Urban advocacy is all about communities. Sure, we may be nerds hyper-focused on technicalities of building codes and road widths, but all of that serves the goal of enabling thriving communities in our cities. One of the most important markers of thriving communities is their dedication to the local arts and culture scenes. This post is a love-letter to one of the most endearing emerging events in the city of St. John’s – The NewfoundLand and Labrador Sketch Festival (NL Sketchfest for short).
We know data. It’s what we do best. But data isn’t particularly engaging. Most of the team here at Streets are for People know this all too well, through their work in the professional fields of applied sciences and engineering. We strive to make the data fun but text only goes so far. So, this year we decided to submit an application to NL Sketchfest. We were eager to see if they would let us perform a set based on urban planning and how… well just read our submission below.
A few of our members have budding backgrounds in comedy performance (improv, stand-up, sketch) and it was a natural extension of our joke-filled meetings to apply to do some urban advocacy bits in front of our friends and neighbours! Luckily, the awesome organizers at NL Sketchfest had the same idea (we would say they were awesome if we didn’t get in too… we would!). We were invited to perform a 10-minute set in the Newfound Sketches night, the opening night where local solo acts and acts that were new to the stage were slated as a ‘showcase’ of local talent!
Then came the writing process. We are already so familiar with each other as friends and team members so it was an easy transition to brainstorming ideas and ‘yes and-‘ing (see, improv) each other. Once we had ideas for three distinct scenes, we split off to polish them ourselves and met up periodically to improve our scenes with each other’s feedback. By the time the day rolled around, we were so excited to share what we had come up with!
Our sketches ranged across urban advocacy topics. Our first scene made fun of the ‘one more lane’ philosophy seen across North America, where poorly planned car-first infrastructure simply resorts to adding more when capacity issues arise, rather than engaging with sustainable solutions. Then, we moved right on to a scene about an eager junior planner watching their excitement turn to frustration as city council votes against important and useful proposals while accepting ones that have no or negative impact. Finally, we finished off the set with a scene about a transit desert, in which a genie (which appeared following us rubbing a muffler) granted us three wishes as long as they did not infringe on the will of the free market. To our massive surprise, the crowd actually laughed – several times!
Hearing people laugh at jokes about ‘One more lane bro’ or being unable to walk without needing to drink muffler water was an incredibly rewarding experience. Our friends know how much we care and how hard we work to enable stronger communities, and this event was an impressive display of a strong live comedy community in town. We were surprised with the hall being near-full on opening night, and that surprise kept goin as the venue filled up to near-full almost every night, even selling out for a few shows through the week. Performers from all over North America shared with us how special it was that so many people were there to have their local artists’ backs. We can’t thank the team at NL Sketchfest enough, both for allowing us a platform to perform bits about things we think matter, and for hosting one of the most magical and community-building events in the NL comedy scene – and indeed, the North American comedy scene.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our fun little recounting of our set at NL Sketchfest. The engagement we received from the community reminded us that jokes and bits are a great way to get the wider community involved with these seemingly-boring topics! This summer we will be making shorts online for the youngins (yes, 50-year-old millennials, we just called you youngins) on TikTok and Instagram. Will these be professionally shot? No. Will they be funny? No… I mean, yes. Sorry, yes! Stay tuned and follow us online once we get the accounts up and running. Because after all, sketches are for people.
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