We’ll be tweeting, blogging, videoing, and photographing our way around the exhibitions, workshops, talks and live cartooning. Although I don’t have any cartoons in the exhibitions this year I have drawn the suitably magic and election themed cover for Foghorn (the PCO’s cartoon magazine), which will be on sale at the Festival, or by subscription here.

If you’re thinking of going along, there’s loads going on, so I’ve also put together a Google Map of the venues for Bloghorn (see below), along with a Google Calendar of what happens when, or you can download a PDF of the festival brochure or the S-MILE trail around Shrewsbury.

In other news – keep an eye on my blog for more updates, including my return trip to St Andrews Union Debating Society back in February, and the last Dr Sketchy’s in March.

View map full-screen

The party was a little different though. It was held at the Temple Works, an Egyptian-inspired Victorian flax mill (that once had sheep grazing on it’s roof) but is now being converted into an arts centre. Work has only recently started, and the building still bears the marks of it’s last occupier, the Kays catalogue empire. As such, each Moleskine was allocated it’s own cubicle office for the evening, and left to get on with it. So, in keeping with our theme of Naughtiness, I drew a number of caricatures of passing punters in somewhat suggestive poses on the walls (nothing too naughty, of course…). Annoyingly, I left my camera in my hotel room on the evening and managed to miss out on getting some photos of me in action, but I returned in the morning to snap a few pics of my work.

All in all though, a rather fun night. There was all sorts of arty stuff going on in the other rooms (most of which I missed, as I was drawing naughty sketches much of the evening), but I did manage to get my portrait taken by Neal Lewis, of which I’m rather fond…

I’ve written a full report over at the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation’s blog Bloghorn, and you can see the episode in question on the BBC iPlayer here.

Update

Erm, looks like the BBC have been tinkering with their schedules again…. and we don’t have a broadcast date after all. More news when I know it.

Update 2

Looks like we have a new (provisional) date for broadcast, so Remember, remember the Fifth of November.

I arrived on Thursday night in order to start fresh and early on Friday morning, snapping and videoing the goings-on in the main square. A number of the posts were written (and videos edited) over the weekend, using laptops and the WiFi connection at a certain well-known coffee shop chain in the Square in Shrewsbury.

On Friday night there were a couple of gallery openings – an exhibition of Kate Charlesworth‘s marvellous work from New Scientist (of whom I’ve been a fan for many years), and a joint exhibition of Steve Bell‘s cartoons from the Guardian alongside submissions on this years theme of Science (to tie in with the 200th anniversary of the birth of local boy Charles Darwin).

Saturday’s weather forecast meant the appearance of the marquee to cover the Big Boards in the main Square, but this didn’t proved necessary in the end. Daytime events on Saturday included talks, workshops and cartoon clinics. Whilst Matt and Royston went off to cover some of the other events, I settled myself in at the Old Market Hall for talks by Bill Stott (on The Science and Philosophy of Serious Ranting – and very funny) and Steve Bell who, amongst other things, thanked me publicly for my eyebrows. You see, the thing is Steve was struggling with his caricature of Barack Obama, but it only clicked for him when he saw my rendering of him (here’s Steve’s before and after for an example) in Tribune. Saturday night closed with the usual bacchanalian shenanigans of the cartoonists’ and organisers’ dinner, of which the less said is probably better.

Sunday was a more sedate, with a chance to meet the cartoonists at the Bear Steps gallery, prior to a nap on the train back to Brum. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable festival this year – and certainly nice to see it from a visitors perspective (if no less tiring).We’ve been posting pics and vids from the show on thebloghorn.org all week, and there’s a bit more to come… in the meantime, here’s a selection of my pics (more here).

There’s been a bit of a dearth of new posts here recently, so I thought I’d add a quick round-up. Basically, I’ve been a bit all over the place recently…

In no particular order, I’ll start with the photo on the right, taken by Stuart Parker (aka @stuartparker) with his TTV camera setup at the recent Birmingham Twestival, a charity fundraising event organized around twitter.com, the microblogging site that’s been in the news a lot recently. I’ve been twittering away on there for over a year now, you can find me at @alexhughes. The event raised over £1500 for Charity:Water, who are a non profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

Then last week I was in St Andrews in Scotland (not the Blues ground) to take part in the University’s Union Debating Society‘s Parliamentary Debate, opposing the likes of former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell… more on this later in the week.

Back in January, I captained a team representing the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation for BBC2′s Eggheads quiz show. The episode hasn’t been broadcast yet, so I can’t reveal much at the moment (although there is a bit more here), but rest assured, as soon as I know when it’s going out, I’ll be blogging it!

Incidentally, it’s just occurred to me that I’ve not written much here about the PCO or The Bloghorn. The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation was formed to represent and raise the profile of UK professional cartoonists, and I’ve been Treasurer for a couple of years now. I’ve also been blogging for the recently re-launched Bloghorn, the blog of the PCO, alongside fellow cartoonists Matt Buck and Royston Robertson, where we’re writing about cartooning issues, news and events.

And finally, a bit of a heads up. Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival is back again (see previous years here) on the weekend of the 24-26 April (events diary), and although I’m not on the official list this year, myself, Matt and Royston will be covering the event for Bloghorn.