Power of Cartoons

In Britain we don’t take cartooning as seriously as we ought to. Yet great cartoonists can express a complicated idea in one picture, whereas a journalist could write 1000 words and still not get the message across. Which one are you more likely to look at and enjoy?

Pete Dredge is Nottingham’s best known cartoonist. He got into cartooning in the 1960s after reading The Adventures of Dan Dare in the Eagle comic. Later, as he waited for his father to have his hair cut at The Black Boy Hotel, he started reading Punch.

Pete was around 12-years-old when he nurtured ideas about becoming a cartoonist. In 1976, after studying graphic design, he took the plunge and dived into the world of freelance cartooning. He hasn’t stopped working since.

I asked him why cartooning isn’t taken seriously enough in this country.

“It's fair to say that the majority of the public associate cartoon with kids animation or an inferior, crude drawing style.

“I think the problem is that the well crafted cartoon looks deceptively simple to produce. In fact it takes years to master the skills necessary to produce a drawing that says a lot in such a small space.”

In 2006, a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It initiated violent protests across the world during which the Danish Embassy in Beirut was torched. The Arab world later began boycotting Danish goods, and Denmark’s exports fell by 35% to Muslim countries. All of this because of cartoons.

So, could cartooning be the most powerful art from? Pete argues that it is.

“The job of a cartoon is to communicate an idea to the onlooker in a clear, concise and powerful way. This may range from a joke situation or social comment through to a stark, political statement that has more impact than a page of editorial text.

“A cartoon should be unequivocal, [there’s] no 'what does it say to you?' subjectivity that fine art enjoys. So, in that respect, the cartoon is the most powerful art form.”

As you would expect Pete is passionate about his profession and recently joined the Professional Cartoonists' Association. Their aim is to raise the profile of British cartooning. Pete did his best to do this very thing in his home city.

He was one of the organisers of The Big Grin Cartoon Festival which took place on Broad Street in Nottingham from 2002-04. Despite its popularity, a fourth festival never emerged.

“We were all unpaid volunteers and we tried desperately to get funding for a full-time organiser to take it to the next level after three successful years, but we were thwarted in this endeavour.

“There were too many other events competing for attention in the summer months in Nottingham and, on reflection, my own thoughts are that a festival of this nature would prosper in a smaller location.”

It’s a shame, and had it continued it could have gone a long way to explain why we should love but also take cartooning much more seriously.