The Šiauliai City Municipal Public Library (Lithuania) is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Comics Center with a creative conference

On November 6, the second comic book conference, “Comic Books as a Synthesis of Literature and Visual Art in the Education of Children,” was held at the Šiauliai City Municipal Public Library. The event brought together creators, educators, literary researchers, and promoters of reading culture from all over Lithuania.

This year’s conference was special because it marked the tenth anniversary of the Comics Center, which was founded in 2015 by library director Irena Žilinskienė. At the time, it was a bold and curious idea, but today it is a mature creative space with its own community, educational cycles, exhibitions, and returning visitors.

Daina Kinčinaitienė, head of the Culture Department of the Šiauliai City Municipality Administration, gave a welcoming speech at the conference, emphasizing that comics cannot be forgotten during the upcoming anniversary of the city of Šiauliai. Project manager and senior librarian for project activities Agnė Gumuliauskienė said that this event is not only a creative experience, but also a sign that comics are establishing themselves in Lithuania as a full-fledged form of culture and education that needs to be discussed creatively.

Illustrators and comic book creators Akvilė Misevičiūtė, Anna Pavlova, Rasa Narkūnaitė, Tomas Mitkus, Gerda Jord, VDU lecturer, Donata Bocullo, literary scholar at the Ąžuolyno Library, Tomas Januškevičius, educator at the Comics Center, Romanas Erminas, senior librarian at the Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library in Klaipėda County, and Gvidas Diržys, lecturer at the House of Asian Languages and Cultures. Comics revealed themselves as a bridge between text and image, allowing complex issues to be discussed in simple terms and teaching participants to view the world creatively and visually.

In the second part of the event, participants immersed themselves in practical creative workshops, where they created their own comics, combining words, lines, and emotions. The workshop became an inspiring space for ideas and collaboration, where participants discovered how comics can enrich the educational process, help communicate with children and teenagers, and encourage reading in a different way. “Comics are not just drawings and text. They are a way of storytelling that allows you to talk about complex things in a simple way and sometimes – through humor, metaphor, or symbols – say even more than words can,” emphasized the project manager, librarian for project activities A. Gumuliauskienė.

The event also featured an exhibition of comics created by 9th–12th grade students and university students, dedicated to revealing the philosophical and pedagogical ideas of Stasys Šalkauskis. The comics for the exhibition were designed by comic book creators Greta Alice Liekytė and Viktorija Dambrauskaitė-Ežiukas. This exhibition was further proof that, for the younger generation, comics are a language that can be used to express ideas, explore values, and create new stories.

The conference was organized as part of the project “Comics as a Keyword 2: New Horizons” which was partially funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Šiauliai City Municipality.