Laugh Moor with Agnes Carter and Dr Edel McGlanaghy

‘I have no desire to perform, but I would love to laugh more.’ If that sounds like you, read on!

Stand up comedian and improviser Agnes Carter and clinical psychologist Dr Edel McGlanaghy are bringing a two-part workshop to the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, designed to help you develop your own humour practice. Agnes tells us a bit more about how the workshop came about and what you can expect if you go along on 31 October and 7 November.

Edel and I met during a comedy writing meet up last year and have kept in touch since then, suffice it to say we’re both equally passionate about combining humour and mental health. I have wanted to get stuck into this ever since I researched the mental health benefits of humour during my MSc in the Psychology of Mental Health, and built on this leading Decider Skills courses with the Thrive team in North East Edinburgh.

Decider Skills is built on the idea that people are more likely to remember something if it’s funny or unusual, and I can attest to that. I’ve been performing as a storyteller, stand up comedian and improviser since 2018, with improv especially encapsulating the kind of playfulness I hope to help people embrace through this workshop.

It’s brilliant to be working with Edel who brings over a decade of experience as a clinical psychologist and researcher who has been dabbling in stand up comedy for a while now. She’s been making folk laugh about PTSD, psychological therapy and parenting at both Edinburgh Fringe and Glasgow International Comedy Festivals.

The name of the workshop, Laugh Moor, is obviously a pun (would we be comedians if we didn’t have one of those in our back pocket). In the seriousness of life we can get bogged down and our sense of humour can get buried in a dreary moor, but once you develop it, your sense of humour is something you can use to moor yourself when you feel stressed and adrift.

When we met to discuss what this workshop will look like, what we kept coming back to was the idea of developing an intentional humour practice. People talk about their personal yoga practice or art practice for well-being, but when it comes to humour, people often think that’s just for stand up comedians, and the idea of getting up on stage is understandably not for everyone.

Gradually we find ourselves laughing less and less because life gets more serious. But actually, funny things are all around us, if we only notice them, and through that we can begin to craft our own sense of humour.

In the first session we’re going to do a deep dive into the research on the benefits of humour and which styles of humour are linked to better well-being. We’ll explore what each of us finds funny, bring your own reel or meme style, and do some exercises to notice the funny in our day to day lives. There will be optional, and hopefully hilarious, homework to keep a humour diary and notice at least three funny things each day. Then in the second session we’ll share what we found funny across the week and have a go at putting some joke-writing principles into practice.

We hope you’ll join us and ultimately Laugh Moor.

Date: 11am-1pm, 31 October, 7 November
Location: Slow Progress Records & Coffee Shop (we can attest the coffee is excellent)
Address: 53 Blackfriars St, Edinburgh, EH1 1NB
Price: Pay what you can (suggested donation £6 per session or £10 if you want to pay it forward).