The Prairie Comics Festival is an annual 2-day event featuring a marketplace and panel and workshop programming, geared towards celebrating, supporting, and discovering independent, creator-owned comics, graphic novels, zines, and other sequential art, by artists based in the prairie provinces and beyond. The festival, taking place annually in Winnipeg, MB, also focuses on educating and encouraging the community and attendees to create their own comic works by facilitating additional events about comic making, publishing, and artistic development. The festival and all related events are free to attend for the public.
Festival Mandate
PCF supports local, regional, and broad Canadian independent comic creators in the development of their craft, network, and community involvement. PCF also seeks to encourage new creators towards their goals of making comics, and having access to the knowledge and tools to make it possible, with a focus on marginalized groups, BIPOC creators, and the LGBTQ2IA+ community.
Artistic Vision
Prairie Comics Festival values above all else community building, development of all artistic abilities in all people, and providing an accessible platform for folks to not only get the word out about their work, but to be inspired by the creators in their community from all stages of work and life experience. The sequential art and zine mediums have a long standing history of investigating individual artistic identity, interrogating social norms, being associated with underground movements, and above all connecting deeper with community. PCF seeks to promote these principles, keep the conversation going by providing platforms for all to be involved, and educate the reader and creative communities on how they can take their life context and translate it into the comic medium.
Annual Activities
The organizing board formally meets 1-2 times to go over what still needs coordinating for the main festival and side events, as well as chatting regularly on a private Discord server to keep up with activity items. Meetings increase to weekly in the two months leading up to the festival. Year-round organization, including developing the exhibitor list, liaising with venue, building marketing materials (both tangible and digital), and fundraising efforts, lead to the hosting of our signature annual event, Prairie Comics Festival, occurring over 2 days, and featuring a marketplace and panel and workshop programming. Positions for the board, and volunteers, will be ongoing in 2023.
Disclaimer: Prairie Comics Festival is NOT a commercial comic convention (like Winnipeg Comic Con). All work at the PCF event is owned by the exhibitor attending and is original, with the exception of independent artists and writers hired by larger companies to develop existing IP. No fan art is permitted. Portfolios and works of every attending exhibitor is curated by the board.