Parables of Care. Creative Responses to Dementia Care, As Told by Carers, 2017
Grennan, Simon, Priego, Ernesto, Sperandio, Christopher & Wilkins, Peter (2017). Parables of Care. Creative Responses to Dementia Care, As Told by Carers. UK: City, University of London, University of Chester, Douglas College. https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/18245/
Parables of Care: Creative Responses to Dementia Care, As Told by Carers is a pioneering graphic medicine project that uses comics to communicate the lived experiences of people caring for individuals with dementia. Based on more than 100 real-life case studies collected through the Carers' eSupport platform, the publication presents fourteen true stories that demonstrate the creativity, empathy and practical problem-solving carers use every day.
Created by Simon Grennan, Ernesto Priego, Christopher Sperandio and Peter Wilkins, the project brought together comics scholarship, healthcare research and participatory storytelling to make dementia care research more accessible to carers, healthcare professionals, researchers and the general public. Rather than focusing solely on the challenges of dementia, the comics celebrate the ingenuity, resilience and emotional intelligence of carers, illustrating how creative responses can improve quality of life and strengthen relationships.
Published through a collaboration between City, University of London, the University of Chester and Douglas College, Parables of Care became one of the early projects demonstrating the value of comics as a tool for research communication, public engagement and graphic medicine, helping establish methodologies that later informed many of Symbola's participatory storytelling and co-design projects.