Drawing for Change - Addressing Adultification of Children

This is best explained by reading the poster! Please click on the image to enlarge it.

A recent commission for a London Local Authority. Good to hear this is being focussed on and addressed, hoping this has a ripple effect.

 

Drawing for Change - Bridget Lindley Memorial Lecture

This image was a collaborative effort between myself and Jacky Tiotto, CEO of Cafcass. 

Jacky will be giving the memorial lecture on 5th March 2024 and using the image as a mnemonic and delivery aid, a link to the lecture here:

https://www.judiciary.uk/family-justice-council-bridget-lindley-memorial-lecture-5-march-2024/

The image symbolically represents the current chaos that families and their children face when they go through the family courts in private law proceedings. This was the final image, and a couple of steps towards this are below to demonstrate the commissioning process.

Step one below was a sketch from Jacky, so I could 'see' what was going on in her mind. I often ask for this before getting started if a client has a strong idea of something they want to communicate. I always say: even if it's a stick man on the page it helps me understand what you have in mind!

After the initial sketch we talked further and I then work it up into a final draft in order to then move on to the colouring stage. It's still line art at this stage with squiggled notes, but beginning to crystallise:

And here are some close-ups along with an animated GIF to emphasise the main message: keep listening to the voice of the child!

 

Children's Service in Nottingham

I was up in Nottingham yesterday, scribing for a great group of people as part of a children's services conference. I was also telling the story of one person who'd had a really difficult start in life, but had managed to turn things around. Amazing what people are capable of...

As well as enjoying the group, I really loved riding the trams in Nottingham!

 

Illustration work, amplifying the voice of the child in Merton, southwest London

Some recent local authority work, for children's services in Merton. I really like the way children's voices are being listened to more, and citizenship is being developed at an early age these days.

Children's parliaments, young people doing peer to peer surveys for the council, children's mental health ambassadors in schools. I'm hoping all this involvement can help build a more engaged and better educated, and hopefully kinder generation of young people.
 

 I also want to bang my drum for using illustration in this way. To invest in the communication of messages is a way of honouring testimony and amplifying people's voices. It's especially impactful when expressing the voices of those who have previously been sidelined and overlooked. 

Illustration may often look 'pretty' or may be considered a 'nice to have', but it's worth investing in the people who surround you, be that a child, your staff, or someone you're trying to reach at a conference.

Ok, time to get off my illustration soapbox :)

Co-Production in East London

A piece of work done in collaboration with local residents to redevelop a Hackney community centre, also involving architects, co-production facilitators and town planners. To plan the image I used the building as a focal image, that I drew in advance, and used the four differently coloured themes in quadrants around it.

This job needed help from the facilitators to make it work, so I had note takers from the 4 groups who helped harvest information and feed it to me, so that I could stay by the paper and keep drawing, because people were scattered around the building.

I'd recommend this way of working if you have lots of breakout groups but still want an overall sense of the feedback in the room. Or alternatively you could have a more sophisticated setup that the folks at a company called 'Realise' have, involving software similar to Mentimetre, but with a lot more questions lined up. I was working with them last week and that worked really well!

http://www.realisegroup.com/

Community Campaign Logo

I was asked to help with a local community issue, so I came up with this logo to help with their campaign.

They had an awful lot of money to raise in order to buy the building that housed the market, so I wish them every success!

Looking After Children in Southeast London

A recent piece of work for Bexley's S.H.I.E.L.D. a multi-agency partnership safeguarding children and young people. https://bexleysafeguardingpartnership.co.uk/

The hope is to create a more joined up approach within the council, and to provide clarity for the public on what services to access when. Also reach out to people and build a communication bridge, before they're in desperate need. 

Crohns and Colitis Posters with Sheffield Hospital

These 4 posters are a recent commission by Sheffield Hospital to showcase a co-production project between the medics and patients of a particular department within this hospital. The department was Crohns disease and Colitis, both forms of inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD.

This shows the role of this particular patient who also acted as a coach and go-between because she has lived experience of IBD and is also a coach of clinicians.

This poster depicts (symbolically!) the unusual ways of working that the group leapt into, in order to think differently and come to new solutions.

This poster was about their changed approach and how they reached out much more into community settings to find people to partner with.

And here they just wanted to say: despite not yet having the quantitive data, that they gained a lot from the process and were really glad they took part!

Live Scribing in South London

I'm working on a co-production project in South London, these are the outputs from 2 of 4 workshops, so we're halfway through. The group of local volunteers are sifting through ideas and debating what to pitch for a pot of money to improve East Croydon. Sorely needed, I really hope they win with their pitch.

I'm really interested in this form of ideation, it's a very active and egalitarian way of involving citizens, full of debate. They weigh up facts, bring local knowledge and a certain amount of gut feeling, a bit like jury service, but for town planning!