The UBC Comics Studies Cluster partners with academic, non-profit, Indigenous, and community partners to support them in the production of comics and graphic novels. We help our partners find funding and support them in participating in comics co-creation through project facilitation and management. If you’re interested in partnering for the UBC CSC, email comics.studies@ubc.ca.
Remember Comics Project with the Homalco First Nation
The “Remember” Comics Project is an ongoing collaboration between Education without Border, the UBC Comics Studies Cluster (CSC), Homalco media personality Tchadas Leo, and the Homalco First Nation.
Exams Under Anaesthesia
“Exams Under Anaesthesia (EUA) Graphics: Equity and Neurodiversity in the Operating Room” is a project undertaken by the UBC Comic Studies Cluster, led by Dr Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam, in collaboration with community-based pediatrician Anamaria Richardson, that seeks nine cartoonists to create 9 short graphic novels based on the experiences of neurodiverse children on their experience in the BC healthcare system.
Turtle Island Cluster in Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project
The Turtle Island Cluster is situated in two regions of Canada, Vancouver and Ottawa, with two graphic narratives emerging through the collaboration of Indigenous co-leads Shannon Leddy and Duncan McCue, settler scholar Biz Nijdam, Indian Residential School survivors and two Indigenous graphic novelists.
Each graphic novel explores the impact of the Canadian Indian Residential School system from a different perspective, providing new narratives of these experiences to deepen and nuance our shared understanding of the trauma, survivance, and the legacy of colonial violence on Turtle Island. Further, because we prioritise transparency in our research methodology, the process of testimony gathering and graphic novel production at each site will also be the subject of a short documentary film. This additional media expands both our multimodal storytelling knowledge mobilisation strategy, but also increases the potential reach of our work to engage those who may otherwise not encounter it.
Visual Storytelling in the Indigenous North
Visual Storytelling in the Indigenous North is a three-year, Indigenous-led initiative that connects storytellers, artists, and scholars from across the Circumpolar North to share stories of Indigenous survivance through comics, documentary film, podcasts, and digital media.
Spanning Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Sápmi (Norway, Sweden, Finland), and Denmark, the project brings together First Nation, Métis, Inuit, and Sámi knowledge holders to co-create graphic narratives and arts-based public programming that highlight resilience, resurgence, renewal, revival, and resistance.