Fresh Air World
Exploring how artists, historians and scientists can work together to transform public opinions and thinking about air pollution
Fresh Air World is a collaboration between illustrators, animators, historians, health professionals and scientists from °µÍø½âÃÜ, Liverpool, and Canada.
Fresh Air World, Alberta University of the Arts and 15lb Pink Productions
Fresh Air World Uganda
Fresh Air World & Breathe Easy
Fresh Air World, Alberta University of the Arts and 15lb Pink Productions
This project is an international co-production with participants from the UK and Canada. It is focused on giving university students in °µÍø½âÃÜ and Alberta the opportunity to work on animation and interactive illustration projects mentored by instructors, scientists, and animation artists, with the goal of promoting healthy thinking about our relationship to our environment and to inspire the possibility of change for the better. As part of their course of study students will do the research and visual development phase for the project, with volunteer participation by interested alumni. The production and post-production phase will be entered into pending receipt of appropriate funding to expand production roles for students and alumni and to engage professional resources towards completion of a final animated anthology film. The length of the final project is to be determined depending on project development, participant selection, and funding.
Fresh Air World Uganda
Illustration students worked with Honorary Associate Professor Rupert Jones from the Community and Primary Care Research Group team at the °µÍø½âÃÜ and Dr Bruce Kirenga and team at the Makerere University in Uganda, on a GCRF funded project (LINK) that resulted in student work being adopted by the WHO as key training materials in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. The illustration work has proven to be a powerful way of engaging the audience and delivering the important messages on household air pollution and respiratory health in rural communities.
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Fresh Air World & Breathe Easy
Between December 2020 and January 2021, four individuals engaged in oral history interviews with students from the History and Illustration BA (Hons) programmes. As members of the Breathe Easy Support Group (°µÍø½âÃÜ), they all suffer respiratory conditions, some of which are debilitating and long-term, and all of which have been exacerbated by the Pandemic. The opportunity to share their memories and stories and speak about their conditions helps to amplify ‘hidden histories’ and ‘histories at risk’. In addition, contact with these young students generated inter-generational knowledge transfer, while having a critical effect of breaking imposed social isolation for these especially vulnerable individuals in what was a particularly difficult Christmas season for many because of lockdown restrictions.
Fresh Air World and Clean Air Africa
Fresh Air World patients illustrated stories of asthma: a demonstration project
‘Eden and the Greed’ by Emma Beavis (BA Illustration)
Fresh Air World and Clean Air Africa
Illustration students worked with Professor Dan Pope and Dr Rachel Anderson de Cuevas (Liverpool University) creating illustrated materials for CLEAN-Air (Africa) initiative on air pollution in sub-Saharan Africa. These materials will be piloted through the work of CLEAN-Air (Africa).
Fresh Air World patients illustrated stories of asthma: a demonstration project
Funded by the Arts Health Collaboration Fund.
This project will create a new partnership with researchers at UoP and RD&E hospital. Building on qualitative research on the impact of new treatments for severe asthma on patients, we will bring patients’ stories to life in a process of capturing and returning stories. Four students are working with supervisors using individual oral-history interviews and visualisation techniques to trial innovative history-health-illustration research methodology and build graphic comic stories.
This project will showcase the benefits of arts-science collaboration for patients, the artists, and historians.
Awards
‘The Smoke Monster’ by Angus Ulyett (BA Illustration) was shortlisted for the World Illustration Awards 2020.
‘Eden and the Greed’ by Emma Beavis (BA Illustration) won the John Halas Award for Best Student Animation’ at Birmingham Film & TV Festival 2022.
Illustrated stories of Asthma
This project incites and visualises the memories of patients who have suffered severe asthma.
Two people with severe asthma who had a good response to biologic treatment accepted invitations to tell their story to an oral history student and an illustration student.
