Fulfilling Lives Graphic Novel Anthology Documentary 2017-18
In September 2017 when I was working at Northumbria University, I began a collaboration between our 2nd year illustration students and Fulfilling Lives, a Newcastle-based charitable organisation that helps vulnerable people to rebuild their lives.
Fulfilling Lives’ work includes outreach work with local social service providers to enact system change in their attitudes and policies to people who they define as ‘difficult clients.’
They challenged my illustration students to use illustration to help amplify those voices, and as part of their Contextualisation and Interpretation module, from two interviews of people with complex needs the students' illustrated their journey through life.
The students interpreted these lived experiences into five short graphic novel stories, which thanks to an ERDF Creative Fuse grant in 2018, were then published in a printed anthology to be used in future Fulfilling Lives outreach work.
There was also an eBook version, and panels from the anthology formed Twitter templates, to provoke dialogue on the stigma against people with complex needs in society using the hashtag #WhatDoYouSee?
Creative Fuse North created a short video documentary on the project, in which myself and some of the students discuss the project (see below - expand to full screen).
A paper on this project was presented in 2018 at the International Conference on Illustration and Animation (CONFIA 18) in Portugal.
This paper What Do You See? Using the Graphic Novella to Challenge Stigma co-authored with award winning children's book illustrator Sara Ogilvie, and Ray Middleton from Fulfilling Lives in Newcastle.
Another paper on this project is currently being written for submission to Graphic Communication Design Research Journal. It's abstract has already been peer reviewed and accepted.
Video Credit: Glen Perry
