Community Comics 

Telling your truth, sharing your story.

We all have a story to tell...

Magic Torch Comics have collaborated with community groups and organisations across Scotland to share perspectives, stories and advice from a diverse range of voices., download a selection of these stories below, or read via our ISSUU page.

In addition to our comics focussed storytelling, we've also worked on a range of illustrated storybooks and storytelling performances which showcase folktales and voices from Inverclyde's New Scots community.

Our new Storyworks project, which starts summer 2023 will be working with young people in across the Inverclyde to create stories using not only comics, but also card games, escape rooms, audio drama and more illustrated books.

We Care - Aberdeen Young Carers

Stories, thoughts and experiences shared by young carers from Aberdeen, exploring the realities of life as a young carer (and some of the unrealities too). The stories were created at Aberdeen Central Library as part of the Legacy Project funded by Word Centre and Wayword Festival and supported by Barnardos Scotland.



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Story Ceilidh

Celebrate the Year of Stories 2022 with a collection of folk tales from Scotland, Nigeria and Syria. Journey through magical treasure rooms, down deep dark wells and across the skies with this selection of stories put together to recognise the universal language of storytelling and the joy of sharing and blending culture. The project was supported by the Year of Stories 2022 Community Stories Fund. This fund was delivered in partnership between VisitScotland and Museums Galleries Scotland with support from National Lottery Heritage Fund thanks to National Lottery players.



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Mind Mosaic (Child and Family Therapies) Comic Club

Discover inspiring stories from young people who attended our comic club with Mind Mosaic Child and family Therapies in 2021, from personal reflections to a story the group created together about finding the quiet space in challenging times. Comics created as part of the Outside The Box- Communty Comics project, supported by National Lottery Community Fund Young Start.



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Our Heroes Comic Club

Get ready to meet a whole bunch of heroes, in comics created by Barnardo's Nurture Group. There's the awesome ninja monkey, helping out a friend in an all action comic without words! And then discover all the special skills of our superteam- footballing, gaming, storytelling - they can do anything! Comics created as part of the Outside The Box- Communty Comics project supported by National Lottery Community Fund Young Start.



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Kinship Care

Stories from two young people, exploring their personal experiences of kinship care, created in partnership with Barnardos.


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Mental Health Ambassadors

Exploring the work of the volunteer Mental Health Ambassadors of St Columba's High School in Gourock.



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Lockdown - Stories from a Strange Time

Throughout spring and summer of 2020, we continued to work with as many young people in Inverclyde as we could, to create comics which explored their experiences of lockdown. 

Sometimes that would mean working via zoom, other times, with stories and text collected via other organisations or at school sessions set up for keyworker families. 

A whole archive of material has been collated across Inverclyde during lockdown and this is our contribution to that collection - some of those stories, retold and reimagined as comics. 

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Ghost Town

In Inverclyde, Hallowe’en is celebrated with a programme of community arts events which takes its name from an old Scottish tradition, Going Galoshans.

In 2020, the festival was mostly online, and as our contribution, we ran a number of comic sessions and courses. Throughout September and October we pulled together a collection of scary stories, including a comic adaptation of ‘The Buried Alive’ a Ghost Story from Greenock born writer John Galt, first published in 1822. 

We also ran a number of competitions, asking people for their suggestions about what ghosts would be doing while we all stayed indoors, and many of these ideas appear in the comic
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Previous Community Comics Projects

Our Outside The Box project has grown out of our community work across our home town of Greenock in Inverclyde. 

Over the last few years we have delivered many projects, from working with people over 65 to create comics based on hopes, dreams and memories, through to comics and storybooks developed with our New Scots community.

You can download some examples below.

Light Years

For the Light Years project, people over 65 in Greenock and Port Glasgow came together to share their stories and memories with Magic Torch and we all worked together to turn them into comic scripts. 

From ferret attacks and martian invasions to job interviews and nuclear incidents, there's something for everyone. And it's all true! Mostly. 

The Light Years project was funded by the People's Postcode Trust.

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The Cloch Book

Celebrate 50 years of tenants and tenements with Cloch Housing Association. Take a stroll back in time to discover the origins of the towns of Inverclyde, read true tales of houses becoming homes and look back at all that has been built and achieved. 

The book was produced with the support of staff, volunteers and tenants, and was paid for with the support of Heritage Lottery Fund Scotland to mark the 50th Anniversary of Cloch Housing Association in 2018. 

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Sharing Stories

A collection of illustrated folk tales from Syria, Sudan and Scotland.. The idea was simple, listen to some traditional tales from people recently arrived in the community of Inverclyde and find stories which had something in common. 

Characters and themes and stories echo all across the world, regardless of where we are. There is a shared language in stories, there is common ground and we wanted to explore that together.



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Inverclyde Adventures

The adventures of Gogo and Celestia was created by a group of New Scots children and young people supported by Inverclyde HSCP, Your Voice, Inverclyde Community Development Trust, Police Scotland and Magic Torch Comics. 

The comic has interactive features such as additional arabic language reading, photos and a song which can be activated via a mobile phone by following the instructions on the first page.

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