Groningen has a new museum: Storyworld
Storyworld is the successor to the Dutch Comic Strip Museum, and is located on the sixth floor of the new Forum Groningen. The doors opened on Saturday morning, and the first day of opening saw 500 comic fans visiting the new museum.
In Storyworld you can find a large part of the collection of the old Comic Strip Museum that was located at Westerhaven in Groningen. But Storyworld focuses much more on new, modern ways of telling stories and also tries to give a picture of future technical possibilities for telling stories. Except for comics, you can also find animations and games in Storyworld.
Visitors are encouraged to interact with images, and the Forum Groningen hopes to have a new crowd puller with the museum. The old Comic Strip Museum on Westerhaven attracted 18,000 visitors in 2018, and it is expected that this will increase considerably in its new location at the Forum.
Storyworld adds to the interactive elements at the new Forum: you can pull crazy faces that are then scanned to show what emotions you exhibit.
Four special cartoon heroes came to Groningen for the opening: Aladdin, Aloy (from the game series Horizon Zero Dawn), Spiderman and Lucky Luke (created by Belgian cartoonist Morris in 1946).
Festive opening day
The entire day at the Forum Groningen was dominated by the opening of Storyworld. The public could join in at various workshops, have their faces painted, play games; read comics, stamp badges, and attend drawing demonstrations by internationally renowned artists Lois van Baarle and Romano Molenaar. Van Baarle is known for her free work and her work for the Horizon Zero Dawn game. Molenaar is behind Batman and X-men Unlimited, among others. And it was possible to take a living selfie with Spiderman, Aloy, Lucky Luke or Aladdin, too.
Images via Forum Groningen
