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OSU and Freedom School Students Unite in Collaborative Comics Celebration

August 7, 2015

OSU and Freedom School Students Unite in Collaborative Comics Celebration

Instructor Allison Paul with Freedom School scholars

To fulfill the service-learning component of ARTEDUC 2520S Digital Artmaking, OSU students partnered with youth scholars from the Freedom School in the University District at Summit on 16th to create collaborative comics. In her most recent blog entry, AAEP 2520S Graduate Teaching Assistant Allison Paul discusses the culminating Collaborative Comics Celebration of her 7-week summer class. More stories and pictures of the Freedom School partnership can be found on Allison's Digital Artmaking & Service-Learning page


 

The final day of our service-learning project with the Freedom School scholars resulted in some awesome collaborative comics! Partners worked diligently to figure out the final formatting decisions in Comic Life as well as edit and finalize their artist statements. Time is always one of our biggest challenges in collaborative art making; however, the OSU students and Freedom School scholars overcame that challenge and printed their comics just in time to walk over to the Freedom School just a few blocks from campus where we had a reception, were introduced to the scholars' classroom, and shared the completed comics with friends and family as the day wound to a close.  

Freedom School students at work

Our celebration moved downstairs as friends and families arrived for pick up at the end of the day. Partners claimed spaces in the entry way of the Freedom School and shared their collaborative comics as people walked by. There were lots of smiles, laughs, and questions about the comics. The students did a great job explaining some of their creative process and sharing the story lines and big ideas. What a fun afternoon! Thank you everyone for a great collaboration!

Some of the students shared that they will take away an appreciation for the friendships they gained and the chance to learn from others' perspectives.  Students acknowledged that they valued the skills they cultivated as well as rediscovering skills that they already had. Some students had reservations about drawing but admitted that they didn't realize they could draw as well as they could. They learned more about themselves and their abilities, were able to visually express themselves, and practiced developing strong stories based on meaningful ideas. Students learned that they all had something to contribute as group members and appreciated what others had to offer. The opportunity to share student voices through the use of humor, surprise, real life experiences or fantastical plot twists based on familiar personalities was a valuable part of the experience of building community and collaborative art making. 

Congratulations everyone for a project well done!