History

Herne Bay Cartoon Festival is the only regular celebration of cartooning in the South East. All our exhibitions and events are delivered free and are fully accessible to everyone. We encourage participation. We work with professional artists and curators to deliver the festival.  All our exhibitions and events are produced and delivered to the highest standard and safety.

A key part of Bayguide’s mission is to make Herne Bay and the East Kent coast a more attractive place to visit. Our annual festival regularly attracts new visitors to the area as well as those who come back each year for the events. We believe that arts and culture make a crucial contribution towards the regeneration of our seaside towns and know that local businesses benefit from our activities.

Our festival showcases the art of cartooning and our objective is to present diverse new work to as wide an audience as possible. Alongside new political and non political cartoons we also exhibit work from the British Cartoon Archive and place this in an historical context. At previous festivals we have worked alongside Cartoon Rights Network International to exhibit and promote work by international cartoonists, many of whom suffer censorship and repression at home for their work.

Our aim every year is to demonstrate that in our changing political environment the cartoonist’s art and comment is as important and relevant as it has ever been. In 2018 we celebrated female cartoonists and illustrators in an exhibition curated for our festival and shown across two galleries and we held workshops and talks featuring artists and creators of graphic novels and comic strips. Cartooning attracts a varied audience, especially amongst those who do not normally visit galleries and with younger audiences and participants. It is very important to our organisation that all our exhibitions, events and workshops are delivered free and that all our events are accessible to everyone.

Local volunteers help us to deliver the Cartoon Festival each year and we rely on their support. Bayguide’s directors give much of their time free as support in kind for the festival.

If you would like to volunteer, get in touch.