PCAF shares its love for sequential storytelling with Perth in a free, creator-focused event that’s all about making comics accessible for all ages.
Perth Comic Arts Festival has grown from a small studio at Edith Cowan University in 2017 to its new home in the Cultural Centre, filling city with over 1000 comic creators and fans each year. The not-for-profit festival is volunteer run by Perth comic makers and loves, and we strive to celebrate comics in all its forms!
OUR MISSION
A more detailed breakdown of what our mission statement means follows:
“PCAF shares its love for sequential storytelling with Perth”
The festival is committed to exploring sequential storytelling in a wide variety of ways. This includes: providing a platform for local creators to showcase their works in the market hall; investigating the medium through academic presentations and discussions; platforming conversations and interviews; showcasing comics works within the context of broader visual arts mediums through exhibitions; and through skill-sharing workshops.
“Free”
The general public will always be able to access the Festival for free. Workshops, exhibitions, discussions and the market hall will be free to attend.
Where there are material costs that might need to be passed on to participants, we should ask the questions:
- First, can the experience be changed to be more economically accessible without compromising its integrity?
- Second, can the expense be covered through a different funding source other than the public? This might include grants, sponsors or other sources that align with Festival values.
- Third, where the need for fundraising or charging admission for events arises, the committee will assess what resources are required to run the ‘bare minimum’ festival experience based on previous years and present circumstances to ensure the event is able to run with minimal cost to participants.
Creators should be able to take part in the market hall with the minimum of expense. A small fee is charged primarily to ensure that there is a commitment from the creator to the Festival and that the Festival has a bare minimum of funds to ensure it can happen each year, in the case that external funding decreases.
Exemptions to the “all free” approach might be where extra programming is being run specifically to raise funds to support the continued free programming of the Festival. This might include professional development workshops for educators and librarians.
“Creator-focused”
Priorities are focused on Western Australian-based comics makers and how the local maker industry can be supported. When external makers are brought into the Festival at our expense, it should be to improve the skills, experiences and opportunities of West Australian-based comics makers.
“Making comics accessible for all ages.”
The Festival is an annual event that caters to all age groups. This means welcoming families with young children, teenagers and adults of all creative interest. The festival will ensure that the event is easy, safe and welcoming for families to explore. Many different types of comics content are welcome, including ‘mature’ content, provided that it is displayed in consideration of the attendees of the festival.
Most PCAF Market Day programming is developed specifically to be child-friendly in order to encourage new generations of makers.
PCAF Academy events, while welcoming to younger makers with ambitious comics goals, are focused on developing our community of adult makers to ensure everyone who wants to make comics has an accessible entry point.
You can read more the values and framework of PCAF in our full Operating Manual.