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Comics Youth CIC: Creativity that moves beyond the margins
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Emily McChrystal (She/ They), Youth Empowerment Director at Comics Youth CIC, explains how creativity can help amplify young LGBTQIA+ people’s voices in health and social care.
At Comics Youth CIC, we work with 8 to 25-year-olds in Liverpool who are marginalised in any way, including LGBTQIA+ people and those who are disabled or neurodivergent. We create space for them to navigate their truth in a healthy way and we publish diverse narratives that people don’t often hear or read about.
To do this, we publish story-telling publications such as comics and zines (non-commercial, self-published print works) through our youth-led publishing house: Marginal. This means we can amplify young peoples’ experiences and perspectives and help combat misrepresentations and negative stereotypes.
The Queer Agenda: a guide for best practice
As part of The Queer Agenda programme for 18 – 25 year olds, we are producing a book called ‘Let’s Get This Straight: A Guide to Allyship’. It will serve as a one-stop-shop for how to support, empower, and advocate for LGBTQIA+ young people, and will include a compilation of best practice for health practitioners and social workers.
Each stage of the book’s production will be entirely led by LGBTQIA+ young people. It will contain comics which represent their lived experiences, including a young trans person’s illustration of accessing a healthcare clinic.
Instead of case studies, it will feature stories written directly by the young people, detailing how certain elements of policies or specific sessions have impacted them personally. Everything within the book will be illustrated with flow charts or spot illustrations; we want it to be fun, interactive, and representative of the community.
Publication
The publication will be accessible and freely available to download. There will be summary pages for anyone who is dyslexic or is unable to read it in its full depth and breadth, and it will have pages that can be cut out and used in a creative and tactile way.
It is scheduled for release in December and you can keep up-to-date with its progress on the Comics Youth website, Instagram and Twitter pages. We will also be sharing it via the Public Engagement Network.
Launch of Applications for our Youth Board
Young people who are passionate about change-making and who want to have a say in organisational policy and development are welcome to apply to be on our new Youth Board. You’ll need to be able to attend meetings in Liverpool city centre four times a year. For more information and apply, please visit our webpage.
LGBT+ME
We also have just printed LGBT+ME - a free resource for anybody as young as 3 up to 300! This is a guide of what being LGBTQIA+ means and follows the story of a group of friends at a sleepover, talking and learning about life as they get ready to go to ‘big school’.
To receive a copy (or a bunch of copies), please contact us here.
TransActual’s major new findings on Transition-related Healthcare
Released during Trans Awareness Week (13th – 19th November), TransActual’s new report, Transition Access Survey 2022, shines a light on the experiences of 1,183 trans people accessing (or trying to access) transition-related care in the UK.
Read more
