Can comics describe the impact of everyday travel experiences ?

If artists and people with dementia travel and create artwork together, can we more accurately describe the sights, sounds and impacts of a journey as experienced by someone living with dementia?

We started to explore these questions as part of Drawing from Experience, a project funded by a Dementia Services Development Trust Disruption Award.

A small group of people with dementia took journeys together with artists Ashling Larkin and Megan Sinclair and developed two stories together to describe their challenges.

Of course, these stories can’t represent everybody’s experiences, but we hope that they can start conversations - not only about the challenges of travel, but also about the importance of getting out and about and how to make it easier to continue to do so. Let’s shift the focus to solutions.

The process of travelling together, discovering the stories and developing the artwork together is perhaps as important as the final product.

We think that comics developed in this way might be useful as a training resource - not only helping staff to understand the impacts of travel services and environments, but also exploring possible improvements. We also wonder if this might be a more accessible format for people with dementia.