This programme will explore the impact of bereavement on young people, supporting them to construct and represent their own stories through the medium of comics. More than 75% of young people experience the death of someone close, with the figure even higher for vulnerable children. Given the impacts of bereavement on wellbeing, including psychological health and educational achievement, this is a crucial issue. While recent Scottish policy emphasises developing discourse and support, a culture of silence around bereavement remains. Comics are an ideal medium for storytelling, with the combination of image and text providing an accessible creative space for expression. The process of creating comics helps generate confident life stories, which will be used to support professionals and carers, inform national policy on childhood bereavement, and normalise discussions of bereavement more generally.
Programme Team:
Dr Golnar Nabizadeh (University of Dundee) – Comics and Visual Literacy
Dr Susan Rasmussen (University of Strathclyde) – Health Psychology
Professor Christopher Murray (University of Dundee) – Comic Studies
Professor Divya Jindal-Snape (University of Dundee) – Chair of Education, Inclusion and Life Transitions
Dr Damon Herd (Dundee Comics Creative Space) – Autobiographical Comics and Comics Performance
Philip Vaughn (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design) – Practice and Production in Animation
Dr Sally Paul (University of Strathclyde) – Public Health, Death, Dying and Bereavement
Judith Furnival (CELCIS) – Residential Childcare, Suicide and Care Leavers
Nina Vaswani (CYCJ) – Youth Justice, Bereavement and Loss
Image: Jindal-Snape, D et al. Fibromyalgia and Us. UniVerse, 2017.
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