NW Museum of Cartoon Arts

Help us provide literacy classes for elementary and middle school students!

The Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts is a new organization working to build a vibrant, living space in Portland, OR, celebrating all aspects of cartoon art. A major part of our mission is to develop and administer educational programs for people of all ages. NWMOCA’s first planned course is a literacy-through-comics curriculum for 4/5th graders to be held at the end of this summer as an extension of Portland Public Schools’ Summer Acceleration Academy.

We raised more than half of the budget for these classes through fundraising events, grants, and corporate sponsorships. But we need your help to get us over the finish line!

DETAILS:

The literacy-through-comics curriculum is designed to help youth from historically underserved communities who are reading below grade level to gain literacy skills through reading, writing, and drawing comics. We know through research that struggling readers can enhance their reading ability with comics and its unique coupling of words and pictures.

Students will work with comics professionals Aron Steinke (The Zoo Box, Mr. Wolf’s Class) and Ryan Alexander-Tanner (The Nib, Holler If You Hear Me: Comic Edition) to not only improve their reading skills, but also to write and draw their own comics, and learn digital production techniques along the way.

This project was developed through discussion with Darcy Soto, the Director of Learning Acceleration for PPS. Their annual Summer Acceleration Academy serves as many as 3500 students, who are significantly below benchmarks in reading and math.

In consultation with Darcy Soto, we tailored our program to address the needs of youth from persistently underserved communities, including black and indigenous students. We will use a teaching facility that is ADA accessible and have a paraeducator to assist with teaching.

Families that we serve will be able to provide feedback and evaluation data following the close of the program. We will continue to partner with PPS in reviewing their post-program data as well, in support of a sustainable program and continuous improvement.

Wacom, a company that produces specialized drawing tablets that are an industry standard in the comics, cartooning, and animation industries, is sponsoring this endeavor. They are located in the Pearl District of Portland and are significant patrons of the comic arts throughout Oregon. The Wacom Experience Center PDX comprises a large classroom fully decked out in an astounding array of digital arts tools, giving students the opportunity to learn digital drawing, coloring, and lettering techniques.

We are also appreciative of the Oregon Arts Commission and their grant award through the Arts Build Communities program!

We at NWMOCA are so excited at the chance to offer these classes! We’ve worked really hard to create a unique opportunity and learning environment for students.

Please donate to make this amazing opportunity real!

NWMOCA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and all donations to this project are tax deductible.

illustration by @party.comic