There’s never been more awareness and open discussion about our mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Almost every celebrity is as open and honest about their breakdowns as their break ups and there are as many new initiatives being launched to help us maintain and exercise our minds as there are for our bodies.
This week, The Dukes and Duchesses of Sussex and Cambridge have come together to voice a televised advertisement for a new mental health campaign. The short film, which highlights the Every Mind Matters campaign, will be broadcast simultaneously across several television channels on Monday evening.
Despite the seriousness of their message, the Royals know how important it is to have some fun too. Comedy and mental health are intrinsically linked with many of us using humour as a good way of managing and maintaining our mental state. In the workplace, it fuels both our creativity and the way we work and interact with others.
Women are particularly good at using humour and demonstrating our feminine approach to male colleagues can increase their understanding of how we tick – in the workplace and beyond. Humour helps us with our self-confidence, to communicate memorably with others, build teams and break down barriers.
Our community of brilliant funny women is teeming with comic talent and over the last year since we launched our HERlarious intitiative, we have been working with some of the top agencies and networks across the advertising and marketing industries, to get humour firmly on the agenda.
Despite our best efforts, and those of fantastic organisations like SheSays and Creative Equals, women in the creative industries still get a pretty poor deal when it comes to equal pay and promotion. Male creatives outnumber female creatives and women do get passed over for the ‘headline’ roles particularly if they run the risky strategy of taking parental leave. Truth is, men want these privileges as much as women so sharing the fun stuff should now be part of the creative culture. A healthy work life balance will also help to counteract the mental health epidemic afflicting us all.
To celebrate a year of amazing HERlarious events, our next event Comedy, Wellbeing and Confidence for Creatives takes place on Wednesday 13th November in London. This is being hosted by LinkedIn at their London headquarters in partnership Mediatel Events and IAAUK.
We have curated another amazing programme of workshops, panel discussion and live comedy working with some incredible women from across the comedy and creative industries. Our workshop topics look at understanding how and when to interact using humour, working alone and under pressure as a creative, interpreting body language and how best to sell yourself and your skills.
Our HERlarious initiative has been bringing women and men working in the creative industries face to face with those who live, sleep and breathe comedy over the last year. We have been working with some incredible organisations including NatWest, Lloyds, Airbandb and Canada Life who have embraced our strategies of using humour to build confidence, entertain their staff and create a new narrative.
Funny Women is a thriving not for profit community of amazing female writers, performers, producers and directors who can help you to develop and frame your products and events for today’s highly competitive marketplace. HERlarious is a part of an important seed change in terms of making our lives more creative and equal and by bringing comedians and creatives together to collaborate, we can change the narrative.
If you want to talk to us about how you can get involved with HERLarious, please email creatives@funnywomen.com or join our mailing list for our regular newsletters.
To book a place at LinkedIn on Wednesday 13th November, visit our event page here.
For more details of who is facilitating, speaking and performing check out the outline here: HERlarious_content_131119
