There’s something beautiful and magical about a safe place where we can experiment, create and try out new ideas and experiences and have fun with our peers. Funny Women IS that place and while we’ve been reviewing the best way to run this year’s Funny Women Awards, we are still supporting you at grassroots and ensuring the future of female comedy.
Last week we had two amazing events that broke the mould and support creative development and life stages in the best way ever – through comedy!
On Monday evening we hosted our recently re-established Funny Women Live in London ‘open mic’ night which is settling nicely into its monthly routine at the Groucho Club. We ran similar events pre-pandemic and when I was explaining to the events manager at the club that we were having difficulty finding a central and accessible venue in London, she kindly offered to support us by providing the most perfect safe space.
Funny Women Live in London is a welcome missing piece of our community comedy ‘jigsaw’ alongside our events in mainland Europe, Ireland and North America run by a team of amazing volunteer regional producers in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris, Basel, Dublin and Montreal. Zurich coming very soon too!
We also have an increasingly thriving community here in our hometown of Medway. We had funding from Medway Council earlier this year and launched our Comedy in the Community initiative with a series of events including How to Have Fun at Work which we plan to do all over again very soon.
We are now running series of events with Medway Adult Education and last week we held our inaugural Funny Women – Baby on Board show. This was a lovely, chaotic baby-filled event of live comedy geared up for a lunchtime audience of mums who wanted to enjoy some adult entertainment while also accommodating the distractions of feeding, nappy changing and toddler wrangling!
Baby on Board is part of a programme supported by Multiply and I am running two workshops this week all about building confidence with some numbers thrown in. Babies also welcome again and I’m dusting down those counting songs! All the booking details are over on our events page here and it’s free to attend.
Thanks to an amazing core team of producers, performers and supporters who are keeping the ethos of Funny Women very much alive and kicking – you know who you are and I’m forever grateful.
