To our most valued friends and supporters,
There isn’t a good way to deliver this information, so I’ll start by ripping off the bandage: Pop Culture Classroom’s last day of operations will be January 31st, 2025.
If this seems sudden, trust me when I say: the current PCC staff completely agree with you!
Since the organization’s beginnings in 2010 as “Comic Book Classroom”, we have relied on your support to make anything happen. You supported us by attending the very first and many subsequent iterations of Denver Comic Con, raising funds for experimental literacy education through comics. You downloaded our first curriculum, and you devoured our first issues of Colorful History.
As I joined the team in late 2018, you continued to support our work to create downloadable curriculum, and to promote literacy and skill development through pop culture around the Denver metro area. As our premiere fundraising event evolved into Denver Pop Culture Con and we took a big risk with Reno Pop Culture Con, you continued to show up. We loved seeing you and your children attended our summer camps and workshops at our on-site classroom and with our partner organizations.
When COVID hit, you attended our virtual workshops, and you supported us as we could no longer sustain Denver Pop Culture Con and became the featured charity of FAN EXPO Denver. You bought t-shirts for “the con that never was,” and you supported our expanded efforts with graphic novel teaching guides and Colorful History.
Post-Covid, as we made our best efforts to build a more sustainable and traditional non-profit funding model, you continued to show up. You supported us through your donations and your attendance at FAN EXPO Denver. You kept coming to the Kids’ Lab and joined in stage presentations, escaped rooms, and found sunken treasure. You continued to show up for Educators’ Day. You helped the Excellence in Graphic Literature awards begin to be known as one of the most comprehensive and respected awards programs in the industry.
YOU have helped us reach thousands of students locally through our comic and game-creation programs, and exponentially more students across the country through our downloadable resources. YOU enabled us to help teachers by providing a huge supply of FREE, high quality, and rigorous materials—as well as providing countless hours of professional development.
Lives are changed because of you.
Thank you.
And after all of that—and what a WILD ride it has been—It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the closing of the organization. While PCC’s finances have been less-than-ideal for a while, the current staff truly didn’t see things going down quite like this. We deserve better, and so do you.
That said, I have one final ask of you.
Please: click on “Classroom Resources” on the top of this page and download everything you can, as soon as you can.
This isn’t going to rescue the organization (Save for the timeliest and largest of financial miracles, that ship has sailed…). But, once our doors close, it will be a matter of days before we anticipate our website shutting down. We are hoping to find a host for our trove of comics, graphic novel teaching guides, and curricular units in the future. But, as of right now, we do not know if or when that will happen. Their future is undetermined, as is the amount of time you’ll be able to access them. So please, save them for the future, and share them with as many people as you can! If nothing else, we hope that these resources will live on, being passed around between teachers and librarians for years to come.
And, I still have a couple of last-minute, unreleased graphic novel guides for you—Reading guides for VIZ Media manga titles Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and The Promised Neverland are now live, as well as the teaching guide for this year’s Excellence in Graphic Literature Book of the Year Award winner, Shubeik Lubeik! Keep watching our social media and website over the next couple of weeks, though. Work has been completed on additional guides for Demon Slayer and a collection of middle grade graphic memoirs from Macmillan, and we’re simply awaiting the finished designs from the publishers. We hope to get those to you before our doors close.
To all of the educators and librarians out there: Thank you for what you do. Your jobs are harder than ever, and you deserve all of the support and recognition you can get. I’ll be sad to miss you at Educators’ Day and other events!
To all of our other friends and supporters: again, THANK YOU. Filling this role has been a dream come true, and the impact you have allowed us to have is not lost on us.
Best,
Matt Slayter
Director of Education
And
Emilee Klein, Director of Events and Partnerships
Angie Morency, Director of Operations
Rachel Brazell, Education Outreach Manger