How to use a creative approach to tell a complicated story
My five-year-old daughter asked me, “What is a microchip?” while showing her the transparent piece of plastic with a network of tiny channels. I managed to explain what it is by putting some coloured liquid inside the chip and comparing the size of microchannels to that of hair. Her next question was: “Why do you need it?” As a passionate scientist I could have told her so many things about analysing body fluids, extracellular vesicles and metabolites! As a not-so-patient mother, I simplified my answer to: “A doctor can use it to check if people are sick”.
Meeting the artist
Finding the right words to explain what you do in the lab to those who are unfamiliar with your work is challenging and requires a lot of thought. At the same time, it is essential that your research reaches a larger audience beyond your colleagues and family members in the most effective way.
Your family, however, is a good place to start practicing.
As an experienced researcher, coming back to the lab after a career break with the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, I was very aware of the real need to assure the impact of my project with different audiences. I had plenty of ideas of how I would do this, but I lacked the artistic ability to implement them. And I simply couldn’t justify investing my time away from the lab, especially when I was just re-establishing my experimental skills.
I was fortunate to meet artist and visual science communicator Annett von Katz who is exceptionally talented in illustration and equally passionate about science. It is very rare to find an artist who also has a solid background in life science (BSc in Biology from RWTH Aachen University). Annett was looking for a scientific project in need of translation to the public. I was looking for an artist to help me translate my research to the public. My research topic on the separation of extracellular vesicles with microfluidic devices had piqued her interest.
The creative process
At first, Annett was happy to follow my idea for the outreach project — a colouring book. But she soon challenged it, making some very valid points about the target audience, the age and what I wanted the audience to learn. From this, she suggested a more suitable option — an educational comic booklet — a creative approach to tell a complicated story using scientific facts. The comic booklet is based on two cool characters — a scientist (me) and an artist (Annett). Together, they reinforce the image of girls in science.
Readers will discover the fascinating world of exosomes through their conversation. Catchy and beautiful illustrations help enhance their conversation along with humour. For example, in the booklet, the scientist and the artist argue over whether exosomes have got eyes. According to the artist: “They look so much cuter with eyes.” A lot of effort is needed to explain the background behind this topic as the area of extracellular vesicles is quite new and exosomes are not even in school textbooks yet! Because of this, most readers have to be introduced to this subject from scratch.
It is through this comic booklet, readers will learn about exosome biogenesis and their function in carrying the molecular information of parental cells, which has already been proven to be correlated to certain diseases. They will also get to know exosomes as the new potential superheroes that provide a new way of carrying out liquid biopsies.
The characters also look at the problem of a lack of suitable methods for their isolation from body fluids and how this slows down the development of the whole research area. My actual work on microfluidic analysis of exosomes is revealed at the end of the comic booklet as a promising solution to the problem. Hence the name of the booklet is “Catch The Exosomes”!
Lessons learned
All in all, it was an interesting and rewarding journey to work with an artist specialised in visual science communication on an outreach project. It allowed me to look at my work from a different angle and it was great to have another pair of eyes with a different perspective!
Looking back now, I believe Annett’s scientific background really made a difference to this journey and to the way we communicated. There were challenges too. For example, incorporating the feedback we received on the draft booklet from other scientists.
It was then that I truly realised how different it is to write a scientific article and to reach out effectively to the public with your writing. Being very grateful for the scientific suggestions from our colleagues, we had to stay strong to ensure we did not turn “Catch The Exosomes” into “Analytical methods for the isolation of extracellular vesicles”, if you know what I mean. It takes some practice to keep your outreach project true to all the technical facts while avoiding heavy scientific jargon.
MCAA micro media grant
The MCAA micro media grant came in handy when facilitating my collaboration with Annett. She put in a lot of effort and I am glad that it could be somewhat rewarded. “Catch The Exosomes” was successfully tested in the outreach activity during the Science is Wonder-ful event at European Parliament in Brussels in September 2018 with more 4,500 visitors.
Our booklet was accompanied by the visually and sensory mesmerising game-experiment “Catch The Exosomes” (also a creation of Annett von Katz). At the same time, the scientific community of researchers in extracellular vesicles have open access to it.
Please visit the fascinating world of “Catch The Exosomes”.
About the author
Dr. Yuliya Shakalisava is a researcher at Leiden University. She started her research on exosomes during her Marie Curie Individual Fellowship and is now continuing within the collaborative project EXIT — Exosome Isolation Tool.
About the artist
Annett von Katz is a visual science communicator www.studiovonkatz.com
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