Olympics don't bring the gold for London's Cartoon Museum

London's Cartoon Museum has seen visitor numbers drop by 40 per cent over the past eight weeks. The Museum has now announced it's extending its opening hours in the hopes of boosting visitor numbers.

A  combination of events have reduced visitors and tourists in central London. Very wet weather in May and July combined with the celebrations for the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee have meant that visitors have stayed away at what should have been the museum's busiest time of the year.

"We are really keen to welcome new visitors to the museum," says Museum Chairman, Oliver Preston. "We have been one of the most successful small museums, and have recorded over a quarter of a million visitors since we opened in 2006.

"We receive no government or local authority funding, and the museum survives on its admission income, museum shop and charitable fundraising. Our visitor numbers and income have been hit hard as the streets remain empty."


The museum's  current family-friendly exhibition Animal Crackers includes everything from Peppa Pig, Simon's Cat and Gnasher to political cartoons featuring fat cats and British lions. The museum is also holding special summer cartooning and animation workshops for young people.

To give even more people the chance to visit, the museum  is extending its opening hours and will open on Mondays from the 6th August 2012.

According to trade association estimates, attendance at traditional tourist attractions last week was down by 30 per cent on the same period last year, restaurants by 40%, and black cab usage by a similar figure.

The royal palaces – the Tower of London and Hampton Court among them – have been particularly badly hit, attracting only half of last year's visitor numbers. The British Museum, the Cartoon Museum's larger neighbour, has lost one in four visitors, the National Gallery, two in five.

"We are opening the museum seven days a week,” says Preston, “so that we can try and attract families – and visitors after the Olympics – to come and see the exhibition that includes Wallace and Gromit, Mickey Mouse and animals in cartoons, political caricature and comics over the past two hundred years.

"It's a lot of fun and also educational. We are delighted that the Olympics have been such an exciting success, with families and kids cheering on Team GB, at the venues and on television, but we really want visitors to return after the closing ceremony."

• The museum is open 7 days per week, 10.00 am-5.30pm, Sundays 12.00-5.30pm. You can contact Anita O'Brien for more information and can see more about the museum at www.cartoonmuseum.org or call 0207 631 0793

Tom Humberstone savages warped Olympics ideals in new cartoon

Art © Tom Humberstone. Read the strip

(Updated 30/7/12, quote added from Tom): Over on Cartoon Movement, a publishing platform for high quality political cartoons and comics journalism, Solipsistic Pop editor and ace artist Tom Humberstone's commentary on the London Olympics is curently fronting the site.

The Olympics begin in London on Friday (what? you didn't know?), and as we've seen in previous host cities, there are many winners and losers when it comes to a production this size, as Tom relates in his thought-provoking 11-page strip.

His comic includes concerns from charities such as Shelter and War on Want, reflecting worries that the Olympic ideals have been warped by over the top commercialization of the event.

Tom takes a look at the increased commercialization, police actions, and surveillance as London 'cleans up' for the games.

Part of the comics intent, quoting various media stories, including one about unguarded missiles*, was to introduce the idea of what the media were covering in the lead-up to the games. "The controversies people were talking about," Tom expands. "The story about unguarded missiles... was also about the wider issue of whether people were comfortable with these things on their roofs. This all being mentioned in the comic as a way to introduce the deeper and more troubling issues of housing and corporate interests which haven't been looked at in quite so much detail in the media as these headline-grabbing stories."

Elsewhere, Tom has finished the first chapter of his six part comic series Ellipsis, which will have a launch party at Gosh! Comics in London on Friday 27th July followed by an official release on Monday 30th July.

 A digital edition will also be available to download on the Monday. Those who attend the Gosh event will be able to have their copies signed and will also receive an A5 signed & numbered colour print incentive. 

Heck, what else is there to do on London on Olympic Opening Night?

• Solipsistic Pop web site

* Recently a local activist with a video phone walked up to bags that he claimed were missiles at the bottom of one of the towers when the military were doing their form and fit checks on the building with inert training rounds. However, as the Daily Telegraph notes, the full version of the clip shows that the military immediately walked over to him to find out what he was doing.

An MoD spokesman said: "These were dummy missiles which are used to practice with, not live ammunition. Had they been live missiles, they would have been protected by armed personnel and in any case, as the video shows, there were three personnel there at the time."