PROJECT: AMPLIFYING MATERNAL VOICES
CLIENT: MATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH ALLIANCE (MMHA)

The Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA) is a UK-wide charity and network of over 100 organisations, dedicated to ensuring women and families affected by perinatal mental health problems have access to high quality, comprehensive perinatal mental health care. They bring the maternal mental health community together and make change happen by combining the power of real-life experience with clinical and professional expertise.

The Amplifying Maternal Voices (AMV) project aims to improve mothers’ and families’ access to support for their mental health, and is a collaboration between the Mental Health Foundation and the Maternal Mental Health Alliance - Find out more about the project here

OBJECTIVE

The two-year AMV project will spotlight the maternal mental health experiences of mothers from seldom-heard communities across the UK, including young mums, single mums, and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.

As well as hosting a conference and learning event to break down barriers, a key part of the project is to produce an Engagement Toolkit intended to inspire action and change at a local level. I was asked to create illustrations for this Toolkit, for which there were 2 distinct areas:

1. The Story So Far

Essentially a Journey Route Map, going through the various stages in developing and implementing the Engagement Toolkit. It was important to show that Toolkit isn’t the final step, but part of a continuing process through further learning, evaluation, development and testing.

2. The Engagement Toolkit Contents

To visualise the core sections within the toolkit, comprising of icons which could also be use separately for the core sections.

I think the addition of yellow highlights throughout the illustrations, although a minor detail, really helped to draw attention to key points within the illustrations, in a way that was slightly anarchic in comparison to the existing brand palette.

Pictured above: The key stages from the Story So Far

And below, separate toolkit icons…

PROCESS

These are the initial sketches I created for the client to feedback on before progressing to final artwork

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“It was great working with Carys on our Amplifying Maternal Voices project. I was so impressed by how she was able to translate our brief into vibrant illustrations which really brought the project to life. The illustrations have been fantastic in helping to tell the story of the project so far in a visual way, including in presentations and blog posts. A massive thank you from us!”

- Sian Drinkwater | Community Engagement Lead, MMHA

RELATED PROJECTS

It’s always great to work with clients over time and build an ongoing relationship with them - I very much enjoy this with MMHA, and the fact that each project has it’s own directives. Here are some previous projects I’ve worked on for the Maternal Mental Health Alliance…