Paper Title: Beyond Words: Comics as a Tool for Social Inclusion
Lucy Bergonzi draws on her experience as an illustrator for Books Beyond Words to explore the creative process involved in producing books for people with learning disabilities: people who often do not read words. She looks at the Beyond Words approach to making books, which incorporates a collaborative process with users and readers. She explores the benefits and limitations of co-authorship, and discusses different ways of establishing a story, such as improvisation and drama. She looks at aspects of pacing, page layout and sequence, and the unwritten laws of visual narrative, such as direction of travel on the page, and point of view. She also reflects on the particular considerations involved in producing stories without the use of words.
