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Carl Giles at the BCA

In 2005 the Giles Cartoon Trustees, appointed by Carl Giles under his will, donated his entire archive to the British Cartoon Archive (BCA) at the University of Kent. This huge collection of objects had been in storage since the cartoonist’s death in 1995, and was his own private collection, unseen and unused by outsiders

Thanks to funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) under the Phase Two Digitisation Programme, the BCA has been able to catalogue and digitise over 15,000 original Giles cartoons and artwork, as well as over 5,000 items of personal correspondence and objects. The majority of these items are already available on this website, with the remaining to be added by March 2009.

The launch of our new website coincides with two exhibitions of original artwork from our archives.

‘Giles one of the Family’ running at the Cartoon Museum in London (5 November 2008 – 15 February 2009) which includes colour covers, drawings never reproduced in the annuals and a recreation of Giles’ studio complete with desk, drawing board and reference material. Review

Eastern Counties Ipswich’s Town Hall Galleries will be hosting ‘Giles: Drawn to Suffolk’ (8 November 2008 – 17 January 2009). Giles made his home in Suffolk from the late 1940’s and this exhibition focuses on cartoons with local places as back drops and related objects from his archive.

British Cartoon Archive Digitisation Project (BCAD) has unlocked a wealth of unique, hard-to-access material creating a critical mass of rich, permanent digital resources for the benefit of the widest user base possible within the UK further and higher education.