TEDxGenevaChange - Tjeerd Royaards - Comics in crises
[Applause] hello jet good afternoon you are a cartoonist and editorinchief of cartoon movement tell us about cartoon movement cartoon movement is an international online community of over 140 cartoonists from over 75 countries and we publish political cartoons and Comics journalism political cartoons give a perspective on the international news in a single panel and Comics journalism is a new form of visual reporting and storytelling recently you reported on Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake there we're going to see a few pictures and cartoons from there in a moment but what was it about the event itself or its coverage that Drew you there in the first place take a look at this cartoon by buso it's a a cartoon by a local Haitian cartoonist it gives an apt summary of the situation in Haiti two years after the earthquake Global media were very quick to respond in the direct aftermath of the earthquake but as the immediate urgency of the crisis passed the attention of the media shifted elsewhere but did did this did not mean that the problems for Haiti were over and at cartoon Movement we decided that we wanted to to tell this story so in the summer of 2011 my colleague Matt bores and I spent a month in Porto prance to search for local journalists and local cartoonists who could tell the story so it was the brevity of the global attention to the crisis that Drew you there that was certainly one of the reasons we started this project for three reasons first of all over 600,000 people are still living in these tent camps and these tent camps are now being called tent cities because of their size and the permanency of their character uh second of all we feel that the international media has an obligation to provide perspective and to provide background not just to do crisis reporting and move on and the third reason is that in crisis reporting you often if not always see that the reporting is being done by reporters that are flown in in the case of Haiti a Haitian reporter will tell a different story than a western reporter will and we feel that stories are told best by the people that are closest to them so for this project we felt it was really important to work with local journalists mhm okay there are many ways to report a newsworthy story what makes Comics journalism a good fit for Haiti take a look at this slide it uh shows what Comics journalism looks like it's probably best to compare it to a graphic novel uh there's one main difference the places and the events taking place in the comic are all real and the persons and the dialogue featured in the comic are also all real and in that sense it closely resembles other forms of media such as written articles or video reports or photo reports but Comics journalism reaches out to a new audience and it offers some opportunities that other forms of media don't oh what kind of opportunities Comics journalism allows you to tell a story in a very personal and intimate way in Haiti we were interested in getting the stories from the tent camps people living here have been confronted by a lot of journalists since the crisis especially in the direct aftermath of the earthquake and they haven't seen a lot of good come out of all this reporting so understandably they are wary of journalists with Comics journalism you don't need bulky expensive camera gear or other journalistic equipment basically all you need is a pencil and paper which means you can get closer to your subject and of course the fact that we were working with local journalists meant we could get even closer and as you can see in the slide we could really provide an intimate authentic perspective on what it's really like to live here mhm and what do you hope to accomplish through the Haiti project not only the international media has by and large forgotten about Haiti it's also the Haitian media themselves that are not reporting on many of the problems there is one major Daily Newspaper in Haiti List It publishes in French instead of cre which is the more widely spoken language and it caters to a very specific narrow Target Target group of politicians and of economic upper class people this narrow focus is reflected in the articles that are published they publish publish about parliamentary politics and about economics but little is written about some of the major problems that affect the vast majority of Haitians on a daily basis such as the the struggle for food and shelter the need for clean water and the widespread violence against women and gays and these were some of the issues that we really wanted to report on as the slide shows you mhm so what you're doing in Haiti is something completely new it is and it isn't uhhuh we we chose to work with local journalists giving them the opportunity to report on some of these issues that they're not allowed to report upon in their own local media and we're using Comics to do so and that surprisingly is not all that new to Haiti there is a publication called shimen laai which means the way home it is distributed in the tent camps and its purpose is information and education and it uses Comics to do so so it uses Comics to teach people on how to best construct tents how to prevent diseases like chalera or what to do in case of hurricanes and the fact that they use Comics is shows you how powerful the visual can be in reaching people and who makes the comics for shiman laai these Comics are drawn by a local Haitian artist called chevin Pierre and I think it's safe to say that he's the most talented comic artist artists working in Haiti today and we're very lucky to also have him draw our comic M excellent so when all is said and done what will the final product be the total comic will be 75 pages and it will be divided into eight chapters the first chapter this is the first page of the first chapter it was about the tent camps and life in the tent camps and the future of the tent camps other chapters will focus on some of the other issues such as the role of the NGS in Haiti the central question where did all the aid money go and the position of women in Haitian Society you've already published the first chapter on your website what kind of responses have you gotten so far we've published the first chapter in January and since then it has also been picked up by some major International media such as the Washington Post and the guardian but the achievement that we're most proud of is that the publisher of shiman laai an NGO read the comic and they were so impressed by by the story and by the way we've tell it that they've decided to publish the the entire comic translated into cre into shim laai which means that in addition to reaching an international audience will also get to reach the people inside the tent camps and hopefully convey a sense that their story is being told in the world M and I is just around the corner I from here all right well that leads me to ask the question what's next this was the first time this reporting this kind of reporting was being done and we're not only very proud of this project Pro we also feel that there's a future for this type of reporting so in November we'll be traveling to Libya Egypt and Tunisia here the Arab Spring succeeded in removing the old regimes but they have an even more difficult road ahead of them as these countries will try to build a working democracy and a truly free Society here we will try to do the same thing as we did in Haiti work with local reporters tell the story after the crisis and use Comics to do so wow well ch it's been a pleasure talking to you thank you for your wonderful insights and I wish you all the best in the future thank you very much [Applause]