Preparations for the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2009 are well under way.

This year’s festival theme is The Science of Nature to coincide with the town’s year-long celebration of Shropshire lad Charles Darwin’s birth. This year also coincides with the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book On the Origin of Species.

The Guardian’s Steve Bell will be exhibiting his unique take on “Anthropomorphism”; expect monkeys, Dubya, penguins, Blair, Brown and more.

There will be an exhibition of historical science cartoons from the nineteenth century that Darwin himself is likely to have have seen. These have been borrowed from collections at the University of Kent at Canterbury, the British Museum print room and the National Cartoon Museum. Curation is by Adrian Plant at the Shrewsbury Museum and is underway now.

And there will be a visiting exhibition from internationally regarded Czech cartoonist Miroslav Bartak who draws jokes from the miracles of modern science.

A spokescartoonist for the organising committee offered Bloghorn this quote:

“The funding is, as ever, as tight as grandma on the absinthe, but the all-hands-to-the-wheel attitude of the stout yeomanry on the ground will bring a fat ray of sunshine into next April’s showers. The festival weekend is the 24th-26th April 2009 although the exhibitions will run through April.”

Bloghorn would like to urge any commercial enterprise interested in associating their name with the potent mixture of large crowds, extreme levity and high seriousness to contact the organisers from here.

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