Projects
Silver Comedy Competition
As an antidote to all the young upstarts taking over the comedy scene, many of whom were not alive when comedy was proclaimed ‘the new rock n’ roll’, we have teamed up with Silver Comedy, a specialist comedy training company working with older people, to launch The Silver Stand Up of the Year Competition open to any comedian, established or up and coming over the age of 55.
Supporting the competition will be stand up workshops with Silver Comedy’s training Director Chris Head. Chris is a Producer, Director and Comedy Trainer and he has delivered courses and sessions for City Lit, Central St Martins, the BBC, Channel 4 and a range of private students and corporate clients.
Silver Comedy is Britain’s first specialist comedy training company seeking to enrich the lives of older people through actively engaging them in comedy workshops and performances. Past work has taken place across the UK and focused on interactive workshops featuring improvisational comedy and games and comedy sketch writing courses leading to live performances. The launch of this competition encourages older people to perform pure stand up.
Community Clowning
This award winning project started in Braunstone, a new deal area of Leicester, where adults were given the opportunity to learn new skills and improve their confidence by taking part in workshops to become community clowns. The project has now developed in to a series of circus skills workshops led by a Leicester based artist. The course is open to participants over the age of 16 and will bring together new and past participants creating an ever stronger sense of the benefits of clowning and circus.
This project which has received funding from Arts Council England, is a partnership between Leicester Comedy Festival, WEA, Lighthouse Learning, Soft Touch, Creative Braunstone, NYP, NIACE and YALP.
Speak for Yourself
This project partners young people from Leicester with illustrator Paul Barrand and writer Tim Haq to produce a comic book that can be used as a toolkit by teachers and young people to examine current and complex issues in engaging and creative ways. The first book looked at issues around new arrivals to the city and the second (“Speak for Yourself”) is about racism and extremism. Year 10 students from Crown Hills Community College used drawing, storyboarding, debate and role play to explore this important and difficult area in workshops before developing a storyline for the final comic book. Copies will be published and distributed around the city thanks to funding by Connecting Communities Plus, a Home Office scheme and Leicester City Council.
Those YoungMinds
"Hilarious and heart warming" Time Out
This show aims give information as well as break some of the taboos surrounding fatherhood. It was commissioned by the national charity YoungMinds, and delves into concerns that parents may have about the mental health of children and young people and ways in which they can access support. The show draws on a mix of workshops, consultations and personal anecdotes and has toured to a variety of venues from the Soho Theatre in London, known for its support of new writing to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The Contact Project
The Contact Project based in the St Matthews area of Leicester aims to build the self esteem of those it works with, developing and extending their skills and helping them to move towards achieving personal goals and aspirations.
What makes the project so different and successful is their use of fun and creativity to carry out their important and serious work and their participation in Make Me Happy is an opportunity to get together, share and celebrate. Their latest project a multi media performance piece that was premiered at Phoenix.
Hurt Until it Laughs
"A superb show" BBC Radio 4
John Ryan is partial to the odd pint and bag of nuts and doesn’t claim to be the model of male fitness. Nevertheless, he has been busy posing the question "Why do men hate going to the doctor?" After a series of debates with men of all shapes and sizes he has turned his findings into the award winning comedy show Hurt Until it Laughs. The show has toured extensively around the country from a Miners Hall to the Edinburgh Fringe where it sparked an afternoon of health checks on comedians.
Bright Sparks
BrightSparks arts in mental health group have developed sketch comedy performances with the guidance of performance poet, comic, workshop leader and reformed psychiatric nurse, Rob Gee. This partnership has both developed participants skills and boosted their confidence to a level where they are relaxed and really enjoy entertaining audiences. Alongside this there is a commitment to produce a fundraiser show that not only raises the profile of the work of BrightSparks but a range of organisations who work around mental health.
Doctor, Doctor!
We have a very well established and successful Arts and Health programme using the arts to improve public health and address health inequalities across the UK. The programme works with a range of ages and across a variety of issues and includes Laughing Fit, a day of healthy living workshops; Ditch the Chips, an animation film produced by young children, encouraging healthy eating and exercise; The Boardroom, a performance piece around smoking cessation and “cr8” a project that assists schools in gaining healthy schools status.
Leicester’s Talking about Sex and Relationships
Part of a programme of new initiatives being developed by the Leicester Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Board – This exciting project is a partnership between the Board, Connexions Leicester Shire, Youth Service, Leicester City Primary Care Trust, Leicester Comedy Festival and Crown Hills Community College.
This project has brought together a group of young people from Crown Hills Community College towards the creation of Comedy Sketches around issues relating to Relationships and Sex. With ideas developed by the young people themselves, the comedy sketches seek to dispel many of the myths around Relationships and Sex, aiming to provide useful and considered information for their peer group and a springboard to classroom based discussion and learning. With thanks to Kate Unwin.
Funny Old World
Funny Old World seeks to influence the education and attitudes of older people as well as younger people through intergenerational contact and profile using perceptions and portrayal of older people through comedy as a stimulus for debate and to challenge stereotypes.
This project aims to promote healthy ageing, raise the profile and debate around ageing, provide opportunities to learn new skills and develop learning in retirement and tackle social exclusion. It will also act as a tool to create new social networks, highlight issues of prejudice and age discrimination.