The Wellspring

Over the last few weeks, all of us on the illustration course have been putting together a publication to raise both funds and awareness for 'The Wellspring'; a resource centre for homeless and disadvantaged people, located in Stockport.

Each page of the publication is dedicated to a particular issue covered by the charity. We were each allocated a page and asked to produce an illustration which represents the issue.

The issue that I was asked to represent was 'Debt and Homelessness': Debt is one of the biggest causes of Homelessness in Stockport and one of the biggest barriers to people becoming housed. The Wellspring provides a ‘money management’ and ‘budgeting finances’ course. They also provide one to one benefits support and will help people write a budgeting plan.

For my illustration I wanted to portray debt as a burden that brings people down. I also wanted to portray a positive message (we were told in the brief that the illustrations needed to avoid clichés and should be uplifting). I decided that I would portray debt as something dense and heavy but that I would also portray it as something that can be managed and overcome. I came up with the idea of portraying the debt as a set of weights and using a 'circus strong man' lifting those weights to represent the idea of overcoming and controlling debt. Here's what I came up with: