Thousands set to visit for cartoon festival

Thousands of people are expected to visit Shropshire next month to take part in the UK's only cartoon festival.

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is a long weekend of cartooning activity, taking place on April 18 to 20. This year's festival will feature more than 40 professional cartoonists from around the UK and overseas setting up around the town to caricature and cartoon for the public.

This year's festival theme is art, and the artists will be on hand all weekend to do caricatures of visitors and create giant pieces of art in the centre of the town.

They will also be "reverse caricaturing", as they draw the subject's body life-size on a giant canvas below their head. Visitors can order the body they aspire to, or put themselves at the mercy of the artist.Some of the other highlights of the weekend will be an Animal Antics art workshop for younger children aged six to 11, and an illustrated talk by Steve Bell, UK Political Cartoonist of the Year and creator of the "If" strip in The Guardian. Budding cartoonists of all ages are invited to bring their work to a cartoon clinic for some tips from successful cartoonists and to get some advice about getting work published, and several family workshops will be held.

The "But is it Art..." and "Create a Comic Strip" family workshops will provide hours of entertainment for all ages and festival cartoonists will be out on the streets to create a mural of cartoons.

During the weeks before and after the festival there will also be exhibitions of American and Belgian cartoon strips, and caricatures from around the world on display around the town.

The event was started in 2004 by Roger Penwill, a Shropshire-based cartoonist.

Having visited cartoon festivals in other countries Roger felt that Shrewsbury's compact and historic town centre would lend itself to a similar event.

For more information about events over the weekend contact (01743) 281200.