Illustrating democracy

What happens, when you put together two Danish cartoonists, three professional Nepali illustrators, six participants from the districts and a PR company and ask them to create images about democracy?

By Anne Mette Nordfalk Information Worker

07. January 2008

MS Nepal took up this ambitious exercise in a seven-day workshop in early December with an objective of developing visual materials on democracy and issues relating to democracy. The point of departure was a list of democracy issues from MS' partners and their beneficiaries and will be used in MS' Civic Education and Local Democracy project which is due to start in 2008. The creative goal was to create diverse visuals to express and portray democracy and issues relating to democracy but at the same time produce visual materials that could be further developed into IEC materials for the project.

Public Relations and Advertising Company Thompson Nepal, Danish cartoonist Bob Katzenelson and photo editor Lars Rievers were facilitating the workshop. Three illustrators/visual artists Dewen, Dipak and Sarab from Kathmandu and six participants from MS focal districts were other participants of the workshop.

The participants were divided into four thematic groups (in line with the three immediate objectives of the Country Program Strategy (CPS)): representation, accountability and democratic civil society. Apart from the three themes, one more—democracy as a way of life—was added as a theme. Under each theme, the four groups selected ten prominent ones from a host of issues. This was followed by an exercise on devising message strategy. After that the participants began creating the visual on the basis of message strategy. Finally, the three Nepali illustrators/visual artists recreated a refined version the visuals. The end result was 25 varied posters on the four themes and a report including the chosen messages.

A melting pot

The process was not easy. Many cultures and issues were put together and this also created difficulties. One of them was that the workshop had to develop a message strategy.

This meant that long strategic discussion took up a lot of time during the first couple of days. “Those days we were merely wall paper”, Bob says and Lars adds that for him personally some of the long theoretical discussions could have been exchanged for a few basic working questions along the practical process.  

Also the cultural differences in drawing were hard to overcome in just one week: “We would have liked to develop one uniform visual language”, Bob says, “But we were unable to get the Nepalese cartoonists to defer the very detailed Nepalese writing style. However, we gave our input and it is up to the participants to decide what they can use”.
Some could draw, some had ideas

MS had decided to invite participants from the districts so that the visuals incorporated the issues relevant to the local people that MS and its partners work with and that they reflected the local reality and context, apart from their contribution in actual creation of them. This made the participants more uneven in terms of their level of skills, but that largely worked out well: “It is actually more important to have ideas than to be a good illustrator”, Lars explains, “Many of the guys from the countryside couldn’t really draw, at least not on a professional level, but they had ideas the illustrators could put to use”.

Even though it was a long and hectic week with many facilitators, languages and opinions, all participants felt that they received something. “We learned a lot about Nepal and we got to know some extremely nice people. So even though we felt that we were only effective in five days out of seven, we had a good time”, Lars says and Bob adds, “What amazed me the most was how the professional cartoonists were able to take in the input of the people from the countryside. In Copenhagen I think illustrators would be more snobbish than that!”

Voices from the districts

Mohammad Arif Ansari, who works with MS partner Nepal Press Institute (NPI) in Nepalgunj also thought that Bob and Lars could have been used more effectively, “We could have learned more from them”, he says but adds, “We did learnt that instances from other cultures can be used to motivate, change and transform people”.

Inviting himself and others from the countryside, Arif believes, was a good choice. “We can tell the people that they own the materials, as we represented them while they were in the making”, he explains. “It increased our visual literacy”, Rudra Prasad Subedi from Banke adds.'

And from the capital

It would not have been possible to create so many visual materials if we had followed the usual procedure. It became possible because so many people and expertise came together', say Sarab, one of the three illustrators/visual artists from the capital.

Mohan one of the coordinators of the workshop says, 'There were participants from diverse culture and context with unequal level of skills, knowledge and experience and it would not have been possible, practically, to get things done perfectly or at least to everybody's satisfaction. The workshop was not without shortcomings. However, on the whole it has been fairly successful.' “I would say the workshop was a success but I wish it had been possible to divert more from traditional NGO language”, comments Nikolaj Kilsmark, visual documentation Development Worker with MS Nepal and the other coordinator of the workshop.

Now the task for MS is to unify the outcome of the workshop and develop them into a wide range of materials. “Our message to MS is to think in simple clear messages that can be used in the templates. Don’t use too many words”, Lars says as he and Bob embarks on the long journey back to Denmark.