An important survey which aims to make a first stab at tracking the size and scale of the UK live comedy sector has been launched by the Live Comedy Association (LCA), who will publish the results and share the findings with stakeholders and policy makers.
With the pending general election on 4th July 2024, as an important sector within the wider entertainment industry, those of us working in live comedy need a voice and an opportunity to assess our impact.
The survey targets those who consider live comedy to be their main/primary sector of work. However, if live comedy is not your full time job and you do other things as well, your responses are still very welcome.
This survey is a partnership between the Live Comedy Association, the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (Brunel University London) and the British Comedy Guide. The research team at Brunel University London will independently compile and analyse the data* and produce an initial report with some key findings. A further report will be shared at an event as part of Leicester Comedy Festival 2025.
Other sectors are miles ahead of the UK live comedy sector in terms of assessing their size and scale (for an example see the UK Live Music Census of 2017). In 2020, during the pandemic, the Live Comedy Association conducted a survey of members about the possible impact of Covid but it didn’t contain details about the broad economic, social and cultural benefits of what we do.
It is hoped that the resulting data, will give our sector a voice and attract the right people to listen about the value and impact that live comedy has to our economy, as well as our health and wellbeing.
Take the survey
The survey is open until 23:59 BST on Sunday 7th July 2024.
For those of you who work in an organisation, please discuss amongst yourselves to decide who will complete the survey on behalf of the organisation.
If you are a festival that also has a venue, or you wear more than one comedy hat, you can complete this survey as many times as needed, or just fill it out once if you think that’s better.
The survey is anonymous. It only takes five minutes to complete, so grab a cuppa and make a start.
