The Stupid Old Studios Has Gotta Move Please Help if You Can (No Pressure) Fundraiser

Stupid Old Studios is a creative hub for comedians and comedy-adjacent creatives located in Brunswick, Melbourne.

Stupid Old Studios is an incredibly unique space. There isn’t anything like it in Australia and we are extremely proud of what we have built over the years. We’ve been home to many members of Melbourne’s thriving comedy scene with current and past occupants including: Aunty Donna, Rhys Nicholson, Anne Edmonds, Claire Hooper, Sammy J & Randy, Josh Earl, Annie Louey, Michelle Brasier and many more.

But recently we discovered that two large apartment buildings will soon be built on our tiny backstreet of Brunswick. This construction means about two years of noise and other major disruptions rendering our studios unusable. So we made the tough decision to look for a new home. 

And luckily we found one! Literally, just one building in the last 6 months has been suitable to our needs. So we signed on the dotted line and we have taken on this new challenge as an opportunity to build something even better.

But we need your help. With Covid-19 pushing the cost of construction supplies up and lockdowns resulting in some of our production work being cancelled or postponed indefinitely, we need to raise money to make sure that we can finish the works. Without additional funds we’ll be left without a home and many of your favourite comedians will lose a vital workspace.

What We Need

We’re aiming for a goal of $10,000 to go towards the costs of getting the building to a state where we can open up again.

The actual project is quite a bit more expensive of course – we’re lucky to have had a good couple of years of work and some cash reserves to help fund the project, but with lockdown halting some key projects, we’re now looking to crowdfunding to help cover the shortfall so that we don’t have to delay the building works any longer. We picked $10,000 as an achievable crowdfunding goal but we’re going to need a lot more, so any amount over the goal will mean a lot less stress on us.

We decided rather than doing a straight online fundraiser we’d do something fun: The Stupid Old Studios Has Gotta Move Please Help if You Can (No Pressure) Fundraise-a-thon!

For one night only on November 18th we’ll be bringing together some of Australia’s best comedians for three hours of live variety shenanigans. It will be the last hurrah in our current studio, a fitting way to say goodbye to our home of the last 5 years.

In the lead up to the telethon you can give money to our cause here. Any amount is much appreciated but don’t give beyond your means, spreading the word helps as well! 

History

Almost a decade ago, four comedians and one filmmaker formed a sketch group named, for no particular reason, Stupid Old Man. From that sketch group sprung forth an idea so wildly ambitious that it just might work. The idea – to establish a creative hub for Melbourne’s thriving comedy scene. Part production studio, part podcast loft, part coworking space and occasional bike workshop – Stupid Old Studios was born.

From its humble beginnings in a windowless one storey warehouse in Brunswick’s illustrious fish packing district (stray prawns on the doorstep were not unheard of) Stupid Old Studios has gone from strength to strength. Five years ago we moved to a new location on Ovens Street in Brunswick. We expanded our collaborative space and now house around 30 comedians in a highly subsidised co-working space (rent for a desk with us is about 25% the cost of your average working space) giving them access to an affordable place to hone their craft, collaborate with peers and access our podcast and production facilities. The original sketch group, Andy Matthews, Matt Stewart, Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall, Bec Petraitis and Evan Munro-Smith, are all still at the helm, helping to sail the good ship Stupid Old Studios straight to paradise or at least somewhere with a good ice creamery.

Other Ways You Can Help

We know not everyone can help. In fact, the people that probably want to help the most are comedians and given the frankly shitty year comedians have had, we certainly don’t expect people to have much spare change lying around.

We’d love for you to share this campaign on social media – tell everyone why Stupid Old Studios is important to comedians and important to you. The more money we raise, the more we will put into the space and, as they always say – the more high quality the window frames, the more high quality the laughs.