretty isolating place and it can feel like very little is going on. It was really positive. The kids were great too, I don't believe how much they got through, right after school, voluntary. They had a lot of energy. And I really liked how you set it up for them, it was fun for them, but it had structure, and they got the job done.
Jack Teagle


Problems and Solutions




The lessons learned from the Falmouth 24HR Comic were valuable to form this advancement of the event. As always, however, there were problems. As a team, we adapted well to find solutions.

Our initial budget had to be altered due to one particular funding avenue coming up short. We applied through IdeasTap, an online creative community, for the remainder of the funding. You provide an online pitch and then a selection made by a panel. In this case, we perhaps overcommitted to this opportunity. Pitching online is very different from having interviews and the opportunity to properly explain yourself. Also, the range of applicants, after investigation, were from all mediums, for any project and without specific considerations (such as community, in the case of Feast).

The solution was to heavily network, finding the Cornwall Community Chest, ProjectBase and Barefoot Games, filling in the funding gap. This worked out, we feel, for the better. The connections were Cornish based, encouraging their own communities, involved more people and thus increased the value of the project hugely.

Another significant problem we encountered was the delay in the final workshops, pulling us way beyond our predicted time-line. The initial ProjectBase workshop was completed in February at the Eden event, however, due to their reorganisation, the workshops were delayed. This is something that neither us or they could have predicted, and the workshops organised at the next possible opportunity. We maintained constant communication with both funders and ProjectBase to keep the issue in mind and monitored.

The Eden Project, as a choice, was always going to be a more risky venture. The high-profile nature of the location meant high predicted audience figures, fantastic exposure, an unforgettable 24 hours in an attraction one can only usually see during the daylight, inspiration, fine support from an enthusiastic team and the space to really be creative. These aspects all turned out to be true, but we feel that the engagement of the challenge was lowest at Eden.

The venue, The Core, was very noisy during the opening hours, very busy, and filled with the usual exhibits. Despite a great looking layout and hanging solution, the art somehow got lost, which is no fault of Eden, but perhaps not the most appropriate. The participants enjoyed the freedom to explore the biomes at night, and many were inspired, while others found the atmosphere terribly trying.

Even with the help of Barefoot Games, we found ourselves stretched at the Eden event. The intention of utilising an established community in a high-profile Cornish location, to contrast the other two, came with both drawbacks and benefits. Participant at Eden, Richard Dinnis, provided his own unique insight into his feelings about working in that environment.

I found being at Eden at night was wonderful and interesting but ultimately difficult creatively.  While I am a big fan of the trees and admire the ambition of the place I find it’s heavy narrativization of nature difficult.... I don’t think it was accidental that I ended up writing about a clay pit effectively off site.  I would not have thought this before but I think a empty art centre, draughty village hall or abandoned crofter’s cottage in a storm more appropriate venues for this event.  I don’t mean to sound ungrateful by writing that.

Richard Dinnis

We originally intended to have a third member of our team, and in particular, help with marketing would have been a useful area to boost. In further events, already being planned, these lessons are being noted and kept in mind.

Legacy and Future of 24hr Comic Etc.

It was really important to us that the project would have a lasting effects after the events were finished. 

Most of these effects are somewhat intangible. We consider the experiences had by everyone involved, and how this will affect their approach to future work, one of the most important outcomes of the project.

We also sincerely hope that many of the young people who took part in our workshops also took something away that they can use in the future, beyond the Newquay school App project and Shout About the Youth forum we mentioned above.
Beyond this we have already seen some solid outcomes of 24HR Comic Etc. for some of the participants, for example:

Some of the comics have been self-published by their authors. Daneila Palimariu produced 24 Ideas for a Happy Couple and Jack Teagle has published both his 24HR Comics, The Jungle which he finished at Wadebridge and Dick Williams, which he completed during our first project The Falmouth 24HR Comic. Jack then went one step further and coloured The Jungle and gave it a different ending, for it's inclusion in McSweeney's 38. 

One of the poem's Felicity Notley wrote during the Liskerett Centre event, If I Do Not Write Again This Morning was published in the anthology 'Spirit of Cornwall' in September 2011.

Charlotte Williams still exhibits the drawing she produced and credits the position we gave her running the workshop to an offer to work with a similar group in pool. The workshop at Eden also gave Sam Bradbury his first taste of Workshop leading and he was invited back to work with on of the schools.




Marcel O'Leary credits the work he produced during 24HR Comic Etc. as an integral career boost: into the US comics industry,

The 24hr comic itself was a pretty strong influence in getting me work and attention in the US among professional illustrators, and in the next couple of weeks I'm going to be starting a surprisingly big comics project with a well known creator through Image Comics, one of the biggest US comics publishers. When I first met the creator I'll be working with, he was particularly impressed with my 24hr comic, and another well known comics writer who I was initially going to work with looked at my 24hr comic as an indicator to the reliability of my work to deadlines. It would've been worth doing anyway, but it's fair to say that was pretty pivotal in helping me get such a strong start in the comics industry.
Marcel O'Leary

As for the future it looks very likely that 24HR Comic Etc. will continue as a model. We are in deep discussion with Plymouth University’s Illustration department (aided by participant Tom Barwick) and it looks very likely that we will be hosting an even with them in the new year. 

One of plans for the project was to produce a model that could, in theory, be reproduced elsewhere, with or without our help. Some of our participants have expressed an interest in hosting their own, although we won't put pressure on them by naming names. Should these happen the plan would be for to have the same internet presence and link back to our main site so people could still enjoy them whether they are a public event or not.

We are also very keen to explore the possibility of publishing some of comics in an anthology, maybe by doing a Kickstarter style money drive. Any plans for this will have to wait until the new year but if there is enough interest we feel sure we can make it happen somehow!

The website, blogs and comics will, of course, stay online for the foreseeable future and we'll update them when we can and use them for any new 24HR Comic Events and we very much hope the artists will keep in touch with us so that we can share their news as well as ours.

              
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        the-24hr-comic-etc-evaluation-time-HIlhxnEHkphffinbcbhr.zip (2.29 MB)
        

        
        
      


-  Phil Rushworth and Thomas Sharpe, 2011