Think and act together
to build peace

The global transformation of communication and media is a cause for concern. The unbridled freedom of the internet has its dark side. Day by day, ‘Big Data’ reveals its power. The advent of ‘Fake News’ is blurring reality, or its perception. For all these reasons, it’s now crucial to make possible a regular meeting for all the actors of cartooning, to find common cause and reinforce networks. And so our goal with this project was to gather at an annual meeting a panel of multiple international personalities, not only cartoonists and affiliated creatives but all the actors who work every day to carry forward the ultimate message and questioning spirit of cartooning in general and the satirical press in particular.

After a year and a half of work the first Cartooning Global Forum took place at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. We conceived this project as a continuation of ‘La Presse en Liberté’ (Press in Liberty), a major exhibition organized under the patronage of UNESCO in March 2017 and created with the Delegations of France and Switzerland and the Brotherhood of Gutenberg Companions. Since then we have worked in a unifying mode to build this day of constructive meetings and collective work. The patronage of H. Exc. Mr. Laurent Stéfanini, Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, made the undertaking possible.

We set up the steering committee with Mr. Gérard Vandenbroucke and established the project’s headquarters at the International Center for Caricature, Cartooning and Humor of Saint-Just-le-Martel. And to ensure the greatest utility of its outcomes we articulated it around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: the SDGs2030.

After the success of this first step taken in 2018 with participants from more than 25 countries, your suggestions, help, energy and, yes, financial support are welcome so that this mission may continue. An enlarged committee will be formed in the coming year to share the work, broaden the network of participants and invite more people to join us. If you wish to take part in this ambitious project please make yourself known and in any case we invite you to note in your diary the next meeting of the Cartooning Global Forum*, October 2nd 2019 in Paris.

Jérôme Liniger and Nicolas Jacquette
Founders of the CGF, Members of the Steering Commitee
Associated Directors at the Si agency – Paris
Graphic Designers, Illustrators and Artists