Brussels museum joins EU-wide project to support comics sector

Brussels’ Comics Art Museum has joined forces with three organisations in Spain, France and the UK to create an initiative supporting Europe’s comic book sector.

The Comic Art Europe project is being supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, with an open call to artists.

It has as objective “to strengthen the comic book sector in Europe by experimenting with collaborative working methods”.

Comic Art Europe will “promote the transnational mobility of artworks, workers and creators as a means to significantly upscale the work … at a European level, thereby challenging the historical dominance of the American and Japanese giants.”

The four European comics organisations involved are a school, the Escola Joso, Centre de Comic I Arts Visuals in Barcelona, two festivals, the Lyon BD in France and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in the UK, and a museum, the Brussels Comics Art Museum.

To reach its aims the project will provide professional training with summer camps and residency programs and grants. The resulting work will be disseminated in Europe and beyond by means of comic book catalogues and larger scale dissemination channels.

Testing new ways of working together, a network will be created to bring the sector together at a European level and be represented at international trade fairs and markets.

Under the theme Visions of Tomorrow, Comic Art Europe is kicking off the project with an open call for artists from all European countries (including the UK) for projects in all formats as long as the medium is comics. Prizes include a €5,000 grant, residencies and production support.