Grassroots Comics
It has long been known that comics are “not just for kids”. Rather, they have been used in a variety of ways reaching adult audiences whether through the medium of cartooning as political lampooning that has been popularized by the mainstream media or through the graphic novel to stir public imagination and tell a large number of stories that are often ignored by the mainstream media.
All this, however, is done by professional artists who aim to make comics a serious business aimed at adults. Usually written and illustrated by one person, it encapsulates the style, narrative and subjective worldview of an individual. Often drawing on direct experience, the author builds a world into which the reader is drawn.
In India, there is a new wave of comics called grassroots comics that has evolved into a genre of its own – instead of professional comic artists telling a story based on experience and subjective world-view, it draws the real life actors into telling their stories by simply using a four-panel frame. Though subjective, it draws on a wide range of experience of several people who have a story to tell and thus lends itself to an objective analysis of the human condition on which it is based. Lastly, scores of grassroots comics thus collected reveal insights about various facets of a particular issue – thus helping to set right systems and processes that result in these kind of experiences.
In its simplest form, grassroots comics are simply comics that tell a local story. It is told by the people themselves and therefore served as a communication tool for all citizens transcending the barriers of language, literacy, media access and social class or even caste. For these reasons, grassroots comics have become extremely popular in remote and low literacy areas of the country as well as in primary and higher education in India and the other parts of the globe.
The use of Grassroots Comics as a medium of self-expression, objective analysis of the issues underlying these stories and strengthening of democratic processes through discussion and debate has been promoted by World Comics India, a registered international organization. Started in the nineties, WCI has conducted more than 1,000 comics workshops in most remote and disturbed areas of the globe and trained over 50,000 common people. Kindly read more here www.worldcomicsindia.com
Grassroots Comics as Graphic Medicine
Graphics medicine is a term coined by Dr. Ian Williams and it builds on the medical humanities movement that has seen students in many medical schools reading classic literature, modern novels or poetry to gain insight into the human condition. Amongst the growing number of autobiographical works and graphic novels worldwide, titles dealing directly with the patient experience of illness or caring for others with an illness are gaining in popularity.
According to Dr. Williams, comics and graphic novels could be used as a resource for health professionals, playing a valuable role in:
Reflecting or changing cultural perceptions of medicine
Relating the subjective patient/carer/provider experience
Enabling discussion of difficult subjects
Helping other sufferers or carers
However, Dr. Williams cautions that stories, whether written or drawn are not real life. Even autobiographies are carefully constructed representations. Written stories tend to have a structure, with some sort of ultimate resolution (as well as a beginning and middle). Many of these “other” stories will be incoherent, too painful to relate, too distressing to hear, and so utterly bleak, miserable or banal. Since many of these stories of illness are written down or drawn by skilled, articulate authors, the human condition they imply is at best observational and vicarious.
That is where the Grassroots Comics methodology has huge potential to be used in the medical field. Being a participatory tool, it can draw on real life experiences and so bring experiential stories that are closer to the real life condition suggesting a variety of approaches that can be used to diagnose, treat and manage diseases and public health issues.
Drawn by people who observe, see and experience the human condition on a daily basis, they present a slice from real life experience and can become the pivot around which discussions and debates on various aspects of the human condition relating to medicine can take place including medical ethics and difficult conversations
Already, World Comics India has introduced it among the medical practitioners to enable them to share life stories, reflect on critical issues, draw informative comics on medicine and patient care, community medicine, medical education etc. This builds upon its previous work in the field of Adolescent Health, HIV/AIDS, Leprosy, Disability, Mental Health etc. where scores of stories were generated in the first phase provoking debate at the community level on these issues. Some of the discussions and debates were elevated to the policy level thus underscoring the potential of this participatory medium.
Taking a similar approach and drawing an analogy with interventional medical and public health research, we can look at grassroots graphics medicine in three layers – individual, community and population. Stories told by the individuals at the first level are similar to the self-expression level at which grassroots comics operates and can be useful in getting perspectives and insights from all actors involved. This is also the basic level where need for awareness, information sharing and feedback is felt and stories can illuminate the basic approaches that inform these areas.
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At the level of the community, segregation, analysis and discussion of issues can happen when scores of free-wheeling issues are categorized. This is the level when urgency of action also builds in and therefore advocacy campaigns can also be organized. World Comics has successfully designed interventions using scores of comics generated by the community provoking discussion and debate and galvanizing people into action.
At the systems and population level, scores and scores of grassroots comics collected at the two levels above set the tone for policy action resulting from organized and informed debates that require a systems change. This is the level at which democratic processes get strengthened based on participatory individual self-expression and community-level action.