Welcome to the inaugural Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation Awards

We’ve been thinking for a long time about doing our own, less formal, ‘above a pub room’, type of awards: an evening that doesn’t take itself too seriously and where we’d get together with fellow cartoonists and cartoon supporters and have a lark (and let’s face it, as cartoonists sitting alone in our garrets we don’t get out much) 

So here we are! The Splats instead of The Oscars and with our own golden ‘Ken with a Pen’ statue!

Still from the green screen studio shoot of Ken/Kendal…when I say ‘studio’ I mean the office swivel chair. 

The Splats has more categories that don’t get the usual award acknowledgements including ‘Caricature’ and ‘Strip Cartoon’ and playful categories like ‘Best Rejected Cartoon’ and ‘Best Cartoon Nose’ (guess which PCO committee member pushed for that one?)

We’ve been hugely helped by having Andrew ‘Drew’ Fraser on board whose technical know-how was essential in setting up the voting mechanic. 

And we have a great venue (secret for now!) with liquid prizes from a favourite eatery Noble Rot wrangled by Martin Rowson (worth a trip to the Soho incarnation just to see Martin’s two HUGGGGGGE paintings upstairs) Thanks also to Sue Kelly, journalist, painter, actor and good friend to the cartoon world, in helping facilitate and organise the event.

Preceding the awards ceremony, there will be a panel discussion about the Great British Colouring Book project, with the aforementioned Guy Venables, Clive Goddard and The Surreal McCoy who’ll be joined by representatives from 38 Degrees and The Refugee Council.

Clive has been busy with his Mr Sheen polishing up the awards.

For those attending The Splats remember to wear your finest award show glitz and glamour! (we’re currently trying to find a bit of old red carpet from local skips for you to all sashay up)

We may be making it up as we go along but we’re learning a lot for the next year’s PCO Awards.

A frame from a mega-pan showcasing each of the cartoonists entered in the awards.

VOTING HAS NOW CLOSED We’ve impressively had over 650 voters. They were selecting from 163 individual cartoons submitted by 61 cartoonists.

A vast team of volunteers are now emptying the ballot boxes and meticulously counting up the votes.

 

 

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