The World Comics Network (India), started by political cartoonist Sharad Sharma in mid nineties, looks at introducing Grassroots Comics as a tool for communication and social design. Working with different communities, they emphasise on the value of visual art, self-expression and awareness in creating social change. Through their practice they have truly embraced the idea of design for the people and by the people, acting as a catalyst for change in the social sector.

Grassroots Comics as a medium stands out distinctly from mainstream comics since it is not created by professional artists. As the World Comics Network(WCN) puts it,
‘these comics are created by ‘You and Me’, common masses themselves. Comics have given a new direction to representation of silences thereby creating a revolution in itself. These comics are easy to-make, reproduced by simple photocopier and distributed in a limited demarcated area, which invites local debates among people from different socio-economic stratum of the society.’

WCN answers some of the most frequently asked questions in a comic format.

How Grassroots Comics operate
Primarily through the medium of a workshop which travels to several rural and remote areas in India and other countries, the workshop leaders gather community members to visualise topics of importance to them. With the help of a manual, which teaches them basics of expressions and postures, the participants then start storyboarding and visually representing their stories, in a simple four panelled A4 comic poster format. It is then inked in black, and photocopied to make several wall posters which are pasted at prime locations within the community like the village panchayats, shops, electric poles etc.

WCN has discovered the potential in the visual storytelling form of comics to connect with people of varying levels of literacy and in the process targeting a much larger audience. It is also this visual and easy to comprehend nature of comics which they have tapped into to build it as a medium to address issues that otherwise become sensitive topics and are not discussed out in the open.
Like in the case of the comic below which questions the veiling tradition in Rajasthan but in a simple, light hearted way, by basing the comic on a humorous yet practical problem.

“Veil System”, a lady is unable to inform her father-in-law about the theft of their luggage because of the veil system. Both regret the incident and the old tradition of veil system.

In case of these grassroots comics, the content is based on memories and stories of the community, represented in regional languages and aided by a strong sense of the visual culture and local perception of that space. Shifting focus from aesthetics, the idea behind the comics is to create something which is more contextual. Through the past fifteen years, these regional comics have covered a plethora of social issues as well as instances of development and accomplishments in these conflict ridden areas. With the use of minimum resources they capture underlying issues and people of a community and portray them in a thought provoking manner.

Designer as facilitator
While going through the project, what struck me the most was the change in the role of a designer in the field. From being the outsider who orchestrates such conversations, there is a now a need for the designer to assume the role of a facilitator to build a participatory and more inclusive process, which looks not just at locating challenges but also collectively – designer along with community – finding solutions for them. Besides bringing in our skills,the role we play in mobilising the thoughts and voices of the community becomes pivotal to the project. As Andrew Shea, in his book Designing for Social Change says, “sometimes you may need to fade into the background and observe, while at other times you might need to work side by side with the members of the community.”

Design for the community, with the community.
The challenge for an urban designer working in the rural context can be understanding who the target audience should be. The World Comics Network base their primary audience and context in the same space that they work in, thus pushing forward boundaries of designing with the community in order to design for the community.

It is only when these stories are distributed that they call for action. Exhibiting the photocopied comics of the participants in easily accessible areas of the community, builds a platform to not just showcase stories and talent, but also open up local debates and discussions within the community on topics which are otherwise neglected. The close proximity and the direct communication between the makers and the readers in the space provide a setup which initiates conversations and drives change.

In a Grassroots Comics Campaign, Apni Dikri Ro Haq ( Girl child right) initiated in Barmer District of Western Rajasthan,India in 2005, more than 300 wall poster comics were created by children and youth on topics of girl child rights, female foeticide, child marriage etc. A selection of which were circulated in several villages by the help of a motorbike rally, which paved way to serious debates and several local people committing themselves in bringing about change in the situation.

Left: Apni Dikri Ro Haq campaign, Barmer, Rajasthan.
Right: World Comics network in another village in Rajasthan, India.
Image Courtsey: World Comics Finland.

“During various discussions and brainstorming sessions, one thing emerged very clear – if we want this campaign to succeed, it has to first start ticking like a clock in peoples’ mind. We remembered what Mahatma Gandhi had said years ago; something which we thought was very much relevant to what we were planning. He had talked about a movement being launched by not working along the periphery of the society, but after penetrating deep into it. He had also reflected upon the fact that villages were the true image of real India.We decided to make these two observations of the Mahatma the pivot of our campaign” – Sharad Sharma

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
WCN has successfully created a system of sustained engagement, which doesn’t stop at one project, but gives its participants the required skill sets to continue such efforts within the community, without any outside help. The merit of the network also lies in the simple structure of the workshop, which not just makes well informed participants, but also empowers them to make change. While the focus is not on skills, the WCN has created many participants, who find their calling in the medium, and with time and under guidance of the WCN master the art, to build similar workshops within their own community. Like in the case of the Apni Dikri Ro Haq campaign in Barmer,the Barmer Comics Manch, a local initiative, now continues the campaign.

A basic manual , introducing grassroots comics, is also available on free to download basis on the website in English and Hindi. Other languages for the manual can also be requested.

The easy to understand and cost effective nature of the workshop has found popularity in the development sector, which has led to the same method now being followed by several NGO’s and other individuals in countries like Pakistan,Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, UK and Tanzania to name a few. The Indian network has also collaborated with World Comics Finland to introduce grassroots comics in many areas, along with setting up a separate network for Pakistan as well as Nepal.

Left: Comic from Nepal – On girl child and the importance of a daughter.
Right: Comic from Africa - On Female Genital Mutilation.

You can also look at these comics on their website, as well as purchase some compiled publications.

Facilitated by a community of academics, health carers, authors and artists, the site is a rich resource that provides multiple forms of engagement for different audiences—from people engaged in popularising the role comics can play in medicine to medical practitioners, patients and carers.

Dr Ian Williams, who coined the term ‘Graphic Medicine’ and founded the website, writes on the site, “Thanks in part to the medical humanities movement many medical schools will now have tutors suggesting students read classic literature or modern novels to gain insight into the human condition. I think it is high time that graphic fiction was taken as seriously: 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”

From Iggy and The Inhalers, by Alex Thomas, MD, to teach kids with asthma about asthma symptoms, treatment and medication.

This isn’t to say that Graphic Medicine only resonates with those somehow connected to the medical field or comic books. Amongst the diverse comics featured or reviewed, there is a loose unification under medical and healthcare themes, making them mostly accessible for anyone to read. They deal with a range of issues, such as coping with a family member’s diagnosis of an illness, postpartum depression and the experience of donating an organ.

Left: Epileptic by David Beauchard. Right: Wrinkles by Paco Roca, a graphic novel about Alzheimer’s disease.

Reading about the project is interesting, but you’re instilled with a much stronger conviction for the case of comics in medicine by actually reading some of them. The narratives expectedly deal with difficult and harrowing themes. They draw you in and give you a greater understanding of and insight into a situation. And while there still exists a fallacy of comic books needing to be ‘comical’ (or dealing with lighter topics), in actual fact their power lies in leveraging image and text deftly to communicate to a wide audience. Graphic Medicine as a platform provides the space needed to explore the role of comics within healthcare.

Some of the comics can be read online. Look Straight Ahead by Elaine Will is about a teenager dealing with depression and bipolar disorder.

From Chapter 4 of Look Straight Ahead by Elaine Will.

Mom’s Cancer , published online twice a week, is written by Brian Fies, and is an account of his mother’s battle with metastatic lung cancer.

Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fies.

The resources available on the site are varied and allow you explore different facets of Graphic Medicine.

Comic Reviews and Editor’s Picks point you to different comics. A Graphic Medicine podcast is available through iTunes. You can submit a comic or become a guest author on the site, which helps adding new voices to the discussion. The Facebook page is active and frequently updated with news. Annually, Graphic Medicine also hosts a ‘Comics and Medicine’ conference—this year, the theme for the conference is Spaces of Care, and will be hosted from 16 – 18 July 2015 at the University of California, Riverside.

Poster for the upcoming conference on Comics and Medicine, themed Spaces of Care

External links and resources on the site encourage you to explore medical humanities, artists and authors, and other comic sites further

An eponymously titled book series, published by Penn State Press is available for purchase online. Currently, there are 2 books in the series, The Bad Doctor and The Graphic Medicine Manifesto.

The two books within the series on Graphic Medicine: The Bad Doctor (left) and the Graphic Medicine Manifesto (right).

From the website:
“Curated by an editorial collective with scholarly, creative, and clinical expertise, the series is inspired by a growing awareness of the value of comics as an important resource for communicating about a range of issues broadly termed “medical.” For medical practitioners, patients, and families and caregivers dealing with illness and disability, graphic narrative enlightens complicated or difficult experiences. For scholars in literary, cultural, and comics studies, the genre articulates a complex and powerful analysis of illness, medicine, and disability and a rethinking of the boundaries of “health.” The series will be diverse in its approach. It will include monographic studies and edited collections from scholars, practitioners, and medical educators, as well as original comics from artists and non-artists alike, such as self-reflective “graphic pathographies” or comics used in medical training and education, providing a creative way to learn and teach.”

By using visuals, comics have the ability to directly immerse a reader in a specific context. Effectively harnessing visuals enable readers to develop a rich and layered comprehension of narratives, rapidly increasing the ability to connect with the scenario. The effectiveness of comics also lies in the ability of visuals to have a high recall value.

All images from Graphic Medicine / respective authors and artists, as indicated.

The Taboo writen by Malini Gupta and Dyuti Mittal.

The book was released in 2012 and features 47 contributors who collaborated to produce 28 stories with the partition as a common theme. The contributors—with backgrounds as journalists, illustrators, filmmakers, artists, designers and writers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—voiced narratives of fiction, poetry, reportage, comics and family histories.

The Old Fable is a collaboration between Tabish Khair and Priya Kuriyan.

A spread from The Old Fable.

At a TED talk in 2009, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks of the danger of a single story and its ability to misrepresent people and cultures by reinforcing only one idea. The talk essentially encourages you to continuously seek different perspectives in order to develop a better understanding of the nuances of a complex, layered idea. Retelling and revisiting the partition opens up how we, in this day and age, with almost no first-hand connection, can start to understand it. I find that this is the most striking aspect of This Side That Side; as a compendium of stories, it manages to communicate the complexity of the partition—not through academic understanding—but by giving space and life to multiple voices and stories.

A spread from the spread I Too Have Seen Lahore! by Salman Rashid and Mohit Suneja.

The book was compiled by Vishwajyoti Ghosh, an Indian graphic novelist and artist based in Delhi, and published by Yoda Press and Goethe Institut, Delhi. Contributors were invited to collaborate on the project through an open call in 2011. At times, the partition serves as a backdrop to people’s lives, and at other times it is the main focus of the story. In the story ‘The Old Fable’, written by Tabish Khair and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, the division of India is parodied through a metaphor. The story ‘I Too Have Seen Lahore’, worded by Salman Rashid and illustrated by Mohit Suneja, is an account of Darshan Singh, born in Pakistan, who has to leave his home because of “a new line drawn by history across the heart of an ancient land”.

The short stories are snippets that inform, entertain, amuse, and educate. They force you to look at the partition through different lenses and often with personal, anecdotal connections in real-life contexts, not isolated in a history textbook. The stories deal with questions of identity and home and lead us to explore the idea of the ‘other side’.The experimental and novel format itself engages readers to approach the book without preconceived notions—allowing for a deeper exploration of our history.

Orijit Sen’s ‘Making Faces’ allows readers to explore ‘Nationality, Ethnicity, Gender, Race and other Indisciplines in South Asia.’

“This astonishing collection of talent from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh focuses on the lasting effects of partition and dwells on the human yearning for something other than what history and its makers dictate. Beautiful, moving and unforgettable.”—Joe Sacco

One of the critical areas of reform in the legal system, is the awareness of rights and laws by the general populace. While there are laws and systems in place, the average citizen is often unaware of their presence, their relevance and when/how to access them. Recognising this as a key failing, lawyers Kanan and Kelly Dhru from Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI), embarked on their idea of creating a graphic story format to educate children about laws in India. Lawtoons is a comic book series on laws in India, and following a successful crowd-funding campaign the first book in the series is now out.

“The useful information about citizenship, democracy, laws and rights that children learn in their schools through the civics curriculum is often passed off as ‘dull and boring’. Even upon growing up, an individual is likely to be intimidated by the bulky law books full of legal jargons. This unfortunately, results in a society where most people find it difficult to relate to the idea of laws and legal systems, and feel disconnected.”
—From the Lawtoons website

The first Lawtoons prototype book was designed and tested with children in two public and three private schools in Ahmedabad. Apart from Kanan and Kelly Dhru, creative inputs on the project have been so far provided by designer & illustrator Anish Daolagupu and mentors like Margie Sastry (writer and former associate editor at Amar Chitra Katha) and Sekhar Mukherjee (head of animation film design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad). With their recent funding, Lawtoons hopes to engage more designers and create subsequent books under the series.

You can buy the first Lawtoons book, called ‘A Song for Everyone’ on Right to Equality & Freedom of Speech, here.

Images courtesy, Lawtoons.

Menstrupedia has been in the news for taking the taboo head-on and creating a friendly online resource for information on menstruation.

A crowd-funded comic book is in the making, with its progress updated on the website. From what is offered as a preview of the first chapter, the comic book promises to offer a contextualised and culturally sensitive narrative for the adolescent and parental audiences in India. It also brings together multiple facets of adolescent life, from physical changes to mood swings, providing a relevant context in which information on menstruation is shared.

While the book will be available for purchase by those who can afford it, there are also plans to enable free access to those who cannot. Equally impressive and inspirational is co-founder Aditi Gupta’s journey from a student project, to an online resource and now to a successful crowd-funded campaign that will help realise the project and make it accessible to more people.

Menstrupedia cleverly uses medium and context to bring vital, medical information to girls across India, where surprisingly, there is a lack of easy-to-understand, friendly and open information. While the project is still at a nascent stage, there are plans to develop Menstrupedia for an audience wider than India.

Read about the journey at Forbes India.

Images from Menstrupedia.

Traditionally graphic novels and narratives have been consumed by a limited audience in India, with brief cartoon strips like The Common Man being most common in newspapers. The Small Picture with its origins in a longer, richer format of visual storytelling, has opened up a new way of expressing relevant social and cultural issues to a broader audience across India.

Images from Live Mint.

Within the book, two distinct streams of story and style merge, in response to the crux of the Andolan’s questions on two developmental models—one indigenous and self-sustaining, the other modern and large-scale.

Published via a grant from Kalpavriksh, an environmental-issues NGO, all the copies of the book were sold over the next few years. Today, the book can be viewed/downloaded here, via Scribd. Here’s an interview with Orijit Sen on the book, on Kindle Magazine.

Images from the book.