Latitude write-up

After we got a mention in What’s On Stage‘s review of Latitude and Tom and Edward both wrote up their experiences, we asked Anne Holiday to write a few words about the weekend…

Bringing comics to festivals was an idea formed in 2009 after traipsing around fields across the country throughout the summer. Some festivals had embraced the oldy-worldy charm of village fetes with egg and spoon races, tombolas and pin the tail on the donkey. Others had plenty of workshop type events but not a single one had a tent dedicated to making comics – or drawing for that matter.

We pictured a kind of comics salon – a haven for kids and adults alike. Plenty of table space for drawing and creating with the help of artists and illustrators on hand to offer tips and advice. And, a picnic sheet complete with our traveling mobile library to offer inspiration and an insight into British small press publishing.

Our tent at Latitude was this and so much more. Our ideas kept evolving over the weekend and spawned collaborative collages (of Latitude’s multi-coloured sheep), a festival crowd complete with hand drawn or collage people and a gallery space during the last couple of hours on the Sunday evening for everybody to see the work that had been created over the weekend.

It looked like we might have been battling against gale force winds at one point on the Thursday evening and, as Matthew rightfully pointed out, “comics can deal with a lot of things, including rain if you’re in a tent, but wind… comics can’t cope with that.”

Our tent was perched right on top of a hill and the sides were flapping almost constantly when we first arrived. It looked a little desolate.

But, mostly thanks to the unwavering optimism of Philippa Rice we found some ingenious ways to put paid to the breeze, including lots and lots of string, some tent pegs and a roll or two of double sided tape.

We’re not ones to boast but, like everyone, we really appreciate feedback – it helps us to improve what we offer and how we approach things. Some people would have liked us to have a bigger tent and more space, one guy even said that the tent was “literally the coolest at the festival.” It was great for us, that everybody else enjoyed it just as much as we did. And what was great to see was the insatiable appetite for both creating and absorbing comics – a mum told us that her son had insisted on coming back to the tent on Sunday afternoon despite the fact his brother was throwing up in their tent and they had been due to leave earlier in the morning! We had a lot of familiar faces come back each day, sometimes pulling out their unfinished strip from the day before, at other times, starting on something completely new. We were delighted by the amount of work created and that wanted us to return the following year.

The festival attitude of people to just give things a go was brilliant to experience. Some of the other events we’ve run have taken people a little while to warm up and get going but people of all ages were ready to get stuck in straightaway (and it wasn’t all about the beer). A huge thank you to everyone who came to draw and make collage comics with us, we were overwhelmed by the welcome we received.

Next up we’ll be hosting a summer picnic in London in August as well as running another drop-in workshop focusing on creating comics characters as part of the hypercomics exhibition at the Pumphouse Gallery in Battersea. Fingers crossed we’ll be back at festivals next year.