In 2019 I met Dr Francesca Cavallerio, a sports psychologist and senior lecturer in Sports Science at Anglia Ruskin University. Over the next three years, Francesca and I collaborated on a visual adaptation of a piece of creative non-fiction she wrote based on her research with gymnasts and their coaches. We wanted to create a comic that very young gymnasts could easily read and engage with, so that it could be used to start conversations with them and their coaches about how to communicate effectively to avoid overuse injuries.

Our work together later extended to a series of interdisciplinary workshops for students and staff from illustration and sports science departments at Anglia Ruskin University. Illustrators and scientists in the group were paired and collaborated to make comics that responded to qualitative research data in the form of ‘Letters to Our Younger Selves’. This work was exhibited during the Cambridge Festival in 2022, alongside the comic that Francesca and I made together.

You can read more about this collaboration and the individuals involved by visiting the project website here. The two digital publications that came out of our work together are available to read via the links below: