Shubbak, the UK's largest festival of contemporary Arab cultures, returns to London next month, running 23rd May until 15th June 2025, bringing new and unexpected voices alongside established artists to audiences across the capital.

Returning this year with an insistence on art in the face of crisis, Shubbak Festival includes the "Enter the Mulberry Tree and Fly Free" exhibition, running Tuesday 27th May - Monday 9th June 2025 at Grand Junction, Rowington Close.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is delighted to announce that it will work in partnership with Comic Book UK, a new comic trade association, to promote the social value of comics and create opportunities for people from all backgrounds to engage in comic arts. 

As the only comics organisation in Arts Council England’s (ACE) National Portfolio of regularly funded organisations, LICAF creates opportunities for people from all backgrounds to engage in comic arts.  

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival, working in collaboration with celebrated Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh, is delighted to publish Safaa and the Tent, the diary of cartoonist Safaa Odah, from Gaza, with all profits from sales going to Safaa.

The University of Cambridge is researching the intersection of comics and autism in partnership with the Comics Cultural Impact Collective and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, and others, beginning with the creation of a Best Practice Guide to help make comics communities as inclusive and accessible as possible for autistic people. 

As we begin a fresh new year and as the range of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival’s work continues to grow, we thought it would be the perfect time to tell you more about our current work, future plans, our funding and ongoing opportunities for creators. So don’t miss our free online LICAF Now & Next event on Thursday 13th February 2025, which will include a Q&A session with MC and Festival Patron, Lucy Sullivan. 

We're delighted to bring you the fourth issue of Between The Lines, our free online magazine focusing on Festival guests and other matters comic, edited by John McShane, designed by Steve Kerner.

Macmillan Children’s Books has announced an expanded programme of publishing with John Patrick Green, the author-illustrator mastermind behind the graphic novel series InvestiGators. The agreement, for seven titles across the InvestiGators and the companion Agents of S.U.I.T. series, comes as the series enjoys a 134% sales increase through the UK TCM. The deal takes the combined series to 19 titles with publishing running through to the end of 2028. 

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is delighted to announce its initiative to promote British comics on the world stage, British Comics Now, is offering two new opportunities to creators to get their work seen overseas as part of a wider promotion of British Comics. 

British Comics Now – LICAF@The Comic Art Museum