Illustrating futures is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Comics Youth CIC, helping young people contribute to the mental health conversation through the creation of comics, zines and sequential art. Join us to explore young people’s perception of loneliness and add your voice to the discourse by utilising the medium of zines and sequential art to explore, communicate personal ideas and feelings to uncover: 1) What does isolation mean to you? 2) Why does isolation affect mental health? 3) What steps can we make to reduce isolation?
We invite you to discover and unearth how young people from the Liverpool City region truly feel and what they have achieved against a backdrop of cuts to education, mental health services and discrimination due to their marginalised statuses. See the strength of our young people’s voices through a wide variety of artwork, comics and zines that highlights their lived experiences and achievements.
We invite you to make their own comics, participate in guided workshops and experience the pleasure of having yourwork on display at Tate. Workshops on offer include visual storytelling and zine and comic making sessions-to be published as part of Comics Youth’s upcoming isolation zine.
Illustrating Futures will be accompanied by a symposium discussing the use of graphic narratives as an intervention tool to improve the mental health and overall wellbeing of young people.
About Comics Youth CIC
Comics Youth is a multi-national award-winning Merseyside based Social Enterprise that provides comics-based literacy and wellbeing projects for marginalised children and young people aged 8-25 within the Liverpool City Region. Comics Youth was co-founded and is led by a board of young people under 30 with the same lived experiences as our targeted groups. From being young people who struggled with suicidal ideation and self-injury we know first-hand the gaps in provision for young people and established the org as a means of plugging service provision gaps between tier 1-4 services for those who fall through the cracks. Our mission is to provide a voice for hard to reach young people including looked after children, LGBTQIA young people, young carers, SEND young people and young people experiencing mental ill-health by providing them the tools to express themselves, improve their literacy and speak truth to power through creating comics regarding salient community issues. We deliver 13 targeted sessions per week in a range of inclusive settings including hospitals, community centres, libraries and inpatient settings.