Showtown, Blackpool's museum of fun and entertainment, wanted to bring the Comedy Carpet to life for a new generation. The brief was ten short films for a brand-new visitor app, funded by the UK Government through the Shared Prosperity Fund, each triggered by scanning a phrase or image on the Carpet and unlocking the story of the comedian behind it.

The line-up was chosen with input from Showtown's Youth Academy, a group of nine young comedy enthusiasts aged 14 to 18, and landed on Morecambe and Wise, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne, Frankie Howerd, Hylda Baker, Cannon and Ball, Les Dawson, and Lenny Henry.

With two minutes per film, every second had to earn its place. We scripted all ten in-house, shaping each one around the performer's comedic style, their story, and their connection to Blackpool. Some of those links were well known, Ken Dodd's long love affair with the town, for instance. Others, like Lenny Henry's appearances at the Winter Gardens, were less familiar and gave the films a freshness even for audiences who knew the acts well.

We spent considerable time in Showtown's archive, working through posters and images from Blackpool's comedy scene stretching back to the 1950s, much of it rarely seen. Alongside that we sourced and cleared archive footage of the performers themselves, which for acts like Tommy Cooper or Morecambe and Wise meant finding the sketches and sight gags that defined them. Rights negotiations were not always straightforward, but getting those moments on screen was worth it.

To bridge the gap between generations we filmed with local comedians and historians who knew and loved these acts, bringing in voices that felt warm and personal rather than encyclopaedic.

The finished films sit inside the Comedy Carpet Quest app, free to download, and ready to be unlocked by anyone standing on the Carpet with a phone in their hand.