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BACKGROUND: Although 1 billion people live in informal (slum) settlements, the consequences for respiratory health of living in these settlements remain largely unknown. This study investigated whether children living in an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya are at increased risk of asthma symptoms. METHODS: Children attending schools in Mukuru (an informal settlement in Nairobi) and a more affluent area (Buruburu) were compared. Questionnaires quantified respiratory symptoms and environmental exposures; spirometry was performed; personal exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5) was estimated. RESULTS: 2373 children participated, 1277 in Mukuru (median age, IQR 11, 9-13 years, 53% girls), and 1096 in Buruburu (10, 8-12 years, 52% girls). Mukuru schoolchildren were from less affluent homes, had greater exposure to pollution sources and PM2.5. When compared with Buruburu schoolchildren, Mukuru schoolchildren had a greater prevalence of symptoms, 'current wheeze' (9.5% vs 6.4%, p=0.007) and 'trouble breathing' (16.3% vs 12.6%, p=0.01), and these symptoms were more severe and problematic. Diagnosed asthma was more common in Buruburu (2.8% vs 1.2%, p=0.004). Spirometry did not differ between Mukuru and Buruburu. Regardless of community, significant adverse associations were observed with self-reported exposure to 'vapours, dusts, gases, fumes', mosquito coil burning, adult smoker(s) in the home, refuse burning near homes and residential proximity to roads. CONCLUSION: Children living in informal settlements are more likely to develop wheezing symptoms consistent with asthma that are more severe but less likely to be diagnosed as asthma. Self-reported but not objectively measured air pollution exposure was associated with increased risk of asthma symptoms.

The closing shutter of lockdown on our sense of normality, routine and freedom had a profound effect on how we see the world and evaluate meaning and value. We quickly realised that our orientation towards life itself was distorted by demands from work, socialising, and a sleepy comfort in the status quo. Through drawing, I sought to examine this new reality by visually realising some of the insights which had been prompted by both a lack of freedom of movement and, a growing realisation of the limitations of political, social, and cultural institutions. A satirical language that had developed throughout my artistic career took a turn towards the improvisational, experimental, and provocative. My visual language was becoming refined and through a ‘no strings attached’ drawing without planning or sketching, the moves of the drawing were closely matched to movement in my own thinking. The detail I was able to provide in these drawings came from years of observing and drawing and observing and doing, as Causey calls, ‘after drawings’ from memory. (2017) This built a capacity for remembering forms drawn and drawing from mental images has enabled a liberation from reference, and with that the ability to manifest almost any pictorial reality convincingly. These drawings utilise the function and effect of caricature to deliver personal and political messages and are consciously indulgent, stylistic, and share the features of mannerism. Ernst Kris noted of the origins of caricature and it’s overriding contribution noting ‘caricature seeks to discover a likeness in deformity; in this way, so runs the theory of the time, it comes nearer to truth than does reality. This settles the nature of its achievement; it serves the purpose of unmasking another person, familiar to us as a technique of degradation.’ (Kris, 1964, p.175) Kris makes a distinction within caricature between the ‘comic’ effect and the more transformative qualities of caricature and notes that ‘pleasure’ is the unifying effect of the two. (ibid) This description resonates with the drawings below which asks small and large questions of the viewer through their propositional, caricatural language and delights the viewer in the satisfaction of a reality re-rendered for consideration of its flaws and folly., BBDS - Black Book: Drawing and Sketching, Vol 3 No 1 (2022): Social Dimensions

The ongoing research/book project provisionally titled A Coast of Teeth, is an exploration of English seaside towns through drawing and writing. My own role as a reportage artist is to respond to what I see and document it in-situ. What we have found on our travels to Torquay, Paignton, Bournemouth, Clacton-on-Sea, Jaywick and Weston Super Mare are landscapes which are reflective of the socio-economic realities on the ground and a people who bare the physio-psycho trauma of such conditions in their behaviours and physicality. Internal conflict manifests itself in physical conditions such as obvious physical disability, anti-social behaviour, obesity and malnutrition from drug use. Working with a writer, it is interesting to see how the writing and the drawing speaks to internal and external realities and the convergence of past and present as an evolving circumstance for people in these towns who struggle for relevance and economic sustenance. Drawings evolve from the same process as all vision and understanding; a refined cataloguing of people, places and things. This piece explores how drawings can capture momentary insights that elude writing and approximate the complex convergence of vision, thought and experience., BBDS - Black Book: Drawing and Sketching, Vol 2 No 2 (2021): Outside - Inside

The field of contemporary reportage practice is diverse and divergent. No longer is reportage drawing restricted to the commissioning structures of print media and accompanying expectations of journalistic doctrine. Contemporary reportage disseminates it’s activity largely through online exposure and some specialist print publications such as Eye magazine and Varoom (both devoted to illustration and or design). There has also been a notable split between professional and enthusiast activity with the explosion of Urban Sketchers. This organisation captures the important and previously unseen activity by professionals from a variety of fields within, and on the periphery of art and design along with amateur enthusiasts. For many within Urban Sketchers, this activity is about refining vision and the pure pleasure of engaging with their surroundings. The important split between this activity and ‘professional’ reportage artists is in the terms of their engagement. In contemporary reportage drawing, practitioners are seeking subjects and circumstances that are both personally significant and provide some opportunity to exploit the political andsocial dimensions of their subject. The authorial shift in reportage drawing is not a refutation of its journalistic origins and rather takes those ideals and applies them inward. Contemporary practitioners are setting their own briefs and find sustenance in un-explored political and social terrain while mining the qualities of their own drawing. This contemporary moment for reportage drawing has come to be most vividly about drawing itself. In a crowded and quickly moving media landscape, drawing becomes a visible reminder of the power and limitations of the hand and all that tells us about vision, witness and the layers of understanding contained in marks and lines that are dashed out in confrontation with a world in flux. This paper seeks to explore past and contemporary reportage artists and my own work as an example of how the practice has come to highlight the qualities of drawing and experience and, how self-initiated work has meant an evolution of the relationship between text, image and journalism.

The field of contemporary reportage practice is diverse and divergent. No longer is reportage drawing restricted to the commissioning structures of print media and accompanying expectations of journalistic doctrine. In contemporary reportage drawing, practitioners are seeking subjects and circumstances that are both personally significant and provide some opportunity to exploit the political and social dimensions of their subject. The authorial shift in reportage drawing is not a refutation of its journalistic origins and rather takes those ideals and applies them inward. This contemporary moment for reportage drawing has come to be most vividly about drawing itself. This paper seeks to explore past and contemporary reportage artists and my own work as an example of how the practice has come to highlight the qualities of drawing and experience and, how self-initiated work has meant an evolution of the relationship between text, image and journalism., BBDS - Black Book: Drawing and Sketching, Vol 1 No 2 (2020): Reportage

The use of waterways for leisure purposes is expanding on a large scale, covering a vast number of users and involving a wide range of activities. Development work is, however, constrained by a certain number of problems which have arisen too recently to enable ready solutions to be found. These include the need for a genuine amenities policy, legal problems associated with making open spaces available for communal use, identifying and setting up suitable organizational structures for planning, works supervision and management, the demarcation and management of public property and the design and implementation of development projects integrating environmental considerations with the need for amenities., L’utilisation de l’eau à des fins de loisirs est un phénomène en pleine expansion. Elle intéresse une très vaste clientèle et permet des activités nombreuses et variées. Mais elle ne saurait se développer sans que soient résolus un certain nombre de pro¬ blèmes qui sont encore trop récents pour que l’on puisse déjà apporter des solutions : prise en compte d’une véritable politique des loisirs, problèmes juridiques liés à l’ouverture de l’espace à des fins collectives, identification et définition des structures d’organisation permettant la réflexion, la maîtrise d’ouvrage et la gestion, création et gestion d’un patrimoine foncier largement ouvert au public, étude et réalisation des projets d’aménagements intégrant l’environnement à la demande de loisirs., Netter Louis-Noël. Rapport V-7 Prise en compte des facteurs de sauvegarde de l’environnement dans l’utilisation des cours d’eau, canaux et plans d’eaux intérieurs à des fins de loisirs. In: L'hydrotechnique au service d'une politique de l'eau. Evolution des problèmes de l'eau au cours de la dernière décennie. Compte rendu des XVes journées de l'hydraulique. Toulouse, 5, 6 et 7 septembre 1976. Tome 2, 1979.