About The Festival – The Galway Cartoon Festival

The Galway Cartoon Festival is an international celebration of funny drawings, hosted in Ireland’s most sociable city!

Galway is a place obsessed with arts and culture, with festivals dedicated to everything from literature to furniture. But noticeable by its absence was the ‘Ninth Art’ – comics, caricature, and cartoons.

In 2017, two local cartoonists decided to change that.

Our Aims and Plans

Our event has particular goals:

To nurture, promote, and develop the art of the cartoon in Ireland, particularly as a living means of social commentary and protest.
To be international in outlook, forging links and exchanging ideas between our cartoon culture and the ones beyond these shores.

We also plan to have a lot of fun.

We regularly hold an exhibition open to submissions from anyone, anywhere in the world. Please get in touch if you’d like to be part of it. We’re especially eager to show female cartoonists; women are seriously under-represented in the cartoon arts in Ireland.

But as well as exhibitions, we want to do things to get people involved with cartooning. We organise workshops, talks, discussions, even games. For children and adults.

Who We Are

Richard Chapman	Artistic Director & Co-Founder
Margaret Nolan	Festival Manager & Exhibition Curator
Paul Callanan	Graphic Designer
Catherine Gagneux	International Liaison
Willy Brennan	Advisor
Gar O’Brien-Collins	Advisor & Graphic Novel Guy
Tom Mathews	Creative & Advisor
Dara McGee	Creative & Advisor
Kernan Andrews	Public Relations