Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration Confirms Summer Opening Date

The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration has announced that it will officially open to the public on June 5 with three exhibitions, a cafe, shop, gardens and free spaces including a library and creative studio. 

Located in Clerkenwell, it will be the world’s largest space dedicated to illustration, with tickets for its special exhibitions going on sale on April 29. Tickets will allow visitors to:

• view more than 100 original and rarely-seen drawings in Quentin Blake: Performance showcasing the theatrical influences of the illustrator
• see the first major exhibition on queer comic-making in the UK, spanning 1940s to the current day in Queer as Comics
• experience MURUGIAH’s kaleidoscopic and sometimes macabre world exploring themes of identity and mental health through works inspired by Hollywood, sci-fi, and 2000s pop punk

Ahead of opening, the Centre has refreshed its identity to include some feathered friends, inspired by founder Quentin Blake who has drawn hundreds of cockatoos, parakeets and other birds over his nearly 80-year career. “I have liked birds, to look at and to draw, ever since I was a child," he siad, "and more recently I have found that if you need an extra note of colour, a small parrot or cockatoo is very useful.”

The Centre’s new suite of cockatoo characters is a nod towards the playfulness and versatility of illustration. Colours, chosen for improved accessibility and suitability across print and digital, have been loosely inspired by Quentin’s watercolours. The free-spirited cockatoo runs alongside the Centre’s pre-existing logotype as designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio. Set in Caslon Doric, the typeface was created in 1722 less than a mile away from the Centre’s Clerkenwell site at a time when it was a working waterworks.