Athens Comics Library, provides a safe and creative space for local, refugee and migrant children and their caregivers through their broad, participatory cultural programme that includes activities around art, storytelling and sports.
Athens Comics Library’s vision is to showcase the power of comics and storytelling as an educational, healing and community engagement tool that boosts a love for reading, teaches multimodal literacies and promotes self-directed knowledge through the medium of comics. To accompany this, Athens Comics Library is designed to be a place of inspiration and creation of experiences, learning and exploration, participation, creativity and experimentation.
Other projects of Athens Comics Library:
Comicdom Press
Not-for-profit organisation, Comicdom Press was founded in 2004. Amongst their activities are the annual Comics Festival, Comicdom Con, in Athens which attracts over 15,000 visitors has been running since 2006, the Athens Comics Library, the first-ever Greek comic library, the design and facilitation of educational workshops for young people, students, schools, teachers, and librarians, as well as workshops for adults which use creative storytelling and comics, and the Comics Digital Museum which will be launched in May 2021. Comicdon also facilitate the Baytna Hub project, a safe and creative space for refugee and migrant children and their caregivers in partnership with the Refugee Trauma Initiative. During the pandemic, they also launched a series of creative Take Away Art packs for preschool children.
The vision of Comicdon is to showcase to Greek audiences the power of the medium of comics. They take an educational angle, bolstering the love for reading, teaching multimodal literacies, and promoting self-directed knowledge through comics. For Comicdon, comics are a tool to teach soft skills such as collaboration, creative problem solving, intercultural understanding, empathy, but also a way to develop social skills by gaining a better understanding of our complex societal environments.
Baytna Hub
In partnership with the Refugee Trauma Initiative supported by Choose Love, Comicdon also run Baytna Hub, a safe and creative space for refugee and migrant children and their caregivers. As they work directly with refugees, they are committed to collaboration and network development. Comicdon’s focus on creative storytelling gives them expertise in reaching wide audiences, creating growth and transformation between local communities and refugees.