Flatpack Festival – Back To The Lab: Hunt Emerson
As some of you will know, Hunt Emerson has long been one of my favourite cartoonists. So when I was given the opportunity to interview him for the Flatpack Festival as part of their retrospective on Birmingham Arts Lab, where Hunt was a printer and effectively started his career as a cartoonist, I simultaneously leapt at the chance and hid behind the
Of course Hunt was lovely and generous with his time and I quickly got over my totally inappropriate and embarrassing star-struckedness. We talked for 90 minutes about the Arts Lab and lots more and about a third of it made the edit for the Flatpack blog, concentrating mainly on the Lab itself. It’s my intention to rework it into a longer piece that’s more about Hunt and his work, but it’s my intention to do a lot of things.
The Arts Lab really is one of those missing links in the evolution of Birmingham’s arts and culture, feeding the roots of what we have today, and until now it’s been criminally under appreciated. I remember when I first came across the Arts Lab during my time at Created in Birmingham, being amazed that there was nothing online about it. Thanks to Ian at Flatpack for rectifying that.
If you’re around over the next week and interesting in the Lab, Flatpack have a whole load of events on which, naturally, are recommended.
Oh, and a special bonus. At the top of this post is a cutaway cartoon by Hunt of the original Tower St venue. Here it is today on Google Street View:
