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Community comic book exhibition opens in town

Kate Bradbrook/BBC A woman standing in a room with large windows and wooden panelled walls. She is wearing a bright red winter coat and holding up an A4 sized book which is titled 'Community Comics'Kate Bradbrook/BBC
Community Comics shares the story of six different groups based within Northamptonshire

An exhibition celebrating different community groups across a county has opened to the public.

The project, titled 60 Miles Presents: Community Comics, is on display at V and B in Northampton for the next fortnight.

It features extracts, audio recordings and pieces of writing about six different community groups in a comic book style.

The scheme has been funded by the National Lottery and the exhibition's founder, Andy Routledge, said artists had brought "flair and originality" to the project.

Mr Routledge, from local arts and heritage organisation 60 Miles, said: "We try to find vibrant, creative and accessible ways to connect with people across Northampton and Northamptonshire.

"Our first project focused on the legacy of Northampton's new town story," he said. "We thought long and hard about what we were going to do this time around.

"Returning to those core values - learning about people who don't typically feature in the mainstream conversations or our local social heritage and finding those vibrant ways to collect and capture those for wider audiences."

He said the comic book format was a way of emphasising "ordinary people living extraordinary lives".

Bethany Gwilliam/BBC A comic book page set on a wall featuring a story where people are stitching and sewing materialsBethany Gwilliam/BBC
The project, titled 60 Miles Presents: Community Comics, is on display for the next two weeks

The community groups featured in the project are:

  • Affinity Day Care CIC, which provides day care for people later in life in Daventry and Northampton
  • Q Space, a voluntary group for LGBTQ+ people in Northamptonshire
  • Deafconnect, a charity for the county's dear and hard of hearing
  • Power of the Mind Networks, a Wellingborough group that uses storytelling to prevent women form becoming socially excluded
  • Mental health provider Northamptonshire Mind
  • And the Indian Hindu Welfare Organisation, based in Weston Favell Shopping Centre, which provides activities and events for the local Hindu community
Kate Bradbrook/BBC A woman with short brown hair and brown eyes. She is smiling widely at the camera and is wearing a black and white shirt in an animal print style.Kate Bradbrook/BBC
Laura Graham said it was important to have gathered the material for "future generations to look back on"

Mavis Mundurwa, from the Power of the Mind Networks, said it was important to "have something that links me to people who have already been here".

She said: "Once we start documenting and participating in things like this, they are there forever".

Laura Graham, the project’s community facilitator, said: "Especially for the older participants that took part, we're capturing stories that will otherwise be lost.

"I think it's really important that we've gathered all of this together for future generations to look back on."

Bethany Gwilliam/BBC A series of comic book pages set on a blue wall inside V and B in Northampton town centreBethany Gwilliam/BBC
The exhibition's founder, Andy Routledge, said artists had brought "flair and originality" to the project
60 Miles are celebrating the people of Northamptonshire with the Community Comics

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