Monday 02 February 2026, Reference Point, Doors open at 7pm. Free for RSL Members/Fellows and Reference Point Members. Public tickets can be purchased for £10 (£7 concessions available).
Join us as three celebrated visual storytellers take us behind the scenes of their craft. Our 2025 Illustrator-in-Residence, Karrie Fransman, will unveil new work that spins a story of global warming, AI, motherhood and our fear of an unknown future. She’ll be joined by one of the world’s leading performance storytellers, Ben Haggarty, whose dynamic performances blend myth, tradition, and image in unexpected ways, and brilliant comic creator Daniel Locke, known for his exploration of small-scale worlds through comics, puppetry, and tabletop games.
Together, these visual storytellers will showcase their work and reveal their approaches to crafting compelling narratives. Expect a lively mix of performance, conversation, and creative insight as they share the exciting possibilities of storytelling.
Take a glimpse into their work:
Karrie will present the Tale Spinner which is an ‘un-AI-able’ performed comic that revolves around the viewer’s head. In it, Fransman spins a story of global warming, AI, motherhood and our fear of an unknown future. Each performance takes 5 minutes. It was researched and developed with a DYCP grant from Arts Council England.
Ben will offer brief glimpses of two practical forms: his reimagining of a Kavad – inspired by a picture shrine storytelling tradition from Rajasthan, and a Japanese Kamishibai (paper story theatre) made with Illustrator, John Welding.
Starting with a screening of work made during his MA in Fine Art at the Slade, Daniel will discuss elements of his practice which have been shaped by a desire to create and explore small worlds.
Speakers
Karrie Fransman is a visual story teller and comics creator whose work has been published by The United Nations, The British Red Cross, The Guardian, The Times, Time Out, the BBC and by The Arts Council. Her books, ‘Gender Swapped Fairy Tales’ (Faber 2020) and ‘Gender Swapped Greek Myths’ (Faber 2023) were co-created with Jonathan Plackett and published in seven languages. Her graphic novels are ‘The House That Groaned’ (2012), and the award winning ‘Death of the Artist’ (2015) were published by Penguin Random House. Karrie is a founding member of The Comics Cultural Impact Collective (CCIC) raising awareness of the value of comics in the UK. She is creative director at PositiveNegatives- an organisation that amplifies research through comics and animation. She is currently Illustrator-in-Residence at the Royal Society of Literature. You can see more of her work at karriefransman.com.
Ben Haggarty is one of the most popular and consistently innovative storytellers working in the UK. Having been trained in mime and theatre direction and been apprenticed as an image-maker with Welfare State International in 1978, Ben became a pioneering figure in the re-visioning of storytelling as a contemporary performing art in Europe. He organised Britain’s first storytelling festival at BAC in 1985 and subsequently created the Crick Crack Club and co-founded the Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival. He has studied Epic singing traditions in Central Asia and Central India. In 2012 he co-founded the street and festival, myth-telling ensemble, Pandvani 108. Ben works in theatres, festivals, museums, galleries and educational and community contexts and has performed in venues ranging from caves to the Carnegie Hall. His repertoire of over 350 folk tales, fairy tales, epics and myths includes many long form epics such as ‘Gilgamesh’, ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Mr Sandmann’, ‘Midir and Etain’ and ‘Orpheus and Dionysus.’ Ben was the official storyteller with Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble from 2001 – 2011, was Visiting Research Fellow in the Creative Arts at Merton College, Oxford (2023/24) and is Honorary Professor of Storytelling at the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK). He has a long-term interest in all forms Picture Storytelling and produced an Award-winning Graphic Novel series ‘MeZolith’ with illustrations by Adam Brockbank. You can see more of his work at benhaggarty.com.
Daniel Locke is an artist based in Brighton, UK. Since finishing his studies in fine art at the Slade School his practice has evolved to focus on the potential for art to communicate ideas in a more democratic way, through the use of drawing and storytelling. His aim is to celebrate the power of the image to share ideas and narratives with as many people as possible. He creates dynamic and approachable books and artworks with the goal of helping people engage with complex concepts or difficult social issues. You can see more of his work at daniellocke.com.
Presented in partnership with Reference Point.