Speakers and audience considered the questions: How can we practise heritage-making with or through illustration? They explored active processes of heritage-making through digital, institutional, and communal archives and collections, illustrative and co-illustrative methodologies, the making and giving of a ‘voice’, understanding and communicating artefacts, and looking at architecture as a historical material, among other practices. The symposium considered principles including inheritance, displacement, collective memory, subjectivity, and plurality. How do contemporary illustrators participate in historical narratives and give voice to people and communities — remembered, obscured, and imagined — through their work? Panels presentations were on heritage-making as a form of knowledge production, illustration, AR, architecture, and materiality.

The symposium is curated in response to Illustration and Heritage, by Rachel Emily Taylor, published in 2024 by Bloomsbury Press. It is organised in partnership with Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, the Association of Illustrators, and Illustration Educators.

Illustration research has undeniably expanded and deepened over the past decade. What remains to be discovered or critiqued? What are our blind spots?
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As a field illustration has suffered from obstructed views. Traditional art history and institutions of high visual culture once looked past it, due in part to the interdependence of illustration and text. Writers since Wordsworth have pooh-poohed the presence of images in print as a distraction from “discourse.” These ancient blind spots have been well documented, and some progress has been made in positioning illustration in the broader universe of visual culture. Indeed, for the last dozen years, through a program of annual symposia, the Illustration Research Network has fostered and promoted research on illustration history, theory, practice, and pedagogy as a vital subject of inquiry. But blind spots remain, both within and beyond the field.
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What are some of these blind spots? For starters, our histories are incomplete. Many illustration and cartooning careers from the last century remain un-excavated or under-contextualized, particularly those of women and people of color. Despite efforts at diversity, equity, and inclusion across the field, questions concerning sensitive representation of all people(s) in contemporary illustration practice remain live ones—both quantitatively and qualitatively. Who gets seen, and in what light?
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As a mass market form often driven by advertising revenue, illustration long relied on fixed gender and racial tropes, obscuring fluid identities in communities of production and reception. Practitioners and audiences were obscured in that process. How did creators subvert or even sidestep enforced compliance in the representation of gender and race? How have the costs of access to the means of production and/or networks of distribution changed? How do illustrators navigate these questions today?

The institutions that collect illustration-related materials – relatively few in number, and less well-networked than ideal–face their own challenges of perspective and practice. Their contents – typically ephemeral and fugitive – remain invisible to many audiences who would value them. Not unrelatedly, academic study of such materials has tended to privilege elite or “influential” cultural forms, obscuring demotic or vernacular ones, How do curators, archivists, and other professionals overcome these challenges, or struggle and fail to do so? How do practitioners and scholars account for and manage the complexities of reception, use, and translation of illustration, which tends to migrate into “hidden” or “invisible” corners of private enjoyment, topical fandom, even cultish fixation. What are the benefits and costs of addressing such audiences?
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New trends in public life and culture, including new habits of censorship – book banning, mural covering, online iconoclasms, “cancelling” – have raised the stakes of engagement with illustration and its cultural meanings. How are illustrators coping with these challenges? Due to the realities of practice – long hours at their drawing tables and computers – illustrators have always fought isolation. The atomization of online culture has made things worse. In this bewildering cultural moment, how do illustrators manage getting safely “seen”, and by whom? What could a new, healthy visibility look like?
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Other blind spots have emerged with the mass-technologization of visual culture. On one hand, large technology firms like Google and Meta/Facebook now hire staff illustrators at enviable salaries to address multilingual audiences. On the other, illustration labor has become increasingly hidden and devalued due to the contraction of print and especially online piracy and appropriation. AI image production threatens to eliminate the illustrator altogether.
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More foundationally, there are the blind spots that are built into a field rooted in the widespread practices of reading from codexes, which dominated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and accompanied the emergence of illustration as a profession. These practices have since been substantially replaced by screens, scrolling, and audiobooks. Undeniably “the text” has changed – has illustration? Are such changes visible, or hidden in ubiquity?
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Illustration research has undeniably expanded and deepened. How have such alternative and expanded practices – in pedagogy, publishing, and exhibition – expanded sight lines, and what remains to be discovered or critiqued? Omissions, occlusions, under-seen developments, hidden opportunities: so much to see past and through!

Carolyn Shapiro offered Falmouth University to host the 12th International Illustration Research Symposium. We were very excited when Desdemona McCannon of Illustration Research accepted this offer. Consequently, we quickly formed a team to move the project forward. Carolyn Shapiro, Laurence North and Linda Scott began by considering a theme. The idea of illustration as being representative of translation or transposition of actions and concepts became a reoccurring subject of our conversations.
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This developed via many twists and turns into Transitus: Illustration as Crossing Ground. Following two years of Covid lockdown we optimistically committed our planning to organising an in-person on campus event. However, as we progressed, the post-Covid state of the global transport infrastructure and the possibility of further waves of pandemic caused us to rethink. We were also receiving requests from delegates who had attended the previous online symposium at Kingston School of Art (2021), who, based outside of the UK were very keen to be part of the 12th Illustration Research Symposium.

Consequently, we changed tack. At the time of writing this introduction we have around 250 delegates from approximately 28 different countries. This international and enthusiastic engagement with the symposium has more than compensated for our initial disappointment at not being able to realise our first plan for an on-campus event.

We have organised the very broad and stimulating range of presentations as best we could into themed panels that we hope will spark discussion and new ideas. We have also included two workshops that we hope will allow a more active engagement with the symposium theme.

We would like to thank all of those who proposed papers and workshops for the symposium and Desdemona McCannon, Nanette Hoogslag and Adrian Holme from the The Illustration Research Group, Camilla Kjaernet for her technical support and Mandy Jandrell our Director of the Institute of Photography and the Falmouth School of Art for her supportive enthusiasm and financial investment in this research project. We would also like to thank our guest speakers Olivier Kugler, Andrew Humphreys and Professor Hilde Kramer for agreeing contribute to the Transitus: Illustration as Crossing Ground, 12th International Illustration Research Symposium.

The theme of the conference took a particular critical position – as the traditional role of the illustrator ‘for hire’ diminishes and Illustration practices become ever more chimera-like, the current high demand for illustration courses raises important questions around how we educate a future generation of illustrators and make known their value to employers, collaborators and commissioners, outside of the ‘bubble’ of academic study. We know that the case for criticality in the subject is urgent.

The symposium incorporated presentations from over 70 international academics, professional practitioners and recent graduates, as well as a virtual poster forum and an exhibition showcase. 800+ registered to attend the event, making this the largest Illustration research gathering globally. The conference hosted the launch of illustration educators an international network for those who have an interest in the education of illustrators.
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As conference organisers, we guest edited the subsequent two issues of the affiliated Journal of Illustration, drawing from the symposium presentations.

Carl Jung kept visual diaries documenting his personal struggles with mental illness, and Jungian analysis to this day encourages patients to document their dreams using imagery. This year’s IR symposium takes Jung’s ‘Red Book’ as a key text and asks how illustration can be used to depict, explain and help understand mental illness and related issues such as wellbeing, happiness, cognition, confusion, dreams and dementia.

A key question is how can illustration represent the inner workings of the mind, through creating visual narratives that draw upon personal and collective experience of the world. A related question is how does illustration articulate complex emotional and perceptual experience, alongside and beyond spoken and written language?How can illustration – as an activity as well as its place in popular visual culture – address these issues?

We are living at a time where image culture has saturated every aspect of our lives. There has been an equivalent explosion in mental health issues for young people. What part does illustration play in exacerbating or alleviating mental health problems by contributing to popular image culture?

GPs now prescribe creative activities as part of a government drive towards ‘arts for health’, and this has resulted in a boom in artist led services to a diverse demographic. What ethical issues should creative practitioners be aware of when working in this field? How can illustrators lead the agenda for mental health policy making?

In the 2018 symposium 38 international practice based researchers and 13 practitioners were exploring the nature of pattern and ornament within the contexts of illustration, printing, and publishing.

The event was framed by Adolf Loos’ declaration that ornament was seen to be ‘backward’ and ‘degenerate’ activity, counter to the utopian, ‘rationalist’ aims of the modernist movement, and called for it to be criminalised.

The Illustration Research Symposium and Exhibition sought to draw together a range of perspectives on ornament and ornamentation, and their close relatives pattern and the decorative, to explore the resilience, continued value, significance, application, and creation of these cultural forms. It was aimed at celebrating their centrality within human life and cultural production, both past and present, and – speculatively – the future.

Alongside the conference there was an exhibition, featuring a collaborative installation by the graphic designer Hansje van Halem and printer/publisher Jan de Jong, as well as ornament-related research projects from 13 contributing artists. The related two issues of the Journal of Illustration were published in September and December 2019.

This conference invites participants to explore the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural means through which illustration, in all of its forms, contributes, and has contributed historically, to the shaping of ‘identity/ies’.

The study of illustration provides powerful insights into not only the representation, but also the construction of identity – including gender identities, national and political identities, subcultures, hybrid identities and performative identities. Illustrators as cultural agents have the power to both reinforce and problematise ‘the visual vocabulary of politics’ (Steven Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State, 2008; rep. 2010) through their use and manipulation of cultural narratives and stereotypes.

Illustrators often navigate several personas when creating artwork – for example the desires of the client, the reception of the audience, and the voices within the text. They may also produce highly personal and subjective work documenting emergent or performed identities in relation to historical, geographical, social, cultural and phenomenological matrices.

We are keen to encourage critical and theoretical frameworks which foster understanding of the cultural relevance of illustration, and to examine the links between book history, print and digital culture and identity. Both practice-led and theoretical papers are welcome. Papers may cover any form (book illustrations, extra illustrations, press cartoons, digital art, etc.) or type (decorative, narrative,
scientific, technical, historical, educational, satirical, etc.) of illustration from the Early Modern period or Renaissance to the present day.

The 7th annual Illustration Research Symposium takes the idea of ‘landscape’ as a starting point. Academic papers, visual presentations, interventions and excursions were invited to explore, map and interrogate the ways that landscapes are conceptualised and understood through illustration, both in contemporary practice and historically.

From topographic engravings in 18th century travel guides to pen and ink hand drawn maps in the endpapers of classic detective fiction, the mass produced illustrated image mediates our collective understanding of place. In recognising a view as ‘romantic’, picturesque or even as abject, an illustrated image often lurks at the edges of our idea of landscape, prompting these taxonomies of place.
National and regional identities are depicted through illustrated representations of ‘chocolate box’ country villages, highland castles or Welsh valleys. On biscuit tins and place mats, bookjackets, wallpaper and food packaging these are images in everyday use forming the background to our daily lives.

Geographies of the last wild places- the prairie, the artic tundra, the rainforest, the moon – exotic landscapes often encountered only via the pages of an atlas or picture book. Our popular awareness and understanding of these places is mediated through the commissioned, constructed image. The landscape itself is often illustrated – think of the long man of Wilmington, and the ‘wild signs’ of graffiti on buildings, trees and stones. History is enscribed into the landscape, and read out from archeological data drawings and ethnographic documentation.

Future landscapes are imagined through the paratexts of book, poster and colour plate. Science fiction illustration creates a set of cultural blueprints for a utopian/dystopian vision on the horizon, but also creates spaces to enact contemporary anxieties about the natural world and our place within it.
The residing ‘genius loci’ or spirit of place is personified – for example in Studio Ghibli’s ‘night walker’, or the ‘Green Man’ who stalks through the forested collective unconscious of British folklore, the idea of nature as sentient, knowing and seeing, pervades the literary and visual cultures of landscape around the world.

Dreams and memories are often sited in particular places, and locating the inner landscape through illustration is a form of liminal practice connecting the imagined and the real. Conversely, illustrating using the materiality of place is a form of alchemical practice, sealing the world into an image, mustering a place into the picture plane. Illustration both enables us to ‘see’ landscape and positions us within it, enscribing meaning and value into certain kinds of landscape, creating cultural habitats for personal and collective memory.

Illustrators and all who study their work have long understood the importance of pictures to communicate ideas and shape opinion, and to possibly provoke the viewer in unpredictable ways. What should illustrators say in the public sphere? What forces limit the illustrator’s expression of thought? What are the key issues and debates around the communication of ideas through illustration?

Organized and hosted by the Illustration Research Network and RISD Illustration, the 6th annual International Illustration Research Symposium invited proposals for papers, panels, round tables, and visual presentations on the theme of the illustrator as not only conveyor of established intellectual thought in the public sphere, but also as a vital, potent voice in public discourse and the author of content through independent provocation, seduction and persuasion.

The Illustrator as Public Intellectual questions the common misconceptions that the illustrator’s mind and hand are wholly guided by editors, art directors, and clients; and that their work is subordinate to the texts they illustrate. This symposium proposes that illustrators are empowered as originators and purveyors of unique thought.

The visual languages of the illustrator not only translate content, they transform it, indelibly inscribing ideas with force and conviction at the intersection of visual and verbal thinking. And yet, public exposition is dogged by inevitable challenges, including balancing profundity and accessibility, intention and misinterpretation. Papers may embrace or reject the concept of the public intellectual, while addressing relationships between communicative intention and audience reception.

The definition of illustration was open to wide interpretation by participants, but as a general guideline illustration had been provisionally defined as fabricated images primarily created to elucidate and communicate an idea, narrative, mood, information, and/or opinion through publication. Studies on the illustration of any era or place were welcome.

Through talks, workshops, performances and exhibited works, we considered the illustrator in terms of the ‘habitual travelling’ that he or she undertakes. The itinerant nature of the illustrator is evident in the praxis of illustration itself – the oscillation of thought between word and image, page and screen, hand and eye, dream and reality.

Occupying many roles and moving dynamically between them, the itinerant illustrator is an interpreter, a translator, an illuminator, as well as a storyteller, enquirer, performer and a pictorial juggler of ideas. The nomadic nature of the illustrator is to wander between disciplines, search for new contexts and to make images not on one, but several different platforms within an eternal evolution of technologies.

The multi-sited nature of illustration, along with illustrators’ journeys between several positions and places, also involves images that travel. We wanted to investigate the fluidity of visual codes and languages, the translations, adaptations and hybrid practices that respond to the movement of cultures within the global village. How are images made and read within shifting regional and trans national contexts? How can we use illustration itself as a methodology to shed light on the praxis of illustration in these multiple contexts?

The Science, Imagination and the Illustration of Knowledge symposium considered the contemporary and historical role of illustration in relation to the collection, processing, understanding, and organisation of knowledge and associated questions of epistemology and pedagogy.
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The symposium was organised by Illustration Research in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Pitt Rivers Museum, and the Museum of the History of Science and these world famous collections provided an important context for the exploration of these issues alongside presentations from curators.

The Symposium brought together 200 delegates from across the world, from a wide range of disciplines, including historians, various branches of the sciences, as well as art and design. A total of 21 papers were presented, along with 50 poster presentations (a number of abstracts of the papers, together with a list of posters are presented below). We also present drawings made at the event by Derek Bainton and Peter Jarvis.

The Third ‘Illustration Research’ Symposium explores the idea of the illustrator as contemporary ‘folk’ artist, and asks what function the illustrator has within communities – local and global. Sessions are themed around key ideas, and cover ground such as the visual language and iconography of folk motifs on clothing, the cultural impact of ‘folk art’ in shaping national identity, the collaboration between publisher and folk artists in India, the engagement of illustrators with the public to create powerful personal narratives, the idea of folk icons, relational and pragmatic methods of creating illustration, the illustration of urban myths, and the exploration of cultural identities through narrative illustration. The diversity of illustration practice today is represented – from traditional techniques of paper cutting, drawing and printmaking to puppetry and performance alongside work created for digital platforms.

With an impressively international line up of speakers and an exhibition of contemporary illustration inspired by the theme of the conference, this event is hosted by the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. The event will be held in an evocative venue – the two beautifully restored historic buildings that house Krakow’s wonderful collection of ethnographic art. The organisers anticipate that most of the work will be displayed as digital printouts

Following on from the international symposium in 2011 ‘Illustration and Writing’, The Illustration Research event this year was exploring the idea of the illustrator as popular or ‘folk’ artist, taking Noel Carrington’s definition of popular art as a starting point, ‘art produced by and for the people among whom the artist lives and works.’ We were interested to explore the idea of the illustration as a contemporary folk art, a vernacular expression of community and identity. This included work that has been produced to express local cultures, stories and the needs of local businesses, work that has a decorative utility in the domestic environment, work that has been made with skill for a particular purpose or responding to specific cultures, beliefs and customs, and work that has a function within the community it was made for.

Convened by Desdemona McCannon (Manchester School of Art), Amelia Johnston and Chris Glynn, the event looked to illustration as an expression of the ‘primary language of vision’ (Kepes) and aimed to integrate its practices and philosophies, both historical and emerging. The event sought to expand the theoretical and practical frameworks and nuances of this potent and far-reaching discipline.

This Symposium brought together academics and practising artists, writers, and designers in exploring Text and Image in their relationship to Illustration; both in research and practice. Various speakers addressed issues of form and content, intention and audience.

There was an exhibition of work by Jonny Hannah alongside the symposium, and also a curated group show by Mack Manning entitled 'Magic Theatre'. Selected proceedings of the symposium were edited by Desdemona McCannon into a dedicated issue of the Journal of Writing for Creative Practice (4:3). The event also launched the 'Manifesto for Illustration' written by Desdemona McCannon and Chris Glynn and published in the Journal of Writing for Creative Practice Vol 4:2

The conference invited to explore the themes of Alchemy, Redolence, and Enchantment. It was exploring these themes, but was also open to papers, which may be a contrast, to debate or discover new ground not yet considered. The point of the symposium was not only to celebrate, talk about, and bring illustrators together but to also invite artists, writers, musicians, actors, playwrights, storytellers, architects, and filmmakers to offer their views, ideas, and possibilities for illustration, and for content. Illustration is, after all, about everything, and in looking at the themes of Alchemy, Redolence and Enchantment, there may be other factors which can add to this, open up questions for debate and further research.

As the first symposium, and the beginning of research into illustration in Cardiff this symposium seeks to find new areas for enquiry and dig deeper into areas which already exist, but particularly and initially, illustration for a growing audience and the space between literature and illustration, the friction of text and image and what happens in one's imagination.

The symposium wished to question, delight, inspire and discuss the impact of these disciplines in the shadows and in our time; how storytelling, picture making and imagination can make a difference and make better our too often un-enriched world.