The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is asking for your support to boost our efforts to encourage younger comic readers and creators, the focus of this campaign mainly centred on boosting the number of Little LICAF-related events at this year's weekend-long Festival in Bowness-on-Windermere, (Friday 29th September - Sunday 2nd October, tickets on sale now).

Introducing children to comics at an early age can bring the joys of reading to even the most reluctant reader and have a big impact on their health and well-being, confidence and learning more broadly. Our research in schools, complementing the work of other organisations, has gathered clear evidence that visual storytelling can cut through to children who struggle to read and write and/or those whose first language is not English including refugees.

Little LICAF is an energetic campaign to make comics accessible to a wider range of children through a dedicated free zone at our annual Festival, a year-round programme of research in schools, and the expansion of our collection of free online downloadable resources for children and parents to use at school and in the home.

In 2022, we invited youngsters to develop their creative drawing process of mark-making, and explore the concept of narrative, by telling a story without using words. Little LICAF created "Making a Mark", a comic challenge inspired by a wonderful silent picture book by Peter van den Ende, The Wanderer - a resource to engage youngsters, families with children and educators, as part of our passion for getting comics into the classroom.

Our website also features "Comics and Well Being" - a bundle of resources that aims to offer teachers practical help as to how comics and visual communication can support the well-being of Sixth Form and higher/further education students. We also provide a diverse new series of resources inspired by three comics taken from our anthology, Traces of The Great War.

We believe that comics have a special power to engage, enthuse and inspire children and young people. We place some emphasis on reaching disadvantaged young people eg those from lower socio-economic groups and those with hidden disabilities such as autism.

YOUR DONATION WILL SUPPORT:

• Little LICAF events at our Annual Festival (taking place once more in Bowness-on-Windermere, 29th September - 1st October 2023)

• The continuation of our year-round programme of research in schools, building on past work at Abraham Moss Community School,  Manchester, where we began  an important research project into Comics Literacy, in partnership with  Comic Art Europe , with support from  The Phoenix  comic and  Manchester City of Literature

• The expansion of our collection of free online downloadable resources for children and parents to use at school and in the home, working with a variety of comic creators