Values-Based Cartooning: Mothers Storying the Absent Father (A Case Study)

This practice-based thesis considers research undertaken between 2012 and 2018 which critically examined graphic facilitation as part of a cartooning practice, and developed the new mode of Values-Based Cartooning. I assumed the role of researcher-cartoonist, and experimented within a case study in order to access and represent multiple and diverse lived experience of single mothers storying the absent biological father or sperm donor. Graphically facilitated interviews and workshops were undertaken with twenty single women aged between sixteen and fifty-two, all pregnant or first-time mothers of babies. Participant responses were filtered and condensed into creative non-fiction graphic narrative, included here within a ‘scrapbook’, and as a stand-alone comic. Values-Based Cartooning facilitated informed interdisciplinarity, enabled participation of women in diverse circumstances and disrupted assumptions about single mother ‘types’. Authentic, alternative and entertaining portrayals of single women’s lives were generated, which recognised intersectional barriers, along with the agency and the social and emotional intelligence required of single women. The research identifies the benefits and limitations of Values-Based Cartooning in the researcher-artist’s professional context, and highlights the politics of creative decision making when applied within a research context. The approach also offered a lens through which to consider graphics, cartoons and comics, which went beyond formalist, aesthetic or narrative analysis, requiring clarity regarding the values, purpose and processes behind the work. This research may be of interest to visual practitioners, motherhood and comics scholars, research teams, public and voluntary sector leaders, authors and artists.

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