Author Archives: ejh43

Spotlight on: The Josie Long Collection

On the 25th January 2016 we were lucky enough to have to opportunity to visit comedian Josie Long at her Arts Emergency Office in Hackney*. Josie had gathered together a collection of gems from throughout her career, ranging from some her first tours to her drawings & zines, to material from her monthly ‘The Lost Treasures of the Black Heart’ comedy club.

One of the earliest items from the collection is a notebook created by Josie when she was performing live in 1998 which contains listings, photographs and annotations.

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Page from Josie’s 1998 notebook. BSUCA/JL/1/1/1

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Page from Josie’s 1998 notebook. BSUCA/JL/1/1/1

A significant part of Josie’s collection is a vast amount of material from her various tours, from Kindness & Exuberance in 2006/2007 to her Cara Josephine show performed from 2014-2016. Within these series’ are items related to tour preparations such as beautiful mind-maps of ideas for shows, to the sketch pads and props used in the shows themselves!

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Mind-map used by Josie Long to brainstorm ideas for her ‘The Future is Another Place’ show 2011-2012 BSUCA/JL/1/8/1

 

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Cardboard cut-outs used for ‘An Audience with Dan Nightingale and Josie Long’ shows, 2005. BSUCA/JL/1/3/2

Another amazing part of Josie’s collection is the audience contributions made at her live shows. It has been wonderful to see how  involved and enthusiastic comedy audiences can be. For example in her Kindness and Exuberance tour, audience members were encouraged to write down their ‘favourite small thing’. After the tour Josie created a zine from these contributions.

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Audience contributions from Josie Long’s Kindness and Exuberance tour in which she asked the audience to write down their favourite small thing BSUCA/JL/1/4/8

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Favourite Small Things Zine created by Josie Long compiling audience contributions, who were asked at her Kindness and Exuberance tour to write down their favourite small things. BSUCA/JL/1/4/5

As part of  Josie ‘All of the Planets Wonders’ tour, she encouraged audience members to send her objects so that she could create a museum of All the Planets Wonders objects which attracted a variety object including books, badges and even food.

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Objects collected from the audiences of the ‘All of the Planets Wonders’ tour. This picture shows a Teddy bear someone found when they moved into a new house, a badge from Edinburgh Zoo and an orange thrown by Josie to and audience member at a previous show. BSUCA/JL/1/6/7

It is brilliant to also have a range of materials from Josie’s life outside of her solo performances. Her collection stretches to material from her ‘The Lost Treasures of the Black Heart’ comedy club which includes club notes & records books and  also audience artwork created during the shows.

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Felt artworks created by the audience at a Lost Treasures of the Black Heart club show BSUCA/JL/2/6

Finally, a mention has to be made to Josie’s great comic creations. From August 2011 Josie has been drawing for the Guardian, creating a comic called ‘Josie Long’s Another Planet’, a collection of which is now in the archive. Also from 2005 Josie has created her own ‘Drawing Moustaches in Magazines Monthly‘ Magazine, issues 1-7 of which are now held by BSUCA.

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Josie Long’s Another Planet: What if we did pull out of Europe? [published 2nd February 2013] BSUCA/JL/2/4/9

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First Issue of ‘Drawing Moustaches in Magazines Monthly’ Magazine, April 20th- June 19th 2005 BSUCA/JL/2/3

The Josie Long collection has now been catalogued and will soon be discoverable via the University of Kent Library catalogue and accessible to view on request at the Special Collections Reading Room.

*Arts Emergency is an organisation created by Josie Long and Neil Griffiths, working with young people in higher education from diverse backgrounds, helping them to effectively access higher education in the Arts or Humanities. They create events to share this information and also to raise money for the work that they do.

British Stand-Up Comedy Archive Winter Update



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As Winter sets in here at the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive, we thought we would give a quick update on what we’re currently working on! As we near the end of the year we are delighted to now have 21 comedy collections as part of the archive. We have now received material from:

–          Alexei Sayle
–          Andrew Sherlock
–          Attila the Stockbroker
–          BSUCA Events
–          Camden Fringe
–          Folkestone Comedy Club
–          Ian Gardhouse
–          Jeremy Hardy
–          John Pidgeon
–          Linda Smith
–          Lost Voice Guy
–          Monika Bobinska (of the Meccano Club / Canal Gallery)
–          Mark Thomas
–          Nick Toczek
–          Oliver Double
–          Peter Grahame (of Downstairs at the Kings Head)
–          Richard Herring
–          Robin Ince
–          Tony Allen
–          Tiernan Douieb
–          What the Frock! Comedy

 

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New Lost Voice Guy Collection- November 2015

Cataloguing:
As our collections grow, it becomes increasingly important to list and catalogue every collection on the University of Kent’s Special Collections & Archives Calm archival database. All collections have been catalogued to collection level and significant progress has been made in the cataloguing of our first, and largest, collections: The Linda Smith Collection, The Mark Thomas Collection and The John Pidgeon Collection. These collections were made a priority at the start of the BSUCA project due to their size and the large amounts, and variety of formats, of audiovisual material within them.

Cataloguing increases access and availability of the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive and the next major step for us will be when the full BSUCA collection listings will be accessible via a Special Collections & Archives CalmView site in 2016. Until this point we are happy to provide any further information regarding the collections and their content to anyone interested and material can be viewed in the Special Collections & Archives Reading Room in the Templeman Library on request (email specialcollections@kent.ac.uk).

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Just 2 of the boxes of comedy books from the Ian Gardhouse collection

Conference:
It’s not long not until the joint British Stand-Up Comedy Archive and British Cartoon Archive conference (‘Comedy on stage and page: satirical cartoons and stand-up’) on the 14th-15th January 2016. We have received some fantastic abstracts for papers and are delighted to have speakers and guests including Ivor Dembina, Steve Bell and Arnold Brown.

More information will be available very soon regarding registration for the conference. We look forward to seeing you there!

Exhibition:
As part of the preparations for the January conference, we will be holding a joint exhibition with the British Cartoon Archive in the brand new exhibition space in the new Templeman Library West, on the first floor, right outside the Special Collections Reading Room. We’re delighted to be able to exhibit a range of materials from the BSUCA archive related to comedy performance, promotion, venues, and the intersection of comedy and politics. This exhibition is due to be unveiled from Monday 15th December and will run throughout the conference in January 2016.

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A selection of cassette tapes from the Andrew Sherlock Collection. Andrew created a radio show ‘Best of Order’ about the history & legacy of working men’s clubs in Merseyside [These tapes are currently being digitised]