Covid in Cartoons: critical literacy and resilience during the pandemic

Our research team will present preliminary analysis and results from our research project: ‘Covid in Cartoons: Empowering a thick narrative of the crisis by promoting cultural literacy and diversity skills amongst vulnerable young people’, which has been funded through the AHRC Covid-19 Rapid Response Call and runs until July 2022. Working together with partners Shout Out UK, a multi-award-winning educational platform, and Cartooning for Peace, an international organisation of cartoonists founded in 2006 at the UN headquarters, we have developed a dynamic and engaging four-lesson minicourse on political cartooning during Covid, aimed at secondary schools (15-18 year olds). The course includes interaction with professional cartoonists and is intended to help young people make meaning of their pandemic experience and to build their criticality, sense of agency and belonging. The process aims at supporting resilience pathways, as Covid-19 poses specific challenges for young people – particularly those in seldom-heard and/or under-represented groups – who may feel especially disempowered by the pandemic. Research suggests that fostering critical consciousness (a critical understanding of the social and political climate), and encouraging dialogue around sharing personal experience, is key to positive youth outcomes. A mixed methods approach using survey, observation, and focus groups is used to assess whether participation in the course led to a change in students' critical consciousness and attitudes toward engaging in discourse. During our presentation, we will focus on the representation of Covid-19 in cartoons from different cultural contexts and analyse young people’s responses to the cartoons and the pandemic.