Lynne Parker

Think outside of the box. Think funny. Humour is memorable and takes many different forms from stand up to clowning, improv to sketch. Above all the ability to unleash your funny bones in a workplace is the ultimate creative process. Humour is innate in all of us and is vital to our health and wellbeing. It’s time to have FUN AT WORK and we can create comedy for your community.

All good narratives take us on a journey and there needs to be light and dark, ups and downs. Contrast is important and to put over an optimistic message, it's good to explore the 'dark side' and explain how overcoming challenges leads you into the light. Humour is vital for conveying important messages and makes your story memorable. Never shy away from telling a funny anecdote as long as it's in context and conveyed in appropriate language.

A workshop is a work - shop, not a lesson or a lecture. In my Stand Up to Stand Out workshops, both the two-hour version and the longer form one-day version, it's all about the interaction amongst the participants and giving them the space and time to actually work on their own presentations, material or script ideas. It's not for me to write it for them and they need to process it all in their own individual way. Comedy coaches often treat workshops as gigs - as I'm not a comedian, it's all about my 'students' and I'm there to facilitate and listen to them. I give them the tools, strategy and keys to creating material that is intrinsically their own.

As a producer my role is to bring my vision to fruition and make everybody involved feel part of the team, and loved of course! They are performers after all. Comedy is not the same as theatre and I often have to wear a director’s hat as well as managing the production, whilst leaving the creative elements to the acts. I have to consider the appropriateness of content, particularly for corporate commissions - and the ‘fun’ bit is communicating this to the acts so that we don’t cause offence to our client. Diplomacy is critical at this point.

Writing is a solitary activity so managing other projects and briefing people to write to order is a whole different skill set. I actually trained to be a journalist where you had to be a team player and collaborate, particularly on a big story or to bring a daily, weekly or monthly publication to print. Digital media has changed this structured way of working towards set deadlines. Then there’s the issue of creative styles and one person has to bring this together - no room for vanity and fighting over who gets the credit or byline. Now there’s a more relaxed approach to copywriting and some of us old pendants just have to get over it! However our management experience has a lot to offer.

So important for comms to be gender neutral and for us to share the workspace on an equal footing. This entails listening and engaging on a human level - no stereotyping and take the person in front of you at face value based on their skills and expertise. It’s remarkable what people and teams can achieve when this is put into practise!