Johanna Rojola

Information

Name:

Johanna Rojola

Age:

39 (2009)

Nationality:

Finnish

Profession:

Comics artist

Country, city:

Helsinki, Finland

Describe your background, your interest in development, your affiliation with ngos, etc.

I have been interested in how things work in society and the world, as long as I can remember. Relations between things and reasons behind visible politics and actions, as well as history in general, interest me. I was a teenage punk. In punk youth movement it is important to have a critical outlook about society and other things around you. Later on in my teenage I became a feminist, too.

I have been drawing since I was a little girl. Early on, when I couldn't write yet myself, I would tell my mother what goes on in the pictures and she'd write the texts to my stories. My comics have been published in Finland and abroad since 1988. I got a diploma in comics art from Angoulême Art School (France) in 1995. Nowadays, I mostly work as a comics teacher and draw only for newspapers.

How did you first get in touch with World Comics and grassroots comics?

Leif asked me to join a workshop in Mozambique as a trainer in 1999.

What are your experiences of grassroots comics? Do you plan to use grassroots comics in your future activities?

I have been very impressed by the development of the grassroots comics method. I use this method, or some parts of it, quite often as a comics teacher.

It would be nice if you could bring up some aspects that you think are important from your own perspective.

Before my first workshop I had some doubts about the relevance of our work. However, the results were astonishing. Grassroots comics are low-tech and cost-effective, and most importantly, people have definitively embraced the method and made it their own. Visual storytelling is a really good tool in general, and grassroots comics is an excellent application of it.

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