START AT BELONGING

Art & Parkinson’s in Dialogue

Poems by Tara Coleman
& Illustrations by Sam McLaughlan

Introduction

Welcome to Start at Belonging; This book is the result of an evolving creative dialogue between poetry and illustration, between words and images, between illness and understanding, and between artistic practice and Parkinson’s. It grew from a series of in-depth conversations we – Tara and Sam – shared about living with young- onset Parkinson’s disease and about the challenges of communicating that experience to others.

On the following pages you will find seven illustrations and poems in dialogue. These dialogues represent our individual and shared creative process in response to the question: How can shared creativity help communicate the experience of illness? This question has shaped our work, our conversations, and our understanding of Parkinson’s and chronic illness—not just as something that happens to a body, but as something that exists in relationships, in language, and in the ways we seek and offer understanding. After each dialogue, we provide reflections and offer a series of questions to prompt your own creative response.

We invite you to play around with creative dialogues in your own projects and personal life. This book pairs with our website, where you will find space for further exploration. You can also share your own creative dialogues here!

At its heart, this book is a collaborative autoethnography—a collection of personal stories and reflections that reveal both individual experiences and shared meanings of illness within culture. By exploring these different scales – the individual and personal, and the societal and cultural – our collaborative process opens up a space for emotionally layered, nuanced, and experience-close dialogue.

We invite you to step into this dialogue with us, to explore the ways illness can be mapped, visualised, and expressed—and, perhaps, to find new ways of articulating your own experiences.

Who is this book for?

This book is for everyone! Our hope is that each dialogue included will resonate with readers in multiple ways and facilitate continued conversation and greater understanding of what it means to live with illness - and how we can better understand and include those who do.

If you are a person with Parkinson’s or another chronic illness, we hope this book inspires your own creative expression and supports you to communicate your perspectives and experiences. It can be difficult to articulate what illness means, but doing so can be therapeutic and can help you connect with yourself and with others.

If you are a researcher and/or artist, we hope this book will motivate further experimentation with creative strategies and collaborations that enable personal and emotionally resonant accounts of illness.

For health practitioners, caregivers, and friends and family of those living with chronic illness, we hope our work inspires you to consider art-based strategies as therapeutic and enabling for those you care for, and for your own wellbeing.

Introducing Sam

Sam McLaughlan is an illustrator and graphic designer. He see’s illustration as a key form of communication in his work as an educator and as an artist.

A note from Sam:

“To be in the dark with forces listening as you are short of words
- words that would bring light to see...It has been a privilege to bring my experience as an artist, illustrator, and graphic designer to such a breathtaking project and explore the illuminating power of creative dialogue. These works reflect the space between us; they are an act of pulling the illness experiences of others closer, to translate their osculating orbits and the tides that push and pull.”

Introducing Tara

Tara Coleman is a researcher-poet, lecturer and health advocate working in the community to enable others to share their stories of illness. She also lives with young-onset Parkinson’s.

A note from Tara:

“Undertaking this project has convinced me that creativity is a super power – creativity empowers a sense of agency through self-expression and is deeply therapeutic, slaying even the wildest anxiety and fears. Working creatively and in collaboration with others is also a powerful connector, not just of people, but of ideas, perspectives, practices, and places. It has been rewarding and a great privilege to be able to explore creative collaboration as a personal and collective force for empowerment.