The Crick Crack Club
The Crick Crack Club is a London based performance storytelling promoter, founded in 1987. It programs public performances of storytelling (mainly for adult audiences) in theaters and art centers nationally; tours artists and their work; trains and directs storytellers; mentors and supports new artists, undertakes research and advises on the use of storytellers in museums and educational settings.
Crick Crack Club events take place in numerous venues, which currently include the Soho Theatre, Northern Stage, the Unicorn Theatre, Cheltenham Literature Festival, York Theatre Royal, Rich Mix Cultural Foundation and Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
The performances and the artists The Crick Crack Club programmes, commissions and promotes varies over time. It works with a core of around a dozen UK-based established performance storytellers (plus additional international artists from Northern Europe, the USA and the wider world) and between five and ten new emerging artists. The repertoire of each storyteller is different, and artists continually produce new work, alongside continuing to perform shows that are in their permanent repertoire. The Crick Crack Club is primarily interested in the performance and oral retelling of traditional narrative material – fairy tales, folklore mythology, legends and epics – and the content of the vast majority of performances it promotes is based on traditional stories to a greater or lesser extent.
The Crick Crack Club is a Charity. It receives funding from grant givers such as Arts Council England and The Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
The Crick Crack Club was the first performance storytelling club to be established in the UK. From 1988–1995 26 weekly events took place every autumn and winter. Artists received fees to entertain an audience who had paid an entry fee. Unlike folk clubs there were no ‘floorspots’; from the outset the Crick Crack Club only promoted professional artists and did not encourage amateur participation. It was founded in 1987 by performance storyteller Ben Haggarty with assistance during the first year from Jenny Pearson. In January 1985 Ben Haggarty had organised Britain's first storytelling festival at Battersea Arts Centre - the success of this and a second festival at Watermans Art Centre in 1987 prompted an invitation for him to stage a third, 16-day-long, international storytelling festival at London's South Bank Centre in 1989. A list of international artists was drawn up, including Louise Bennett, Vi Hilbert, Abbi Patrix, Eamon Kelly, Seref Tasliova and Punaram Nishad. However, questions arose as to whether there would actually be enough performance storytellers in the UK with the experience and stage presence to hold large adult audiences for a whole evening with appropriate material. This concern led Ben Haggarty to found the Crick Crack Club. Many of today’s leading British storytellers first cut their teeth on adult audiences at the Crick Crack Club. In the autumn of 1988 the first season of 26 weekly events was launched in a pub theatre in Ladbroke Grove, with the expressed aim of trying out new artists and providing an opportunity for established artists (who mainly worked in educational contexts) to develop their skills and repertoire for adult audiences.
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