There's no age limit for reading comics!
SOLIHA and housing
In France, the SOLIHA (Solidaires pour l'habitat) movement is the leading network of associations in the home improvement sector. Its aim is to help disadvantaged, fragile and vulnerable people stay in their homes and gain access to them.
When age no longer allows you to live in isolation, leaving your home is a difficult time. SOLIHA offers shared housing solutions for the elderly. To facilitate and support the transition, the association wanted to develop an illustrated tool presenting the experience of its users. So they asked The Ink Link to join the project.
Meeting the residents
Scriptwriter Simon Kansara visited the SOLIHA site in Donzacq. He interviewed the elderly people who live there. They were able to describe their worries about leaving the house where they had spent most of their lives, the adjustment to a new place, and also the anecdotes of community life:
With the idea of grouped living, I discovered a joyful and convivial alternative to the retirement home. The residents of the Donzacq home amazed me with their distance, their humor... their youth, in short!
The Ink Link has created a story to which the target readers, the future inmates and their families, can more easily identify. So Simon Kansara wrote a short story, a fiction, a moment of life and humor, without directly representing the interviewees.
This scenario was approved by SOLIHA experts. The illustrator Yannick Corboz and his semi-realistic style were then able to transcribe the atmosphere of the scenario:
I had no trouble understanding the meaning of grouped housing, as it seems so natural to me. The people who live there seem happy. In the script, Simon suggested a diversity of characters. They're human, and I got very attached to them.
