Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk once said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” He preferred the word ‘sympathy’. That is an insight.
At the moment, globally , empathy doesn’t rate highly.
Empathy isn’t to be trashed. It is a skill. It helps find that small piece of common ground between widely divergent stands, a starting point …
Illustrations created in collaboration with Parry Agius, Linking Futures, for Star Dreaming -holistic athlete development. The dark emu image is used in each picture. These graphics illustrate preparing indigenous players for the Australian Football League AFL – which involves much more than just the player…
Other sketch drawings…
The Parliament House exhibition NSW Ombudsman – Fifty years pursuing fairness for NSW 1975–2025 will be accessible Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm for the month of July. Details about NSW Parliament and the exhibition: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/visit/events/Pages/Ombudsman50.aspx
In the 1980s one of my first regular cartooning assignments was illustrating a number of each year’s case studies in the South Australian Office of the Ombudsman annual reports. This led to also doing illustrations for the New South Wales Ombudsman – a number of which have been used in the exhibition and also in the History Report: https://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/50-years-pursuing-fairness-for-nsw-1975-2025
These were early days and it was real work experience for me.
Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge quotes the ‘Where are you from?’ cartoon in her speech at the June 10 celebrations of Portugal Day, Camões and the Portuguese Communities, in Lagos:
… It is true that we only know what happened on that 8th August 1444 because the chronicler of Prince Henry the Navigator narrated it. Eanes Gomes de Zurara could not help but feel compassion and commented, movingly, on how cruel the arrival and distribution of slaves was. Fortunately, we have this page of the Chronicle of the Deeds of Guinea to be sure that there were those who did not find such degradation fair and said so. In fact, we know that there have always been those who completely repudiated the practice and theorized about it. On one of the walls of one of the museums in Lagos is written the testimony of a sixteenth-century author who denounces the injustice – “… they do not offend us, they do not owe us, nor do we have just cause to make war on them, and without just war, we cannot captivate or buy them”.
This means that Lagos, the city of Prince Henry the Navigator’s dreams, of which Sagres is the metaphor, after all these centuries, promotes awareness of what we are capable of doing to each other. It has therefore become a city against indifference. It is our contemporary struggle. In Lagos, today, the message of Simon Kneebone’s cartoon from 2014 that has been circulating the world is present, in a different way – The scene is our contemporary one, it takes place at sea. On a huge ship, equipped with defensive weapons, at the top of the tower is a crew member who sees in the distance a fragile, shallow boat, loaded with migrants. The crew member of the large vessel asks – Where do you come from? From the crowded boat someone answers – We come from the Earth . I suggest that young Portuguese people, descendants of manual diggers,sailors, seamen, grandchildren of emigrants who left barefoot in search of work, print this cartoon on their shirts when they go to sea.
Read her full speech here.
Dimitrios Papalexis, founder and director at Soulgen – building social capital, driving social innovation, enhancing community wellbeing – wanted a design that illustrated Asset Based Communiy Development (ABCD) – for T-shirts and other uses.
The final design (above) came together after three ideas (below) were drawn up and put out inviting feedback.
The inaugural Positive Pathways to local Rural Prosperity conference was held in Pickering Brook, Western Australia, September 17-20th 2024. Initiated by The Bank of Ideas which has been committed to ‘supporting the growth of enterprising, sustainable and vibrant small-town communities and economies’ since 1989. Here are a few of the cartoons drawn during the conference highlighting just some of the great ideas from the presentations and sessions. For more about small town reinvention and conference assets and presentations click here.
Cartoons from ideas by David Low, Australian Pesticide Reduction Network; highlighting the ‘reckless use of PFAS pesticide Fiprinol in Queensland and NSW ..’ in the fight against the red fire ant outbreak, the widespread use of the herbicide Paraquat, linked to Parkinson’s disease, and more.
Simon Kneebone - cartoonist and illustrator 