Comics and Literacy – Final report

For the past three years, the aim of the Comic Art Europe (CAE) pilot project has been to examine the potential for exchange and capacity building across the European comics sector. This, in order to boost the sector’s profile in relation to its East Asian and North American counterparts. The project has involved a collaboration between four organisations – Escola Joso in Barcelona, The Belgian Comic Strip Centre (BCSC) in Brussels, Lyon BD Organisation in France and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF) in the UK – across several strands of work, including training, residencies, dissemination and research. Over three years, CAE has conducted different projects and research studying the possibility if and how comics can have a positive impact on literacy skills, enabling people from all ages and backgrounds to become better readers, writers and communicators and enhancing their confidence and social skills.

We are very proud to share our research results in our final report, summarising the activities and findings of the work carried out by the four participating organisations to explore the relationship between comics and literacy.

Projects and Contexts

The research theme chosen for the project was the transformational potential of comics as a tool to promote and enhance literacy. The research report summarises the activities and findings of the work carried out by the four participating organisations to explore the relationship between comics and literacy.

The research strand to the CAE project took place at various points across 2020-22.

Broadly speaking, all of the projects were either wholly or in part concerned with the promise of comics to mediate access to literacy among socially disadvantaged and culturally minoritised groups. There were particular similarities between the Belgian and French projects in their focus on the social inclusion of adult immigrants.

Meanwhile, the Catalan project, working with homeless people in Barcelona, shared with the Belgian project a particular concern with the social isolation and vulnerability of women. The UK project, which focused on school children, took place in a strongly contrasting setting to the other interventions, but also addressed issues of ethnic diversity in a context of economic disadvantage.

Conclusions

In general, we found a very positive impact of comics on literacy. In particular it could often sponsor positive change in the acquisition of particular skills and capacities that relate to learning development in the different contexts that the projects operated in. These include changes in cognition, motor skills, independence, motivation, co-operation, creativity, affect and well being.

Interested in finding out more about the different organisations and projects, our method and findings? You can find the complete and final report on comics and literacy here.