Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2014

The success of the 2013 Marcel Duchamp in Herne Bay Festival exceeded even our wildest dreams. 
We were so excited to be awarded THREE East Kent Culture Awards, which were:

-The Experience Award “given because the Festival provided an exceptional experience to audiences”

-Best Project Involving the Wider Community Award “for the positive and sustained impact the Festival made to the Herne Bay community”

-The East Kent People’s Award “judged by the people of Kent to have demonstrated engagement as well as developing existing and new audiences”.

Our trophies are proudly displayed at Beach Creative

We thought the festival would be a one off event, but the visiting professional cartoonists had such a wonderful time at the festival they asked to return and repeat the experience.

And so the annual Herne Bay Cartoon Festival was born.

On 3 August 2014 we held the Live Cartooning event again at the Bandstand.  Participants included “Cartoonist of the year”, Dave Brown, Andrew Birch from Private Eye and Chris Burke (Evening Standard/Sunday Times)

And we held a two week long exhibition entitled ‘Cartoonists Beside the Surrealside’ at Beach Creative. The works on display included cartoons by Dave Brown, Steve Bell, Glenn Marshall, Royston Robertson, Andrew Birch, The Surreal McCoy, Jeremy Banks and many more.

On Saturday 2 August, cartoonist Tim Harries held a drop in workshop for kids of all ages to try their hand at creating a comic strip with advice and help from the professionals.

And Herne Bay’s very own “Banxsy” (Jeremy Banks from the Financial Times) literally painted the town red – and white and purple and orange – as he added colours to his guerrilla masterpieces on the outside of the bandstand.

Our poster for 2014 was designed by Ian Baker

Writing to the organisers, local resident, Dee Sullivan said, “This was a completely brilliant event – such fun and great to see so many kids wanting to join in. The cartoonists were all so generous and entertaining.”

Replying for the ProCartoonists.Org, Nathan Arris said, “The Cartoonists all loved the town and had a wonderful time here.  Some of them even came away with a tan and a stick of rock.”

Apart from instant cartoons and funnies throughout the afternoon, the Cartoonists also drew murals on the hoardings around the Clocktower.  “We wanted to brighten up the building during its restoration.” said Julian Jennings from Friends of the Clocktower “So when we heard the Fleet Street Cartoonists were volunteering their services, we couldn’t believe our luck.”