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Sequential Pictures

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Education |
2012

Abstract

Comics as a form of storytelling through sequences of images became enormously popular among the masses and flooded our lives with visual images, which became a part of our life experiences. However, the position of comics in Slovakia and Czech Republic is a bit different, especially because of several decades of censorship and no freedom in "comics' speech and style".

On the other hand, all these struggles led to creation of a specific and culturally marked contemporary comics style, which in my opinion should not be omitted from art education projects. But many art educators, in the mentioned countries, still do not know how to use it appropriately and consider comics more like a taboo, even though young students may enjoy working with it.

As a part of the preparation of my research project, I spent several days at one secondary school in Spisska Nova Ves in Slovakia, leading a discussion and getting some ideas and opinions on the art education lessons and contemporary comics from young students. I was working with one group of 23 students aged 12-14.

The preparation also included few workshops where students could have seen and tried different possibilities of working with comics and storytelling. At the symposium, I would like to bring into discussion some of the results from the mentioned dialogues with young students and to present how these ideas and contemporary comics might become suitable combination for art education projects; since I believe that these "sequential pictures" are able to develop students' capability to judge and to understand visual images, which are close to their daily life, and also to improve students' visual literacy.