A giant cartoon has been put on display at the entrance to the Darwin Centre on Pride Hill to signal the fact that the month-long extravaganza, Britain’s longest-running and now only cartoon festival, is celebrating its tenth anniversary.
The festival’s return to the busy Darwin Centre will see cartoons, part of the Festival’s S-mile Trail, popping up in up to a dozen of the centre shops and Festival committee member Bill McCabe is delighted.
He said: “It’s great to be back after a gap of a couple of years. The Darwin Centre is a focal point for the town and we’re glad to be back and the response we’ve had there has been fantastic.
“We’ve got up to a dozen shops involved and we’ve put up some of our humourals – humorous murals – in some of the units.”
The Festival climaxes this weekend, April 20 and 21, when the town will be alive with cartoons and over 40 top cartoonists will be there to draw for the public with the Square, the Market Hall and Theatre Severn the focal points along with the Darwin Centre.
Bill McCabe added: “The festival has several elements and it’s an opportunity for visitors and shoppers to stroll round town and view cartoons in some unusual places.
“It encourages people to walk round the town and look in the shops and we’d like it if all the shops had cartoons on display.”
The shopping centres have reported an excellent response to their programme of activities this week with a great turnout for the art allotments with over 100 of all ages attending.
The craft and street and vintage dance workshops also proved big attractions and so did the Faux Flowers, and Shrewsbury in Bloom’s Plant A Seed workshop while there were also plenty of entries for the Easter Egg Hunt.
Maggie Love, Community Co-ordinator for the Shrewsbury Shopping Centres, said: “We’re getting really good feedback from the public about the way we are making a visit to the Darwin, Pride Hill and Riverside Shopping Centres much more of an experience with our art exhibitions and craft activities.
“That’s something we are looking to build on, especially after the success of the free workshops we held over the school holidays.
“We had lots of people calling in and families taking part in the activities and we’ve had a great response from the artists as well.
“Shrewsbury and Shropshire has a real community of artists and they have been given the opportunity to thrive and survive by the old Borough Council and that’s created a network of artists locally.”
Now in its tenth year, the theme for 2013 is ‘Time’ and an exhibition, entitled, ‘It’s About Time’ is at the upper floor gallery in Shrewsbury Market Hall until May 6 before it tours three other Shropshire galleries during the summer.
As well as exhibitions there are workshops and cartoon clinics ranging from simple have-a-go drop in sessions to more detailed sessions over two days.
Kevin Lockwood, Manager of the Darwin, Pride Hill and Riverside Centres, said: “We are delighted to have the Cartoon Festival back in the shopping centres – it’s a brilliant event which can’t help but bring a smile to people’s faces.
“We want people to look in the shop windows and what a good way to do it.
“We’ve also been very pleased with the response to the holiday activities we’ve organised here and we want to make that a regular feature and we’re already looking at providing something at half term and for the summer.”
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