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- ISSN: 2052-0204
- E-ISSN: 2052-0212
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CHAOS: A Co-Creation
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Authors:
Hannah Waldron1
and Steve Braund1
- Source: Journal of Illustration, Volume 7, Issue 1-2, Aug 2020, p. 205 - 223
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- 21 Apr 2020
- 01 Aug 2020
Abstract
This is a critical account of a year-long collaboration between MA Authorial Illustration students and service users of a social services organization and mental healthcare provider, The CHAOS Group (Community Helping All Of Society), with the aim of communicating the journey of those experiencing mental health issues and the efficacy of authorial illustration in promoting wellbeing. Central to the project was the production of the book CHAOS: A Co-Creation, and this article describes the book’s development and the experience of working in the co-creation mode. Drawing upon research methods in narrative and authorial illustration, the article explores the potential of authorial illustration to serve as a tool for benefitting mental health: could an illustrational mindset – one rooted within personal authorship – bring out those personal voices, rekindling a sense of worth and self-esteem? At the heart of the project was the concept of shared creative process, a ‘thinking-through-making’ in which weekly creative sessions allowed each of the participants’ individual voices to emerge and feel empowered through a gradual encouragement to author personal stories. Alongside the fostering of individual authorial voices through illustration, the article describes how, through a non-hierarchical co-creation process, we witnessed a collective empowerment. The article draws upon the recent research-based publication Co-Creation (in France) and draws on the notion from social psychology that there seems to be a sense in which narrative, rather than referring to ‘reality’, may in fact create or constitute it, as when ‘fiction’ creates a ‘world’ of its own: empowering each individual to author their own life-story (Jerome Bruner 1991: 1–21).
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