In the UK, there are an estimated 8.7 million people who have never used the internet.
Surfing The 7Cs is a graphic novel published by Sheffield Hallam University and the four South Yorkshire local authorities. Digital inclusion is about finding out who doesn’t have access to the internet and why, then working out what can be done about it. Hannah Goraya and her team spent 2 years researching this for Sheffield Hallam University, and wanted to make sure their conclusions reached the widest possible audience. The graphic novel Surfing The Seven Cs was her solution.
I was hired to help Hannah turn their report into an illustrated guide to best practices for councils tasked with broadening their digital inclusion. This was by no means an easy translation, as graphic novels thrive on thrilling set-pieces at their most vivid, or poignant character studies at their most thoughtful. Digital inclusion reports, on the other hand, consist of lots of hard work and research and very little that obviously lends itself to the stuff of compelling narrative. It was never going to be Watchmen or Maus, but it did succeed in communicating a series of important messages in a way that would otherwise have been dry and inaccessible.
Internet access is something most of us take for granted, but if this report helps people who are ordinarily unable to benefit from being online, then I’m extremely happy to have taken part in getting this research to a wider public.
The graphic novel will be distributed to local authorities and is available as a pdf here.
