Chris Butcher (manager of the award winning comic book store Beguiling, the co-founder of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival as well as inspiration for Wallace Wells in the always amazing Scott Pilgrim series) has sent out some news for this year’s TCAF, Check it out all you aspiring comic book creators:
APPLY NOW TO EXHIBIT AT TCAF 2010
Hi folks! Christopher Butcher here, Director of the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, being held May 8th and 9th 2010 in Toronto, Canada. I just wanted to let you know about a pretty exciting change to TCAF for our 2010 event, and that’s our new policy of an open-application process for exhibition space.
Previously, exhibition at TCAF was by invitation only, as we strove to bring the very best creators in the medium to exhibit in Toronto. We’re very proud of all of our previous exhibitors, and we enjoyed curating the sort of show we always wanted to attend ourselves. But quite simply, 2010 isn’t 2003, and the comics medium and industry has grown in so many interesting directions and is producing so much great work that even we’re having trouble keeping up. So we’ve opened up the process so that all creators are welcome to apply to exhibit at the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, in the hopes that we can continue to be a great home to a diverse and talented group of authors, artists, and speakers.
You can find the application info at http://www.torontocomics.com/. Please note, if you’re a full-line publisher or will require multiple tables at TCAF 2010, please instead contact us at [email protected].
Unfortunately even with our increased space for 2010, there’s no way we’d ever be able to accommodate every creator who applied to exhibit at TCAF. Rather than treating the exhibitors in a “first come, first served” fashion that may exclude some great people, we’re instead keeping registration open until November 15th, 2009 and will then select our exhibitors from the total pool of applicants. The TCAF Executive Committee will choose the cartoonists we think would be the best fit for the Festival. TCAF is still (and will likely remain) a show with a juried exhibition space, but we did want to give everyone a level playing-field on which to have a chance at participating.
Applicants will be contacted beginning December 1st to let them know them know whether or not they’ve been accepted as exhibitors. TCAF 2010 is presented by Toronto Public Library and The Beguiling, and will be held May 8th and 9th 2010 at Toronto Reference Library.
So whether you’re a previous exhibitor or are hoping to exhibit for the first time, feel free to fill out the online application. Hopefully we’ll see you in 2010!
Thanks,
– Christopher Butcher, Festival Director, Toronto Comic Arts Festival
