Starting motivations

For many years, I worked on the active Fuego volcano in Guatemala. I spent time with people living on Fuego’s slopes and heard their stories about its eruptions. While my initial research focused on Fuego’s recent explosive activity, I became interested in also understanding how that activity is experienced by local people. Older people on Fuego’s west slopes often told me about eruptions in the 1960s and 1970s that had devastating impacts on their communities. These people spoke of loss, and change – how those events shaped their livelihood outcomes and choices – while lamenting the lack of channels to share their knowledge of these eruptions within and beyond their communities.  

Researchers increasingly recognise that individual voices are absent or homogenised in many accounts of disaster, and are exploring creative approaches to broadcast these missing voices. Just as case study can inform generalised understanding, individual stories of disaster can represent the diversity of ways that people live with environmental change; representation that is particularly pertinent as disasters associated with climate change increase and intensify. At active volcanoes, stories of past eruptions tell us about both the physical processes of the natural event and the sensations of those people who witnessed it. We need both physical and social perspectives to fully understand volcanoes and our relation to them.

I have been moved by beautiful examples of researchers using creative practices to codevelop narratives of disaster and recovery with local people – including comics , graphic narratives, and music-enhanced interviews. These inspired me to invite people at Fuego to co-create a book telling their stories of its past eruptions through their words and my art. The motivations of this study were (1) to sensitively explore experiences of volcanic disaster through art; (2) to translate experiences to a tangible format that could be shared within and beyond affected communities.

Theory into practice

This study was supported by the Ixchel project and an arts council seed grant. Seed funding is so valuable for exploratory research where methods are developed in practice. I planned three main activities:

1. A series of individual consultations on illustrations drawn from interviews;
2. Two participatory workshops;
3. A second series of group consultations.

Even with the flexibility these grants afforded, I met challenges in translating theory into practice. For instance, local people's interest in the project fluctuated. Some people who were initially most keen were later ambivalent. Conversely, other people who seemed uninterested at first asked later if I could create a book with their community – tempting, but no small undertaking!

I also confronted the question of how to assess how illustrations were received. When I shared illustrations in consultations, some people expressed gratitude at seeing their experiences visualized; some, apparent indifference. Evaluation was something I built in as the project progressed.

Finally, I learned that ‘co-development’ is a Tardis of questions about power and control in the research process. Did illustrations of people’s stories of disaster allow them to shape the research? When one older lady said my drawing captured her memory exactly, perhaps she meant she wouldn’t change anything, but perhaps too that she couldn’t. I found the participatory workshops that I organised fun and tough simultaneously– people had lots of opportunity to shape and share their stories creatively, and I had to relinquish my vision of what a story about Fuego would look like! In this project, I was both researcher and artist. This diverges from research that inspired me, where those roles are separate. I recognised that holding both roles afforded me a lot of control, while allowing me two means to connect with people at Fuego. The tangled challenges and promise of this dual responsibility could only be learned through doing.

Outputs and lessons learned

Some lessons I learned in this study recreate known challenges in disaster research (see this excellent guide). Was this recreation unnecessary? Not at all! I think there’s value in learning through practice challenges you recognise in theory. Plunging into participatory arts-based research impressed on me how complex and valuable this work is, and I emerged with an even stronger motivation to work with people around active volcanoes in ways that amplify their experiences and voices. The lessons of this study had to be learned through practice. And, while there was discomfort in this learning (for example, the disconnection implied in interactions like “this story is not ours” - see article), these uncomfortable conversations often led to more comfortable relationships.

I also learned through practice the value of combining more- and less-participatory methods. Some responses of local people to my illustrations (e.g., the interaction closing the article's Discussion) show the value of representing individual stories of disaster through less participatory methods. I appreciate the insights of a colleague who, during a crucial point in writing the article, pointed me to a different research field (art history) that argued for the power of illustration to capture vanishing experiences in a tangible format.

This study allowed exploration of the different ways that zines and illustration can empower people by representing their untold stories of disaster. Because it required learning by doing, the study also taught me a great deal about the challenges and promise of my methods and approach. This project was possible because of my deep relationship with the people of Fuego; similar relationships powered the research that inspired me. I see value for researchers using these methods in future – to honour and enrich existing relationships with the people with whom they work, and to acknowledge the individual humanity of these people and themselves.