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Graphic Medicine Project – Alder Hey Children’s Hospital – Comics Youth CIC

Comics Youth CIC, L2 2DT

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Graphic Medicine Project - Alder Hey Children's Hospital - Comics Youth CIC

Comics Youth was founded in 2015 and is a creative community organisation led by young people, for young people. We aim to empower youth across the Liverpool City Region to flourish from the margins of society: Harnessing their narratives, finding confidence within an inclusive community, and developing the resilience to succeed on their path.

We offer a range of creative services designed to support and amplify the often diminished voices of marginalised young people aged 6 to 25. From zine creation and comic book reading workshops to youth-led publishing hubs and AQA Unit Award Scheme programmes, we believe young people deserve to have their voices discovered, distributed, and elevated.

The Graphic Medicine Project is a ground-breaking partnership between Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Comics Youth CIC that aims to raise awareness of Graphic Medicine as an interdisciplinary practice through the development of young person-friendly health information and health education resources via the medium of comics and zines.

On an operational level, Graphic Medicine delivers a range of autobiographical narrative sessions for chronically and terminally ill children and young people aged 6 to 18 based within wards and inpatient settings at Alder Hey, with the aim of capturing patient stories.

By delivering creative comics-based workshops for young people at beside or in group settings, we aim to establish a better quality of life for patients whilst in hospital by addressing some of the underlying issues associated with long-term hospital stays such as isolation, anxiety, and depression. It also supports children and young people to develop new skills in visual literacy, story-telling and graphic design as well as transferable skills and life experiences such as decision-making and creative expression, which will support both their immediate wellbeing and also their future education and development.

Graphic Medicine is a term coined by Dr Ian Williams which denotes the use of comics to tell personal stories of illness and health. The combined language of words and pictures within the comics medium gives approachability and emotional impact to these personal stories, and even to the clinical data they sometimes include.