We’re really pleased to hear from cartoonist/activist Bill Crooks below about his important recent work in Lebanon alongside Mireille Abikhalil. Bill played a big part in the success of our 2024 conference ‘Challenging Hope‘ and we continue to appreciate his connection with various projects.
He writes:
This paper is about using art to restore wellbeing to front line aid workers operating in a hostile environment of missile attacks by the IDF across Beirut from October to December 2024. The programme was then extended to incorporate a visit to Lebanon, to run art workshops as part of an initiative about peace building and community development.
Drawing for Hope came out of a WhatsApp discussion and later a zoom call between a Lebanese humanitarian aid consultant whom I trained and then worked with many years previously – Mirielle Abikhalil. She remembered that at a workshop we were involved in together some 10 years ago in Kyrgyzstan, I had run a session called ‘Can’t Draw for Toffee’. This involved lots of crazy art games and activities designed to help participants overcome their fears of drawing, while also having fun (at the same time). She felt that if we could run this on a weekly basis on zoom it might help to support frontline workers, who were dealing with victims of the daily bombardment, to have some time out for themselves and ease their stress.
So, in late October we set up a regular Friday evening zoom and invited as many aid workers as possible that she could contact from her network. The understanding was that people could join at any time and leave at any time, as they needed to. Miraculously the connection from Stroud (Gloucestershire) to downtown Beirut worked most of the time and we ran a session every Friday from October to the end of January when the ceasefire started to take hold.
On average we had 15 to 20 people join from their phones in a car, from crisis centres, cafés, bars and from the balconies of friends, basically from whereever they could get a signal. Some participants gathered in a group of 4 or 5 people around one phone and would relay the drawing activities to each other and then post their art work on a group WhatsApp so that we could all see each others’ work.
Personally, I found the whole process both moving and inspiring, connecting with those who were risking their lives daily to pull victims from the rubble of bombed buildings, going back again and again to bring food and water while the bombing continued. They were clear from the outset that they didn’t want the session to be about processing what they had seen during the day, but more about switching off and having fun together. However, at times it was inevitable that some participants shared aspects of what they were going through, which were heard with sensitive and caring concern.
One time I brought one of my chickens ‘Roxy Beaujolais’ to be a live model for them to draw on zoom. I had to make sure she didn’t poop on the desk or worse on the keyboard! They had to draw her in bursts of 30 seconds, 1 minute and then 2 minutes. The drawing and jokes that followed made the whole experiment worthwhile. This then proved to be a catalyst for participants to bring a pet each week for everyone to draw. The pets ranged from various dogs including Sana who belonged to the bar owner where one group regularly met, to a frog called Godfrey found on a leaf on a balcony. A cartoon story in Arabic was created using the character of Godfrey for helping children cope with the trauma of losing their homes.
Along with fun and simple drawing games we also explored quotes and illustrations about resilience and hope for the future. In particular we created drawings from the quote ‘Olive trees do not bend, Cedar trees don’t break’, which led to some great discussions.
Over the 12 weeks we became a small online community, not just a group of people doodling art, but a group of friends with a strong sense of solidarity. That sense of solidarity gave hope and energy for the week to follow. I think the zoom link external to Lebanon also gave a sense that people are not forgotten and are part of a global family and community, which is important in a world where the media moves rapidly to the next crisis or political event.
A few months later after the sessions had finished, I was contacted again by Mirielle to see if I would come to Lebanon to co-facilitate with her a series of art workshops with local communities. This was to be part of a YMCA programme that seeks to build bridges across different communities. I jumped at the opportunity as I had last visited Beirut when I was 18 years old and that was 47 years ago! Gosh am I that old?
I arrived into Beirut airport one late balmy evening in May on a flight from London and was then whisked into a continuous daily programme of traveling from community to community running anything from kite making workshops on the Syrian border to creating a mural with a community in the mountains above Beirut.
These workshops reflected the same joyous creativity I had witnessed in the zoom sessions but more so, as the activities encompassed all age groups, ethnic and national and religious groups, gender and economic positions. The process of making art created a common purpose regardless of the differences and brought a dynamic energy, as groups discovered together what they could create. The kite-flying was meant to be youth-based but soon the old men and the community leaders joined in and flew the kites as if they were teenagers again. In another venue we had long panels of paper stretching 4 or 5 metres along the ground at a local market, which we called the ‘The Long Table’. Passersby were invited to come and draw and colour in their favourite food. Soon we had all ages and backgrounds involved and small discussions taking place between the artists and the by standers about the best forms of Lebanese food. The community mural was chaotic to manage with all ages adding their bit with a paint brush and paint dripping everywhere, but by the end everyone was proud of their own contributions to the mural, whose subject was ‘what makes you proud to live in this community’. They were already making plans to extend it and include more aspects of village life by the time we came to leave and move to the next workshop in another venue.
Art workshops may not bring immediate community harmony and restoration but they can contribute to laying the foundations of trust and to seeing each other as fellow human beings with the same hopes and fears and challenges of living in an unstable national context. Across the online zoom sessions and the face to face art workshops it was evident by what was produced and in the conversations with individuals that the process of creating any kind of art can give a space for self-discovery, provide an emotional release, reduce stress and, most of all, bring people together.
And finally I am very grateful to Mireille and her team of dynamic leaders at the YMCA for their energy, encouragement and support and most of for being such an inspiring group of people to work with.
24 July 2025