Shropshire Star

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival wins £2,000 grant to keep it going

[gallery] Organisers of Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival today said they were "thrilled" to receive a grant to keep it going, after thousands of people attended the event this weekend.

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The festival has been running for more then a decade.

On Saturday visitors were treated to workshops with illustrators as well as artists drawing cartoons in the Square.

Organiser Karen Lloyd said the event could not have gone better.

She said: "The numbers were in the thousands. It's always been a popular event and it went really well, we had one illustrator fly in from Australia just so he could be here.

"Cartoons are so important because I think they encourage you to keep your pecker up, they''re such good fun and people were turning up early to make sure they got a spot for the classes.

"We have also just received £2,000 in arts funding which will enable us to do even bigger and better things next year."

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is the only event of its kind in the UK.

Each year the free festival adopts a theme and this year the theme was music. Visitors had the chance to watch as cartoonists from around the UK and further afield interpreted the theme in their own ways.

More than 20 cartoonists, some whose work regularly appears in the national press, created their funny works of art on canvases up to eight feet high.

Among the visitors to the festival was Shrewsbury & Atcham MP Daniel Kawczynski, who posed for a caricature by Jonathan Cusick.

"I want to express my thanks to him – a very talented artist and very patient with me during my sitting," Mr Kawczynski said.

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