Our project’s primary mission is to collaborate with participating urban youth to develop collaborative comics stories and other creative content based on their own interests and ideas. And by doing so, we hope to foster creative thought and provide a truly positive collaborative experience for participating youth, artists and you!
The backdrop of this virtual studio framework is our first comic series, The Back of the Yards, which was created as a result of our initial in-person collaborations with participating youth in the West Side of Chicago. Now, as you may or may not know, this project didn’t even start out as a comic project, much less a “virtual studio.” No, in fact, this project started as a modest community project intended to connect artists with youth to generally collaborate with one another on independent creative projects. That simple premise then evolved into a broader comic-based project based on those initial collaborations with participating youth in the West Side of Chicago.
It doesn’t get more real than Back of the Yards, on the South Side of Chicago, when you’re growing up as a teen. It’s where fantasy and the power of story can build resilience, foster healing and lead to greater understanding. Based on the stories and experiences of real urban youth, the Made Collaborative Studio presents Back of the Yards. A fictionalized version of the real Back of the Yards neighborhood serves as setting for the eponymous comic book series. Likewise, the stories and the characters themselves are based on the real lives and musings of Chicago youth. These stories were first conceived by students attending an after school arts program. They were facilitated by the project’s founder, Jimmy Briseno, during Made Collaborative’s first round of urban outreach to inner-city schools. Jimmy then had an inspired idea to elevate these kids’ ideas by bringing professional comics artists and writers into the creative process to validate the kids’ stories and experiences, weaving them together as the narrative threads of a real comic book series – and with that, the Back of the Yards comic series was born. You can learn more about the comic by visiting our Comic Overview page.
We were, of course, thrilled that we were able to ultimately develop a comic based on these initial collaborative youth sessions and ideas, but on the flip side, those in-person collaborations took time. A lot of time. And a high degree of coordination between after school programs, youth and our own adulting lives. With that in mind, we wondered how might be able to scale this modest grass roots project up so that we could more effectively enable collaborations with other after school programs and interested youth, and even potentially bring others (like you) into this new collaborative process. And then on top of all these existing complications came COVID! So, what was our solution to all of this? …. Why not try to bring some of these basic collaborative concepts from the classroom into the virtual realm?
With this website, we are simply trying to extend this same collaborative opportunities that started in the classrooms of west-side of Chicago, to others virtually.
This is a grass roots project in the truest sense. Started with a summer spent volunteering at a local Chicago after school program. Just a rag tag group of artists trying to do something they thought was cool in their spare time. And if you’d like to learn about any of us, just click on any of the ugly mugs to the right.
If you want to know more about the full story behind the story, well, here you go! We’ve cobbled together this “Project Chronicles” flipbook which journals the early origins of this project through the current Virtual Studio incarnation. And with that, we will also be documenting the next stage of collaborations (including your contributions) as we develop Issue 3 and beyond together!
We close by providing you with a few Studio Cards that you can access and explore … and if you feel so inclined, collaborate!
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book. iPad/iPhone users, submit images from FILES (NOT from Photo Library).
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Collaborate with professional artists by contributing some artwork of your own! Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
