comic book library for homeless and vulnerable young people

My friend (and comic book maker/illustrator) Karrie Fransman is seeking donations for a comic book library for homeless and vulnerable young people (in London), all the info and contact details are on her blog: http://www.karriefransman.com/?page_id=53

Over the last two months I’ve been running a comics youth project with House of Illustration and New Horizon Youth Centre. New Horizon Youth Centre is a day centre working with young people who are vulnerable, homeless or at risk. I’ve been running an eight week comic project with House of Illustration were the young people have been learning to tell their own stories and express themselves through making comics.

Each week I brought in loads of new comics and was delighted to see how much the young people loved them! It is easy to see the importance of comics in improving literacy and communicating across different cultures and classes. Of the 2000 young people New Horizon sees every year a number have had negative experiences with formal education, and have issues with numeracy and literacy. There are also a number of immigrant clients for whom English is a second language. You can imagine how well these young people responded to comics such as Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’ and Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’.

I am currently trying to set up a small donated library of comic books at New Horizon and would love your support. Like me you probably have a shelf full of comics you no longer read. Any comics or graphic novels you can spare would be fantastic, even just one would do! It would be great if the collection included some classics (Chris Ware, Clowes, Alan Moore, Mccloud etc) if you have any copies to spare. I am starting the collection off with some of my own comics so please join in!