What We’ve Learned in the First 11 Months of Gags for Good

Eleven months ago, Gags for Good CIC was an idea.

The idea was fairly simple: comedy can do more than entertain people. It can build confidence, create connections, give people a creative outlet and help people find their voice.

What we didn’t know was whether anyone else would agree.

Eleven months later, we’ve run comedy courses, supported people writing and performing stand-up for the first time, produced showcases and live events, worked with brilliant comedians and creatives, built new partnerships and watched people do things they genuinely didn’t think they were capable of doing.

We’ve also made mistakes, changed plans, worried about ticket sales, hunted for venues, rewritten courses, learned what works and discovered quite a few things we definitely won’t be doing again.

So, before we hit our first birthday, here are some of the biggest things we’ve learned.

1. People don’t need to think they’re funny to learn comedy

One of the biggest misconceptions about our courses is that you need to already be “the funny one”. You don’t!

Some people arrive full of ideas. Others arrive convinced they have absolutely no material and no idea why they signed up.

Comedy is a craft.

You can learn how to spot a premise, write a setup, build a punchline, use misdirection, exaggeration and callbacks, and turn something that happened to you into something an audience wants to hear.

And sometimes the people who arrive saying, “I’m not actually funny,” are the ones who surprise themselves the most.

2. The showcase matters

When we first started, it would have been easy to see the final performance as simply the nice bit at the end of a course. It isn’t.

It changes the whole experience.

Having something real to work towards gives people a reason to keep rewriting, practising and pushing through the terrifying moment when they realise:

“Oh God. I’m actually going to have to say this in front of people.”

Then they do.

Watching someone walk onto a stage nervous and walk off having made a room full of people laugh is one of the best parts of Gags for Good.

3. Confidence doesn’t always look confident

We’ve learned that confidence isn’t necessarily becoming the loudest person in the room.

Sometimes it’s someone sharing an idea for the first time.

Sometimes it’s performing a joke they were convinced wasn’t good enough.

Sometimes it’s getting on stage despite being absolutely terrified.

And sometimes it’s coming back the following week when the previous week felt difficult.

Those moments can look small from the outside.

They aren’t.

4. A supportive room makes people braver

Comedy can feel intimidating. You’re effectively standing in front of strangers and saying: “Here’s something I wrote. Please validate me immediately and preferably quite loudly.”

So the environment matters.

We’ve learned that when people feel safe enough to experiment, fail, rewrite and try again, they take much bigger creative risks.

Support doesn’t mean pretending everything is brilliant. Good feedback matters!

It means creating a space where somebody can hear, “That joke isn’t working yet,” without hearing, “You’re not funny.” There’s a massive difference.

5. The right people matter more than having lots of people

When you start something new, it’s very easy to become obsessed with numbers.

How many people signed up? How many tickets did we sell? How many followers have we got?

Obviously those things matter. We do, unfortunately, live in a world where venues don’t accept “good vibes” as payment.

But we’ve learned that growth isn’t just about getting as many people through the door as possible.

It’s about finding the right people.

People who want to learn. People who support each other. Comedians who understand what we’re trying to build. Venues and organisations that genuinely want to collaborate.

A smaller room full of people who believe in what you’re doing can sometimes move things forward much faster than a packed room of people who don’t.

6. People come for comedy and get much more from it

People sign up because they want to try stand-up, improve their writing, do something creative or challenge themselves.

But something else happens along the way...

People make friends.

They encourage each other. They share ideas. They celebrate when someone finally cracks a joke they’ve been struggling with. They turn up to each other’s gigs.

Comedy becomes the reason people walked into the room.

The connections are often the reason they keep coming back.

That has shaped how we think about Gags for Good enormously.

7. Social impact and genuinely good comedy can exist together

This one is important.

Gags for Good isn't about lowering the bar because something has a social purpose.

We want people to gain confidence, develop skills and feel more connected.

But we also want them to write good jokes.

The two things aren't competing ambitions.

In fact, we've learned that taking the comedy seriously is part of what makes the social impact work.

People deserve proper creative development, honest feedback and the opportunity to produce something they're proud of.

8. Partnerships make everything possible

One thing we definitely couldn't do alone is build this.

Venues, comedians, tutors, organisations, funders, promoters, audiences and other creatives have all played a part in helping Gags for Good grow.

We've learned to ask.

Ask for the room. Ask about collaborating. Ask whether somebody wants to try something new with us.

Sometimes people say no.

Sometimes they say yes and suddenly an idea scribbled down a few months earlier becomes an actual event with actual people sitting in actual chairs.

Which is still slightly terrifying.

9. You have to be willing to change the plan

Some ideas work immediately. Some need tweaking. Some need completely rebuilding. And occasionally an idea needs to be quietly taken outside and never spoken about again.

We've become much better at listening to participants, audiences, partners and each other. Gags for Good now isn't exactly what we imagined eleven months ago. That's a good thing. The aim isn't to prove the original idea was perfect.

It's to keep making it better.

10. There is a real appetite for creative spaces built around comedy

Perhaps the biggest thing we've learned is that people want this.

They want opportunities to be creative.

They want to meet people.

They want to learn something new without feeling like they need to already be brilliant at it.

They want spaces where they can take risks, be ridiculous, make mistakes and occasionally discover they've written something genuinely hilarious.

And they want to laugh.

Never underestimate how important that last one is.

So what happens next?

We're still learning.

We want to develop more courses, create more opportunities for people to perform, work with more brilliant creatives and organisations, and keep exploring how comedy can be used for confidence, creativity and connection.

We also want Gags for Good to become a place where people can develop, from somebody nervously writing their first joke to somebody beginning to find their place in the wider comedy world.

Eleven months isn't very long.

But it's been long enough to prove something we suspected when we started:

Comedy can change how somebody feels about themselves.

Sometimes all it takes is a room, a microphone and the courage to tell the first joke.

And if the joke bombs? Well... we've learned something from that too.