Letters to our Younger Selves

This project was run as part of the Anglia Ruskin Qualitative Research Lab.
Find ARQLab on Instagram @ARQLab__ and Twitter @ARQlab__
The copyright of all work in this collection is the artists›, 2020.
Not to be reproduced without permission.

Creative Non-Fiction:
Visual Narrative Workshops
What happens when academic research is
communicated using creative non-fiction
techniques? Can a story be research? And
what about a visual story?

The comics in the previous pages are the result of a collaboration
between the students of the Sport and Exercise Sciences (SES)
discipline at ARU and staff and students at Cambridge School
of Art.
In September 2019 staff and students of the Anglia Ruskin
Qualitative Research Lab, a student-focused research group,
conducted a study to understand how to support students
transitioning into Higher Education. We asked students in their
second and third year,“If you were to start university again,
what would you do differently? What did you learn?”
We asked them to think about these questions and to write a
letter to their younger self, as if they could advise this young
person on the best ways to get the most out of their university
experience.
We collected more than a hundred letters, analysed them, and
then used creative non-fiction techniques to represent our results
in the form – again – of a letter that a fictional student could
have written to their younger self (pictured opposite). Then we
decided to join forces with the students from the Cambridge
School of Art, to transform the written data into visual narrative.
The comics you have just read represent themes identified in
the analysis of the letters we collected, or respond to extracts
from the letters themselves.

Kinchoi Lam
Lam Kin-choi is an illustrator and printmaker. He believes in the power
of reading. Through creating local picture books, he hopes to open an
adventurous and imaginative door for young readers, and inspire them
to connect with people in the community.
www.lamkinchoi.com
Instagram: @lamkinchoi
Sònia Albert
Sònia is an illustrator from a city near Barcelona. She graduated from
Children›s Book Illustration MA in January 2020. She is interested in
different ways of storytelling such as comics or picturebooks mixing
traditional and digital art.
www.sonialbert.com
Instagram: @sonialbert_
Dowon Kwon
Dowon is an illustrator and picture book maker from South Korea who
has a passion for telling stories about human relationships and society
with metaphor. She graduated in 2020 from Cambridge school of art
with MA Children’s book illustration. She loves using line drawing and
digital collage with limited colour palettes.
Instagram: @dott.k.illustration
Sharon Boswell
Sharon did her MSc in sport science at ARU. She is now a Post-graduate
researcher in sport and exercise science, interest areas, autism and
optimal parental behaviour in sport and more generally, inclusion in
sport, specialising in qualitative methods.
Twitter: @boswellstudies

Edo Brenes
Edo is an award winning Costa Rican illustrator, animator and comic
artist. He won the Cape/Comica/Guardian Graphic Short Story Prize in
2019, and the Cheltenham Illustration Awards in 2018, both in the UK.
His first graphic novel «Lobster Paradise» has been published in Spanish
(Reservoir Books) and Italian (Oblomov); and soon to be in French (Ici
Meme Editions). He currently lives in San José, Costa Rica, with his wife:
illustrator Yoss Sánchez; and is working on his second graphic novel
«Memories From Limón». He has awesome dancing skills and masters
the timeless art of seduction.
www.edobrenes.com
Instagram: @edobrenes
Phil Rogers
Ana Marques
Ana is a designer and illustrator, who specialises in visual arts. She
completed her Graphic Design Bachelors at Central Saint Martins
and has been working in the field of learning design since. Ana is
now studying Children›s Book Illustration on the Masters degree at the
Cambridge School of Art with the aim of furthering her practice of
storytellling techniques as a way to tell stories and share knowledge.
Instagram: @anaedmarques
Shao-hua
I am Shao-hua from Taiwan. I enjoy making my artwork with printmaking
texture and digital edited.
Instagram: @shao_huaaa
Jess Worte-Brown

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