A presentation about The cartoon museum in London.

1. This trip is planned for a Year 4 class for the subjects of Science, Geography, P4C and
Art. All material is suitable to be modified for any KS2 class.
Key Contact: Alison. Very accommodating and allowed us to enter the museum for free to plan
for a trip. Usual charge is £7.

2. The Cartoon Museum opened in 2006 and is self funded. It is located just
around the corner from The British Museum on Little Russell Street. It is a small
converted two floor building with exhibitions downstairs and a workshop for
schools to use upstairs. This upstairs setting is a private room with whiteboards,
paper and private toilets for the children to use.
Exhibitions change frequently. Currently, the main exhibition is about Spitting
Image but this will change to a topic about World War 1 Propaganda and
cartoons from 11th June – 19th October (another brilliant resource for Year 4
World War 1 teaching).
The building has no lift to the first floor which will be a problem for anyone with
difficulties walking, but they do have a hearing loop for the hearing impaired
and wheelchair access to the ground floor for the exhibitions.

3. The aim of our trip is to provide an exciting
stimulus to science, art, p4c and geography lessons
by taking the children to a workshop at the cartoon
museum. This workshop was designed by the
University of Leeds to encourage children to think
about the consequences of global warming and
how the future will look, before reflecting this
through art.
The workshop focuses on teaching children the
construction of a comic and how to frame material
before drawing upon a graphic novel called
‘Dreams of a Low Carbon Future’ which can be
then used in the classroom to reflect upon the
session. A professional engineer is present in these
sessions to guide this.
Artwork by Thomas Fletcher

4. All of these sessions are free to schools in Barnet, Brent,
Camden, City of London, Hammersmith and Fulham,
Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster.
The artists who run the workshop run sessions all year
round on drawing comics. The Cartoon Museums
programme of study can be found here:
http://www.cartoonmuseum.org/images/CM_Workshops_F
INAL2.pdf

5. Please see medium term planning for more detailed information.
Lesson 1: Philosophy for Kids – Energy usage and prompt from comic strip.
Lesson 2: Geography – Energy sources (renewable and non-renewable)
Lesson 3: Science and Geography – Based on comic strip ‘Everthing is connected – climate change and its effects’ (page 18 of
‘Dreams of a Carbon Future’
Lesson 4: Trip to the Cartoon Museum workshop.
Lesson 5: Philosophy for Kids/Literacy – Reviewing the content of comics and interpreting the meaning.
Lesson 6: Art – Writing and completing comic strips in pairs.

6. Summary of the Royal Academy of Engineering-funded project:
The aim of this project is to develop engineering researchers’ communication skills, by enabling
them to work with schoolchildren and professional artists to produce a ‘graphic novel’ (comic) that
explores the children’s visions of a sustainable ‘low carbon’ future society.
Engineering PhD students ran a number of workshops where children had the opportunity to
produce artwork depicting their visions of a sustainable future. This artwork was compiled and
edited to form a graphic novel. The graphic novel aims to explore different versions of the future –
some bad, some good, and how technology will affect everything from what cities will look like to
what fuels your car or your TV. We hope that through this project awareness of the issues of energy,
resources and climate change will be increased.
The graphic novel is being circulated to schools and museums throughout the UK, as well as
selected comics shops. It is being launched in parallel at the Leeds Science Festival and at ‘Thought
Bubble’, a leading UK comics festival.
(Information from http://www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/dtc-low-carbon-
technologies/research/DreamsofaLowCarbonFuture.shtml)

7. Project prepared by David, Dipesh, Ed and Melissa – Group A3