Comedy night marks ten years down the Pavement

By Yousif Farah

Pavement Magazine is celebrating its 10^th birthday on Friday 11 September, a milestone that will be marked with a high-profile comedy fundraiser featuring the exceptionally hilarious Stewart Lee.

The event will be held at the Pleasance Theatre in Islington’s North Street, off Caledonian Road, and the all-star line-up will also include Robin Ince, winner of the Time Out Award for Outstanding Achievement in comedy and music from Barb Jungr whose album of Bob Dylan covers was once described by the Wall Street Journal as “the most significant vocal album of the 21^st century”.   

Also joining them will be Tom Read Wilson and Gary Albert Hughes who are both known for performing satirical and political songs.

The Pavement hopes the event will raise much-needed funds to help them further pursue helping homeless people through their unique publication. 

Its sole purpose is to support people at times of crisis, aiming to make life that bit easier for homeless people through providing them with information that can both help reduce short-term hardship, as well as enable them to guide their own lives.

The publication is pocket-sized, concise, providing homeless readers with news from the streets relative to their situation and often neglected by the mainstream press. Alongside the news stories they run monthly updated lists of day centres, soup kitchens and places to gather advice and assistance regarding housing.  It also has features on health, legal advice and an insider’s view of life in hostels.  

The publication relies entirely on donations from the public and volunteers. However, these volunteers are highly skilled writers and cartoonists, some of whom work for reputable media outlets such as Private Eye. 

At Poached Creative we work closely with the Pavement magazine. Some of our own Big Issue online journalism trainees have contributed articles to The Pavement. We also recently ran a four week media training course for budding contributors. Furthermore, the writing panel meetings are held at our premises and are attended by our writing mentor Grant and I.

Grant says: “The listing section is a revelation especially when you first find yourself in that situation. The news story covers topics that you will never see in the mainstream media.”

The proceeds of the forthcoming event will help more homeless people through their ordeal.

For tickets, bookings and information on how to get to the venue visit The Pleasance Theatre website.

To donate visit The Pavement website.