We used images and humour to raise awareness about climate change.
Climate change is a defining issue of our time and presents a fundamental threat to human health. According to the World Health Organisation, climate change contributes to the death of hundreds of thousands of people due to humanitarian emergencies like heat waves, wildfires, and floods. These emergencies are increasing in scale, frequency, and intensity.
You may not know how climate change is affecting you and the world you live in, or you may think there is nothing you can do. Well, our comic strip called 'Climate Chronicles' is set to change this!
Climate Chronicles
'Climate Chronicles' is a booklet of eight comic strips and a tale, each focusing on a specific issue caused by climate change - from loss of ice due to warmer air and ocean waters to the increase of floods and droughts.
While the main aim of the booklet is to raise awareness, we also want to empower readers to take steps to help mitigate climate change. As such, the booklet offers a series of practical calls to action. These are a series of everyday activities we can all carry out to help prevent climate change, from ways to reduce energy use and food waste to avoiding single-use plastics. The collection ends with the fun little tale 'Bee Whispers' that encourages readers to engage with climate change by helping the bees!
Why comic strips?
Comic strips and graphic novels can tell a story and deliver a complex message with just a few images. Indeed, they have been used to visualise complicated topics, including Legal principles and difficult history. Dr. Michelle Falter - Assistant Professor of English Education at North Carolina State University, argues that graphic novels are extremely effective at engaging with difficult subjects like trauma and conflict due to their lighter text load and use of images. For example, Maus explores the horrors of the Holocaust through animals, humour, and a stunning visual style.
Let’s also consider comics journalism - a form of journalism that uses comics to report news, current events, and complex, long-form subjects. Comic journalists like Joe Sacco and Guy Delisle have used illustration to discuss difficult histories, including Israel and the situation in Gaza. While this may not be the most widely-used form of journalism, it can be more thought-provoking, engaging, and memorable than traditional textual and auditory methods.
