Creative Innovation Shortlist - University of Dundee Scottish Centre for Comics Studies
Creative Innovation Shortlist - University of Dundee Scottish Centre for Comics Studies
Since 2016 the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies has undertaken a project to research and create public information comics, and, more broadly, the use of comics for educational purposes. This partnership-based research responds to the core mission of the University of Dundee – to transform lives – by engaging the public and various partners (often charities) to produce comics that address a particular public information need. Many of these comics have dealt with healthcare issues, such as heart disease, mental illness, and topics such as organ donation. Over the course of this project we have been faced by the inevitable outcome of some of these conditions and issues – death.
While this can be a very difficult topic to confront, we have found that many of the partners and individuals that we have worked with have important messages concerning death and bereavement that they wanted to communicate. So, we produced several comics that addressed this theme. These include Close to the Heart (2020), by Dr Megan Sinclair, about her experience of losing her father to heart disease, and The Gift (2018), a project led by Mayra Crowe concerning experiences and policy regarding organ donation. This led to our work with charities such as Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, and Children’s Hospices across Scotland, and culminated in two comics:
When People Die: Stories for Young People (2019), led by Dr Golnar Nabizadeh. This comic was the result of workshops with young people who had experienced bereavement and wanted to create comics to help other young people in similar circumstances.
Supporting Bereavement (2022), led by Mayra Crowe and Professor Christopher Murray. The aim of this comic, and all the comics we have produced that deal with this theme, was to highlight the importance of talking about death.
This is often a taboo subject, but we wanted to help provoke meaningful and helpful conversations about life and bereavement. One cannot exist without the other. The stories in Supporting Bereavement celebrated the work of the To Absent Friends Festival, highlighted the importance of finding ways of honestly talking about death with young people, and drew attention to the Bereavement Charter Mark for Scotland – a scheme that aims to support businesses and institutions in developing policies and practices that acknowledge the impact of bereavement.
Professor Christopher Murray, director of the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies, notes that comics are uniquely suited for communicating such themes. He says ‘Comics present information in a very clear and accessible way, combining words and images and using sequential narrative techniques in a way that allow the readers to connect with the characters and stories on both an emotional and intellectual level. Comics immerse readers in the story, but also allow readers to see and feel the emotions as expressed in the drawings, which are immediately comprehensible, but also, through thought balloons and captions, which can reveal what character are thinking, and how they tell their own stories. This can include opportunities for dramatic irony, or a tension between what is shown in images and communicated though words. This is the power of comics, and this can be harnessed to tell very impactful autobiographical stories, and to tackle difficult subjects, like death and bereavement, in ways that can inform, inspire and console.
The Scottish Centre for Comics Studies' Public Information and Educational Comics website can be found here.
Artwork above from Supporting Bereavement comic - top by Monty Nero, lower by Catriona Laird.
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