Young Carers Card - Rhondda Cynon Taf

Facilitation was delivered on-site by our therapeutic arts specialist Ioan Raileanu, who wrote about their experience here.

He set out workshop aims to help guide the young participants, aged 5 to 17, to verbally and visually express their experiences of caring for people in their lives. Ioan was present to talk to the children and note down themes and ideas from the young carers' experience that came out in the artwork they produced. For example, one of the children sculpted an elephant with a cape. They saw themselves as an elephant protecting and caring for their younger sibling. Each participant’s artwork was a deep window into their lived experience, which the children were more than happy to share to our facilitator on site.

After the workshop, the Cooked Illustrations decided to focus on two designs (one of the elephant another of a dinosaur) that we identified that met the two requirements of the posters:

- visually eye-catching and simple, yet deep in meaning

- elevate the lived experience of young carers

We presented these designs to Rhondda Cynon Taf’s communications team, who agreed to go with a dinosaur theme but requested two poster designs. Once approved they were delivered for translation into Cymraeg/Welsh.

Final files were delivered to the Council’s team in ready-to-print formats for digital and physical posters and leaflets.