Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic con, lakes, lcaf

Lakes Comic Arts Festival Moves From Kendal To Bowness-Upon-Windermere

Published Thu, 25 Nov 2021 09:27:12 -0600

The Lakes Comic Art Festival, held for many years in Kendal in England's Lake District is to move to a smaller town even closer to the lakes in question, Bowness-Upon-Windermere, inside the Lake District National Park for their October 2022 show, held from Friday the 14th to Sunday the 16th of October 2022. Bleeding Cool had heard there had been some conflict with Kendal local government, so for its tenth year LCAF has found a new home.

The core of the Festival will take over multiple venues within Bowness-on-Windermere, on the east banks of Lake Windermere, including The Windermere Jetty Museum, supported by partners who including Arts Council England, the Lake District National Park Authority, South Lakeland District Council, and Lancaster University.

"This isn't about moving the existing Festival from Kendal to Bowness-on-Windermere, this is about re-imagining the Festival for a new era," says Festival Director, Julie Tait. "The world of comics is continually changing, and we want to reflect this in a new Festival that unlocks the power of comics to change the world. We are already looking forward to welcoming our regular Festival visitors and new audiences to LICAF 2022."

Lakes Arts Festivals will continue to run comic art activities in other cities and towns throughout the UK, including Kendal, along with an extensive international programme. The 2022 programme of comic art activity will include:

A series of pilot projects exploring how comics can improve literacy, health and wellbeing
An ongoing programme of creating online resources to introduce teachers to comics and showcase how to use them in the classroom
Using the comics medium to explore mental health and promoting resources to secondary school students in conjunction with Lancaster University
Forming long-term relationships with Special Schools across the UK, to explore the positive impact of comics in the school environment
Supporting the UK Comics Laureate to promote the transformational power of comics to educators, librarians and policy makers, as well as the young people directly
Working with the neurodiverse community and specifically those on the autistic spectrum and undertaking research with the University of Cambridge with a new Autism Comics & Cartooning Project
Supporting independent creators through our Virtual Comics Clock Tower online marketplace and providing professional development opportunities through our webinars programme, exploring topics such as crowdfunding, pitching to publishers and fundraising
Providing a range of opportunities for year-round artist residencies and cultural exchanges in the UK and internationally, through programmes such as Comic Art Europe
Exploring and celebrating how comics intersect with new and emerging art forms including digital art, animation, film, gaming, virtual reality and augmented reality – this will result in new partnerships with international creators at the forefront of new technologies
Continuing to offer an annual Festival programme in October that features a wide range of British and international guests with the eye on the eclectic, exciting and entertaining, alongside workshops for aspiring creators, children's events through "Little LICAF" and much more

The Festival is also commissioning new comic work in collaboration with the Lake District National Park Authority to bring comic art experiences to family audiences within an outdoor environment. The climate crisis, flood risk and sustainability will continue as themes throughout 2022 with new comic artwork being commissioned, alongside the further development of our '10 Years to Save the World' project and website.

The full programme for 2022 along with details of the 10th Lakes International Comic Art Festival will be available in January 2022

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