By Your Deputy Pres™, David Blumenstein
The Stanleys conference is a lot of work to put together, but, having done plenty of zero budget events, it's nice to have a bit of money to put toward making some good conversations happen for members.
My way of thinking since COVID has been to take what you'd spend on one international guest and put that toward bringing several local guests to the conference instead. It made sense coming out of lockdowns, etc, and I think is still a good way to go bang-for-buck-wise.
Last year we had a particularly high budget thanks to Steve Panozzo, Cathay Wilcox and a very good sponsorship list – notably a large contribution from Destination NSW helping us bring the Stanleys to Coffs Harbour. This got us guests from around Aus, including Bluey crew from Brissy and Brenton McKenna all the way from Broome. In 2023, virtually all the non-member speakers came from Tasmania and Melbourne (and Angus Olsen from Katoomba).
When you invite too many speakers, you risk using each only once, which feels a bit wasteful. This year I think we were more successful in making use of a smaller group. "The Tasmanians", Tony Thorne, Jon Kudelka and Paul Peart-Smith were each on a few discussions, and, frankly, could've been on a couple more, given their breadth of experience. We also got a double hit of MEAA representatives, Karen Percy and Marisa Wikramanayake.
According to the post-conference survey, the St Kilda Life Saving Club and Toasted Toasties were very appreciated. I was especially happy we could support a community resource like the Life Saving Club. It means you're a bit more limited in terms of tech and "polish" than you would be in a hotel ballroom, but it was accessible and damn, what a nice view and vibe.
Each year I plan for plenty of breaks and breathing space, and every year that gets squeezed out and I end up cramming too many talks in. Apologies. There was plenty to talk about, though, and only one day to do it in (the Sunday was more casual, with only our AGM, a 90 min social media workshop from the Fin Review's Rachael Bolton, and a large pile of Haymisha cookies to get through).
“Animation isn’t for kids (or for anyone)”
Saturday kicked off with a welcome to country from Mark Brown of the Bunurong Land Council, and then into our first discussion -- Tony Thorne, Erika Tucker, Carmel McAloon and host Kelly Lynagh gave us a potted history of what's been going on in the local animation industry. Since streaming outlets like Netflix and Stan came on the scene, and the federal government killed content regulations mandating commercial networks produce children's content, there's been a virtual wipeout of locally conceived animated shows -- local animation companies are mainly a service provider for the USA, with a few exceptions. This looks to turn around a bit with the Labor government’s new arts and creative policy.
Drawing colour
Simon Kneebone, Cathy Wilcox, Tony Thorne and host Marisa Wikramanayake gave us a good discussion about illustrating ethnicity, which can be a touchy subject given various media cartoonists in recent years have been pulled up for ugly characterisations of various races. The group painted a picture of a past where even seeing a non-white person in an illustration felt unusual, as though it needed justification (Cathy: "What is that person doing there?").
We've progressed to the point where we generally expect illustrated work to reflect real communities, and where artists might not always "get it right", no matter how they try, but the group agreed that doing your research and making an effort counts for a lot with readers (Simon: "Teaching ourselves to draw diversity is an ongoing effort").
Grawlixes and emanata
An attempt at talking about the craft of comics, and about all the different stuff we do when we make them that has no convenient vocabulary. Reimena Yee, Paul Peart-Smith, Jon Kudelka and host Sarah Howell used Reimena's project comicsdevices.com, and Mort Walker's classic The Lexicon of Comicana as the basis for a discussion about narrative devices inherent to cartoons and comics and the way cartoonists create visual language, often without consciously thinking about it.
Graphic medicine
The reaction to the day's panels was enthusiastic across the board, but the Graphic Medicine panel was probably a very slight standout -- Angus Olsen, Simon Kneebone and Tony Thorne spoke with me about their experience with drawing as a form of self-therapy, as a way of communicating experience between patients and as an actual advocacy tool that, aimed at doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, can lead to better outcomes and actual lives saved.
Tony's The 100 Days, a book he made while receiving treatment for multiple myeloma, was meant as something he could leave behind for his young children were he not to make it through. It's now used at Peter Mac Cancer Centre to give patients a better understanding of what their experience might be like, and to give doctors a better understanding of the patients' predicament -- just because you treat the disease doesn't mean you know what it's like to actually have it.
Meanwhile, Angus began drawing cartoons for, and about, families like his, whose children had been diagnosed with cancer. His work comforts thousands of parents and children around the world, and one cartoon in particular went viral enough that it may have helped force a pharmaceutical company to reverse course on their "business decision" to end production of a vital cancer drug.
“Let’s get physical”
Next we heard from Michael Fikaris, Jon Kudelka and Frantz Kantor about artist-run spaces. Michael has had many; his are often project-based, intentionally temporary. He sees these spaces as how you create communities; a way to bring in people who aren't pro artists and encourage and inspire them. Frantz took his gallery space online during COVID and produced a lot of drawing livestreams which continued to keep that community alive. Jon sees his art space as therapeutic, but acknowledged the best way to actually make one financially successful is to already be a famous political cartoonist... or do everything on the cheap.
"Not funny"
Harriet McDougall, Paul Peart-Smith and host Karen Percy then discussed mental health for freelancers. Harriet is a designer and illustrator who made a sharp turn into training as a therapist post-COVID. Paul's newsletter, the Inkskull, looks at comics and how they work, but also shares a lot of his thinking about being more effective as an artist. Karen spent many years as an ABC journalist and foreign correspondent, and became a mental health advocate in her workplace, having seen journalists abandoned to process their own trauma, having been through difficult situations.
The group believed comics are a good way to work through trauma (and something you have available to you between counselling sessions), alongside other outlets. They recommended freelancers have long term goals, stay connected to others, know their value, learn to save and learn to say no, graciously!
“F**k A.I.”
Finally, the day ended with Prof Rebecca Giblin, Marisa Wikramanayake and host David Pope chewing on the topic of generative A.I., which has been such a huge topic over the last year or so, but not something the ACA has really grappled with yet (we will need to consider where we stand on such questions as, "would we accept members working primarily with A.I.?", and "would A.I.-assisted art be eligible for our awards?").
Whatever the benefits of A.I. tech in other fields, Prof. Giblin put it well -- "In the creative sector, the application for A.I. is removing you, the artist... the problem they're trying to eliminate is you, eating." The panel was largely a bleak vision: the continued dismantling of journalism and resultant loss of writing and illustration skill, and a one-sided fight against all the tech platforms and money. Nevertheless, film and TV artists and writers in the US have already won battles against A.I. by banding together and striking. For freelancers like us, staying close to our local orgs, like MEAA, the ACA and ASA, may be our best hope.
Future conferences
All in all, I think this was my favourite Stanleys conference and we've had a lot of great feedback about it!
The little bit of negative feedback has been around a few occasions of audience commentary of a sexist or racist nature. Those comments were effectively dismantled by the speakers, host or audience, and showed that, as a group, we don't welcome that sort of thing (frankly, the very little of this I saw across the weekend shows we've come a long way in only a few years). To anyone who needs to hear it: we're an increasingly diverse professional association, so enjoy the conference, but read the room.
I’m not seeing strong themes in your feedback this year, other than that people would mostly like the conference to be held somewhere convenient to them, wherever in Australia they are. There’s also a small contingent who’d like us to livestream the conference so they can attend from home.
I’m supportive of the idea of an accessible conference, and I think the interest may be driven by lack of interest in travel (being busy late in the year, travel cost and stress, etc), which is understandable. But I’m also a big advocate for one-off, in-person experiences, and so much of the value of a conference is in what happens between and after the sessions. Plus I’m not sure who would want to spend a full day or two listening to the conference via Zoom.
If you have other ideas about programming for 2024, get in touch!
Thanks!
I'm glad we could welcome locals and interstaters to a sunny, beachy St Kilda event.
My huge thanks to our great speakers, named above. Plus special thanks to Chris Kelly for this year's publicity art, our brilliant Stanleys host Lawrence Leung and special Stanleys guest Sen. Jacqui Lambie!
Thanks to those who bid in the awards night auctions; it'll send a chunk of money over to the good people at Orygen. They're a research group and they provide a truly modern mental health service for all kinds of young people.
Thanks to the ACA committee for their hard work, including Cathy Wilcox, Peter Broelman, Steve Panozzo, David Pope, Mark Pickett, Adele K. Thomas... and a special thanks to our tireless Melbourne contingent, setting up payments, kicking the tyres of hotel ballrooms and washing endless dishes: Martina Zeitler, Ian McCall and the indefatigable Judy Horacek.
A special thanks to the weekend's graphic scribes! -- Matt Bissett-Johnson, Jock Brodie, Danny Zemp, Cathy Wilcox and Megan Herbert. Some of them had never drawn live before!
And finally, a big thanks to this year's sponsors: Media Super, Wacom, the Museum of Australian Democracy and their Behind the Lines exhibition, Canson, the NSW Journalists' Benevolent Fund, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, KPMG, D'Arenberg Wines, the National Cartoon Gallery and Comic Books On Demand.
