This week, the Oswestry Advertizer is featuring a full-page comic introducing the Oswestry Heritage Comics project. I talk about how I got into using comics in archaeology, and why I thought using them in a local newspaper to shine a bit of a spotlight on local history, archaeology and heritage might be a good idea. It’s a very quick introduction to everything I’ve been doing with comics, information and public outreach over the past ten years – right back to the Çatal Nedir? comic I did way, way back in 2005.
My basic argument has always been that when we talk about the past – history, archaeology or heritage – we use a very specialised language full of concepts and assumptions that most people don’t recognise. This is because these concepts and assumptions don’t feature a great deal in the day-to-day of ordinary life. So public outreach has to provide a context for these things in order for them to be best understood by an audience unfamiliar with them: and the narrative and visuals of comics do that very well indeed.
Over the next twelve weeks, the Oswestry Heritage Comics series will hopefully demonstrate how this can be done even with a subject as rich and diverse as “heritage”, and within the confined parameters of a four-panel strip. It’s an artistic and informational challenge, certainly – but it’s an opportunity to really test the idea that comics can be effective as a means of communicating information about the past.
The comics are only part of the package. There’s a Facebook page which will provide onward links and additional information based on the subjects of each week’s strip. Plus, over the course of the twelve weeks the comic series is running in the newspaper, I’m going to be hosting a professional-level workshop and a family activity on comics and heritage at Underhill Farm during Heritage Open Days, a kids activity on comics and family history at Oswestry Library, plus a Learning at Lunchtime talk about the project, also at Oswestry Library, a mini-exhibition of the comics and preparatory artwork at The Willow Gallery in September, with an introductory talk on the process. If funding materializes, there will also be a pop-up exhibition of some of the comics at venues around Oswestry during Heritage Open Days, plus I’ll be giving a talk to the Chirk History Society which will be about public outreach in heritage, which will draw on (no pun intended) the comics project. I’ll put links to each of these events up here, closer to the time. I’ll also put up posts here about each weekly comic strip in turn, discussing some of the “behind the scenes” process, as well as talking in more detail about the way each of the strips was written.
I’m extremely excited about this project. If it proves to be successful, I’m hoping it might provide a model for other comics and local heritage projects – both in Oswestry, and beyond!
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