What would happen to your creative career if you went ALL IN?
The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is an excellent community and the Europolitan conference brings together creative people from all over Europe. The conference includes
- pre-conference workshops,
- Conference planner (free download) to help you take advantage of everything,
- Exciting sessions for all target audiences (age groups),
- Optional tours of Cologne cathedral and picture book museum!
- Scrawl Crawl (a time-honored creative way to walk and create),
- Show off your portfolio (+ competition),
- One-on-one meet-ups with experienced and knowledgeable professionals,
- Critique group sign-up
- Win a 1 – year membership to SCBWI?
- Complimentary 1-year digital subscription to Indie Author Magazine
- and more!
If you took advantage of all the offerings, you would seriously level up!
(and have SO MUCH FUN!)
Seven Reasons to Take the Leap:
1. Cachet
A boutique conference in Europe frames you and your work in a flattering way.
As a person who speaks English in Europe, you very likely speak or understand more than one language and do your creative work in a setting that looks exotic to most Americans. (It still looks pretty fancy to me 🙂 This setting makes you more interesting to agents and editors.
2. Community
Your everyday life may happen in a different language and setting than the one you are writing for. The same cultural things that make you exotic and interesting mean you have to look for opportunities to connect with like-minded creative people.
3. Contacts
An intimate space and a cozy conference make it possible to connect to colleagues, agents, and editors in more meaningful ways. I love the Frankfurt Book Fair, but it can feel anonymous. The Europolitan is an opportunity to grow your reach.
4. Craft
Of course, there are a variety of sessions about how to improve your craft. (Check out the schedule.) Critique partners are hard to find. But this is a prime place to find some colleagues who will grow with you.
5. Context
The same societal pressures are affect us all. We have the same goal: to serve young readers.
A conference that serves multiple age groups (picture book, chapter books, middle grade, youth adult) and disciplines (writing, translation, illustration) is an opportunity to work out how we can best do our work today.
6. Challenge
If you want to get seriously fired up about your creative work, get together at the Europolitan, where the buzz of voices match the buzz of creative energy. You will be fueled up with ideas, motivation, and friends for the next two years!
Perfect, because the next Europolitan won’t happen until then!
7. Cologne is a place to have fun!
Celebration-happy Cologne, Germany has one of the 3 (or possibly 4) picture book museums in the world, a wonderful writing supply and art supply store (Ortloff), and the world-famous cathedral.
The cathedral is right outside the main train station–a purposeful juxtaposition of the modern technology of the steam locomotive and the tradition and elegance of the cathedral–and you can walk across the padlock-covered bridge over the Rhine River to our venue.
Already registered? Get your free planner!
Just for fun and to get your creative subconscious noodling and doodling about how you can get the most out of this wonderful opportunity:
