Like the illustrations contained in written communications, live cartooning using caricatures allows you to:

• Enhance the content put across in an original manner
• Maintain the attention and interest of your audience, spectators and speakers
• Lighten the load when presenting information, and relax the atmosphere
• Create a break, allowing you to 'breathe' for a moment... using art and humour!
• Represent your topic, making it less abstract
• Structure the event: introducing the themes, moving from one speaker to the next
• Humanise the communication through the subjectivity of the drawing
• Offset your speech, give a different perspective (that of the outsider, the neophyte, the 'artist')
• Cement certain points in the memory through the impact of the image
• Emphasise, get a key idea across (which can be communicated to the cartoonist beforehand)
• Flag up a certain detail, attract our attention to something that might have gone unnoticed
• Summarise long developments or a situation through a drawing
• Raise a smile or laugh from the audience and/or the speaker (perhaps making him or her more 'friendly'!)
• Convey a positive image of the organising body (ability to be self-depreciating)
• Ex-press ('relieve the pressure of') the audience's feelings, through representation
• Dare to say what remains unsaid, or to ask that naïve or 'fatal' question - what everyone is thinking or perhaps nobody has thought of
• Temper an idea that is too unequivocal
• Conclude in a positive manner

Specific, very practical uses

• Welcome the participants, guests, audience
• Capture their attention
• Ask them to switch off their mobile phones
• Remind the speakers to keep to their allocated time
• Encourage them to speak closer to the microphone
• Explain a communication procedure applied during the meeting
• Call the room to order in a nice way
• Announce a break, lunch, etc.
• Fill a gap (due to a technical problem, for example)
• Help a speaker in difficulty - having trouble making themselves understood, being heckled, losing their place in their notes
• Pay tribute to those who cannot be there
• Thank the participants in an original way
• Communicate a reference website or e-mail address to be noted down
• Invite the participants to a drinks reception
• Provide a set of illustrations for any meeting reports or
• Give a gift or reward to the participants: caricature, original drawing, etc.
  

In the case of a less formal event:

• Amuse, provide humour, laughter, surprise, a touch of originality
• Promote communication (the drawings will prompt reactions, get people to move around, etc.
• Encourage a sense of relaxation in circumstances that can sometimes become 'stilted'
• Bring the participants together around a drawing (created with them, for example)
• Offer participants the pleasure of seeing themselves or their friends being caricatured
• Respond to requests from guests, participants or attendees
• Provide a souvenir (the drawings can be given to the participants)

Option : production of illustrations prior to the event
Why not use drawings to enhance your communications prior to the event? This can be a good 'teaser'!

Option: creation of a compendium
Gather all the drawings in a book to offer your participants - a good means of communication and an original souvenir!