Before the project’s current focus on online communities, research was conducted into the role played by local studios in supporting creators, especially early-career artists.
The goal of that initial research was to create peer-reviewed scholarship on the social labour of comics professionals. The intent was to examine how community-based resources and organizations supported creators in an industry shaped by precarious labour.
You can view some of the researchers’ previous scholarship on comics labour.
“The Role of Communal Studios in Combatting Precarious Labour,” delivered online as part of the 2020 International Comic Arts Forum’s annual conference.
This short blog article was written for the ICAF 2020 conference to summarize the research on community studios.
A journal article examining the creative and social function of editors in comics production.
The Comics Labour Research Project 