The Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival comes to an end

Big Boards in the town square 2006. Photo © Roger Penwill. Roger Penwill writes: The old maxim that all good things come to an end has become true for the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. The sad and untimely loss of two key organisers just prior to the pandemic, Covid putting it’s oar in to disrupt planning […]

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival Exhibitions 2022

Roger Penwill reports from Shropshire’s medieval county town: For its 19th year the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is represented by a collection of three exhibitions. At the Bear Steps Gallery, the festival’s spiritual home since the inaugural festival in 2004, are the Festival themed exhibition “Look and Learn” and an exhibition of work by the popular cartoonist Noel […]

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival exhibition comes to the High Street

Poster illustration by © Jonathan Cusick Festival Organising team member Sarah Knapp writes: Delayed by lockdowns, and consequently without it’s usual live events,  Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival exhibition is going ahead this year represented by two exhibitions at the Bear Steps Gallery, Shrewsbury from 6th to 18th September. The show goes up. Our theme is ‘The High […]

Bringing Animals to Life cartoon workshop

Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery have asked Jonathan Cusick to repeat the animal cartoon workshop he ran during this year’s cartoon festival, during the October half term. ‘Bringing Animals to Life’ is on Halloween, 31st October. It’s one of the activities they’ve ran to tie in with a major exhibition by local comic leg-end Charlie […]

Noel Ford 1942-2019

Noel with daughter Sara at Nottingham’s Big Grin Cartoon Festival 2003. Photo © Pete Dredge Pete Dredge writes: It’s a cruel irony that it is only when someone passes  that the outpourings of love, praise and acknowledgement spill out from friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Such has been the response to the sudden and unexpected death […]

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival photo album

The ‘Plan B’ Shrewsbury Square. Photo © Tat Effby. Glenn Marshall & Jonathan Cusick write: With Storm Hannah due to roll in threatening rain and high winds the marquee company wouldn’t put up the festival’s gazebo roofing. Fear of airborne ‘para-boarding’ cartoonists made the festival organisers hastily arrange a Plan B for Saturday, which involved […]

Cartoonists in Conversation

Jonathan Cusick writes: A Friday evening talk has traditionally opened the public programme of the Shrewsbury cartoon festival. This year ‘Cartoonists in Conversation’ aimed to give the public an insight into the lives of cartoonists, whose work they would probably be familiar with but know little about the people behind them. The number of cartoonists […]

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival in the rear-view mirror.

Jonathan Cusick, Pete Dredge, John Roberts and Helen Pointer ‘drawing the crowds’. Rupert Besley writes: The sun shone on the righteous – and on the cartoonists in Shrewsbury. It was a bumper gathering in the town this last weekend, with visitors and participants drawn from far and wide. Few more so than festival regular Dean […]

Eaten Fish Thanks

As many will have seen, young Iranian cartoonist Ali Doarani’s (AKA Eaten Fish) ordeal in Papua New Guinea is now over. He has been moved to a safe country aided by ICORN (The International Cities of Refuge Network) who promote freedom of expression and offer sanctuary around the world to writers and artists under threat. […]