Moorabool Shire Council, in country Victoria, Australia held its Vibrant Communities Conference 2013, in the Ballan Mechanics Institute Hall ,on the 20th of April.
I was there to cartoon the issues and ideas that emerged in the workshops and sessions. Cartooning on the spot, among people passionate about their community and its future is a dose of reality.
It is also a good test for the cartoons. Do they help capture what people are feeling and saying? Do they have ‘yes we can’ positiveness? (Tricky, cartooning lends itself to more negative ways of looking at things). Can they help remind participants of the conference discussions weeks and months down the track?
It is that mnemonic role of cartoons, and other images, that gives them value after the fun on the day.
Simon Kneebone - cartoonist and illustrator 