Posted by Jo Spencer (Soupa founder) We headed down to Latitude festival last weekend to take part in the YARN set 'YARN presents 10 stories about smoking' in the Literary Arena. YARN invited us to be part of the set to visualise the 4 performances from Katy Darby, Jarred McGinnis, Verity Flecknell and Camila Fiori. After a few meetings Gemma Mitchell (YARN director) and I decided we would create a visual book to record the experience of the set – live on stage. We initially invited people to submit their own stories, illustrations and photos about smoking – from which we received a brilliant response including submissions from Soupa members Spiros Halaris, Jason Lear, Anna Spencer, Joshua Marshall. I then collected these all together and added them to the book on the night.

The set was a great success, we received a brilliant turn out and response from the crowd – thank you if you were there! We handed out 200 Kazoo's which the audience used to accompany Verity Flecknell's performance of the a re-written version of Johnny Cash song – Final Cigarette Blues.

I was on stage for the whole set (1 hour) treating images, designing and building up the book... and trying not to look too serious!

The book is now available to view in full here.