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Drawing cultures of resistance with Co-POWeR community participants

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(Drawing from Be Happy and Get in Shape in the Park by Edgar Lushaju)

Democratising access to research

For more than a decade, illustrations have been used by anthropologists in their studies of human behaviour and to share findings with the general public. In some cases, images have been developed with communities involved in the research. This can be a good way for researchers to maintain contact with research participants who might otherwise feel kept at a distance once the fieldwork is over. Instead, research participants can be part of processes that use research to bring about change. In some projects, participants are named and credited for their involvement.

Another reason for integrating illustrations into research has been to make the research more accessible to different audiences. Instead of text-heavy reports and research papers, the creative process of drawing can break down linguistic and cultural barriers. Building on my previous professional experience as Creative Agent for the Creative Partnership programme, and Artistic Director of Aldaterra Projects working with children and culturally diverse communities in London, over the past year I have been involved in the use of art to ‘decolonise’ Co-POWeR’s research. This means ensuring that project outcomes represent stories about COVID-19 from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. A key part of my work has been highlighting strategies used by diverse groups to overcome the stigma and prejudice they encountered during the pandemic.

Participatory design

Taking inspiration from other anthropologists who see the relationship between images and words as a dynamic field for the expression of research participants’ emotions and personal experiences, I engaged in a year long process of producing and analysing research material with Co-POWeR participants, researchers, and later with the graphic artist Edgar Lushaju, with the view to create two graphic narratives based on participants’ life stories, A Day in March and Be Happy and Get in Shape in the Park. I used the Rainbow of Wishes method, which I first created for a workshop delivered with Olatundun (Tundun) Gafari in November 2021, as part of Work Package 4 community engagement activities at the University of Southampton (see The Power of Listening and the Rainbow of Wishes), and then used in a series of creative sessions with young people and adults organised with Dr Anita Sharma and Dr Teresa Perez from Work Package 4 as part of our synergy research activities.

The first thing to note is that using drawings and storytelling with participants has been a rewarding method both from the point of view of the creative outputs produced and for the quality and depth of the research outcomes. Asking young people and their families to draw their experiences and emotions during focus group discussions and one-to-one interviews, allowed them to access their innermost feelings that they shared with others through words and images. This process eventually widened the researchers’ understanding of the socio-political context in which the experiences were set, and even enabled the participants to reflect on the wider contexts of their own experiences in a different light. It also helped the graphic artist and I to see the stories through their eyes, a process which was incorporated in the scripts I wrote, and the images Edgar created for the narratives. As part of the co-creative dramaturgical method, I explored common themes and shared concerns across all the Work Packages and wove them together with the artist’s graphics. For instance, during a workshop with young people at the Future Men youth centre in Pimlico, one of the participants drew a scene of his family watching the news of a violent attack on a black man on TV. This led me to include messages of violence circulating on social media in one of the narratives, and the image of a family watching the TV together during the announcement of a forthcoming lockdown. The process shows the direct influence of participants’ personal stories in the making of the narratives.

(Participant’s drawing produced during Work Package 5 and Work Package 2 synergy workshop, 1 December 2021)

(Sketch drawing of “A Day in March” graphic narrative by Edgar Lushaju)

Creative dialogue and constructive feedback

Another crucial aspect of the co-production of the graphic narratives is the engagement of researchers, young people, and adults in creative feedback sessions. To this aim we organised two online workshops, one with Work Package 4 participants on 31 March 2022 and the other with Work Package 2 participants on 28 April 2022. These workshops were organised to make sure that the fictionalised stories aligned with people’s lived experiences they had shared with us, and that the dialogues and images were representative of their lives. During the workshops, participants had the opportunity to see and listen to the first public sharing of the stories, followed by a discussion which offered them the opportunity to express their views on the dialogues and images and make suggestions for improvements or changes. Interestingly, we noticed that age and literacy did not play a divisive role during the activities and that younger people were more comfortable with the illustrative process than adults, something they had already demonstrated during the creative sessions. This shows how notions of who can draw and who cannot draw are instilled through the education system, and how people might distance themselves from the activity as they age or progress in life. However, such resistance in adults was easily overcome during the sharing events as people got into the creative flow of the workshops. As mentioned by Dr Sharma in an email correspondence following a feedback session with Work Package 2 researchers: “What emerged from the narrative was a move from the micro to the macro, from fact to realistic fiction, from personal to political, from negative to positive” (email correspondence with the author, 13 April 2022). Indeed, realistic fiction seemed to capture the process and outcomes very well – both the drawings and dialogues were resonant of participants’ lives and spoke to them, whilst the process of anonymising them offered the opportunity to protect participants from any risk of backlash or stigmatisation.

Perhaps, the most encouraging statement came from one of the young people who mentioned: “I can see my own experience in these panels” (Participant 1, Work Package 5 graphic narratives workshop session, 28 April 2022), while another appreciated the combination of depth and humour in A Day in March story. A number of recommendations were also made. This included advice to strike a fine balance between the use of text in relation to images and keeping longer references in asides.

Another participant suggested to reduce the number of characters wearing a symbolic orange jacket designed to highlight the passing of the virus amongst people as well as the stigma imposed on BAME communities and reflected in the graphic narrative. One Muslim participant advised that we change the dialogue between the main character and his sister to be more representative of a Muslim household, deleting references to their personal relationships. One person highlighted the wealth disparities among the young people. Another suggested that we make the drawings as neutral as possible to avoid the story resonating only with culturally diverse communities. The latter point was reinforced by another suggestion that we include different races in the closing panels to highlight the wide impact of COVID-19 across the whole nation.

While views and opinions varied, all were united in their goal to improve the graphic narrative so that it is sensitive and effective in communicating with, and engaging wider publics. The importance of the feedback reveals the invaluable contribution of participants’ input to the design of the work, especially in “ironing out any insensitivities and misinterpretations” as noticed by Dr Sharma. We are now looking forward to sharing the graphic narratives with wider audiences through a series of events planned by the Co-POWeR research team during the summer and beyond. Our hope is that the work might inspire further conversations on the impact of COVID-19 and racial discrimination on BAME communities in the UK, as well as their effective forms of mutual support and resilience in response to the problematic nature of these social and medical pathologies.

 

Blog post by Alda Terracciano