Comics teaching
Bernard has been delivering comics workshops, information sessions and visual performed stories at primary school, secondary schools, libraries, and universities for more than twenty years’. He is an energetic, engaged and enthusiastic presenter.
Schools
For 20 years Bernard has been presenting comics workshops and talks for primary, secondary and tertiary students. He is also a popular speaker at libraries, talking about comics to groups of all ages.
Sessions can take the form of:
- — workshops: ‘Making a Comic’, during which the participants produce a comic booklet;
- — information sessions: ie ‘The Story of Comics’ which is a talk illustrated with slides and live drawing, describing the evolution of the artform;
- — an introduction to the analysis of comics texts for VCE/HSC listed graphic novels including Maus and Persepolis;
- — tailored presentations addressing specific aspects of English or Art curricula; an artist’s talk, in which Bernard describes his comic book making process and discusses other approaches to making comic books.
“Bernard presented three online workshops to groups of Year 8 students at Strathcona GGS. The purpose of the day was to give the students a fun and creative outlet after a term of online classes. The planning process with Bernard was easy and the day went well. Bernard encouraged the students to create self-portraits and then talked them through the process of creating little zines, which they could then do on their own. He demonstrated techniques and gave them a story structure. All the students participated and the supervising teachers really enjoyed it too. Bernard’s online presentation was engaging and in an hour everyone created a zine. The feedback from students and teachers was positive. One of the students uploaded her zine with the caption, “This was so fun.”
- Penny Roberts, Director of Library and Research at Strathcona Girls Grammar School