Quite a lot going on at the moment. It’s the old feast or famine conundrum. I’ve either got nothing on the drawing board or I’m juggling around six different projects, all with the same delivery date! Hey ho …

One of the projects has come about due to a lack of success trying to arrange funding from the Arts Council (I know!). I was hoping to be able to take an exhibition with workshops around the country this year but that didn’t happen. As an alternative I’ve been approaching various DDPO’s around the UK offering a cartoon workshop tailored to their own particular needs and their local environment.

I’ve had a great response so far with several organisations looking at having me work with their members, either on their premises or through the Zoom platform. I’m quite excited about this as it will certainly stimulate the old brain cells and give me a unique look at what fellow Crips are experiencing on the ground. It’s all well and good covering national politics etc., but it’s the smaller, more localised problems that get overlooked.

The idea of the workshop is to have a brain storming session (are we still allowed to say that?!) with everyone contributing to ideas and sharing their own experiences. This should bring up enough material to start roughing out some cartoon ideas, which will be the second part of the session.

I also do a basic introduction to cartooning, sharing the ways in which cartoons can be created simply and without too much in the way of drawing skills. Finally, we’ll create some specific cartoons that can be used by the organisation for training, publicity, protests, etc.

More often than not, there’s often someone at these workshops that is capable of creating these final cartoons. Alternatively, I take the ideas away and draw them for the organisation as part of the workshop.

If you’re interested in getting me to work with your group or organisation then please drop me a line – [email protected]