Residencies

Since its inception, the Lakes international Comic Art Festival has been active in facilitating creative exchanges allowing UK comics creators to take up residencies with overseas partners, and overseas creators to visit the UK for the purpose of artists’ residencies.  These have been hugely successful and are part of the organisation’s year round activities. 

Some examples include UK-based artist Fumio Obata who visited Prague in 2022 in an exchange with our partners, the Czech Literary Centre.  Fumio used his time in residence to focus on the life and works of Franz Kafka and he created the graphic novel/diary Looking for Franz, which will be published in 2024 and featured at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, as well as at the FRAME festival in Prague and as part of Manchester City of Literature Festival of Libraries.   

As part of our participation in the Comic Art Europe project (part of the EU-funded “Creative Europe” programme), UK artist Karrie Fransman took up a residency in Barcelona in 2022 and produced her interactive VR experience Metopia vs Youtopia which was exhibited at Lyon BD festival in 2022 and at LICAF in the same year.

Also as part of the Comic Art Europe initiative, LICAF hosted several overseas artists including French creator Marine des Mazery, who was resident in Kendal in 2021. Marine was inspired by the Kendal floods of 2015 and produced her work Underwater Fate addressing climate change and its devastating effects. 

In 2022 the Festival hosted German-based Lebanese artist Bernard Hage (known as Art of Boo) who created a work, “The Philosopher”, which was exhibited in Lyon and Bowness and at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre in 2023. 

The Festival has also hosted several Czech artists, including Stepanka Jislova, Katka Cupova, Vojtech Masek and Vaclav Slajch. Vaclav was resident in Bowness in 2022 and produced his graphic novel Just Another Day in Cumbria, inspired by Lake Windermere and its environs.  It was published in 2023 and featured at the Lakes festival in Bowness in September.

Also hosted were Julie Rocheleau (Quebec) and Meikel Mathias (Germany) and the organisation has facilitated the overseas residencies of UK-based artists Sayra Begum (Prague), Jonathan Edwards and Louise Evans, aka Felt Mistress (Helsinki), Jacob Phillips (Prague), Mikiko (Quebec) and Oliver East (Helsinki).