Commissions, workshops and producer support.
Circus City was born of a desire to celebrate Bristol as a centre for contemporary circus and provide a platform for artists to create, innovate and take risks. Over the years we have strived to ensure that our programme provides opportunities for people at different points of their career whether they are testing out an idea for the first time or an established company launching a new show – we recognise the importance of the whole ecology.
We also recognise the need to promote diversity in the artists that we support. We believe in the representation of a constellation of experience on stage and in the power of intersectional perspectives to disrupt the traditional narratives about perfection and power that are often perpetuated in circus.
We see this as the route to uncovering new solutions and ideas about the world in which we live. We actively seek out and create opportunities to support existing artists who are currently under-represented and to support the role models who are needed for future artists.
Current Commissions
New Authors commission (2023) directly responded to this gap in the performing arts sector and was formed as a collaboration between Handstand Arts, The Lowry, Deda, Jackson’s Lane, and Worthing Theatres. Through New Authors we aimed to support the next generation of artists, recognising that focussed and paid physical research and development time, and opportunity to try out new collaborations or processes in a supported environment, is key to allowing new work to take shape.
Through a national call out we selected 3 artists/companies with targeted R&D time, space and seed funding to begin researching a new concept. Of those 3 we selected one artists to receive a bursary of £5000 towards realising their idea into a full touring show for 2025.
You can read more about out final commissioned artist Farrell Cox and her project Cocoon here.
Previous Commissions
Since 2020 we have woven commissioning into our activity, foremost as a way of ensuring work was made during the pandemic, and so that diverse independent artists, not just those supported by organisations or recovery funds, were able to continue working. Secondly, for these artists and our programme, the commissions went a small way to ensuring the pandemic did not force an end to experimentation and development, and in tandem with that, that audiences were still able to experience performance.
Our Respond Commissions (2021) supported three artists to respond to the new challenging pandemic context with socially distanced, community-based and outdoor work that was a genuine and considered development of their practice:
Maddie McGowan developed a programme of circus performance for isolated older people in East Bristol. In partnership with the Beehive Centre, six circus performers and one circus dog, Maddie devised a series of one-to-one, family and neighbourhood spectaculars to be performed on doorsteps and in front gardens and cul-de-sacs. Participants responded to special postal invitations over the month prior and invited friends and neighbours to share in the experience, sitting down for a socially distanced chat and a cup of tea with the performers after the shows.
Olga Kaleta developed her solo show Period Drama for outdoors and embedded BSL into her work for the first time in collaboration with interpreter Sherrie Eugene Hart and access consultant DL Williams. The piece, which explores mental health through a feminist lens is now supported by Arts Council Wales and on tour through 2025-26.
Felix Rowberry developed her participatory creation process, collaborating with young people from South Bristol to fabricate the sculptural performance space for our Redcatch Park Firegarden.
All up coming opportunities will be shared as news items on our website and via our mailing lists. If you want to be the first to hear make sure that you sign up below.
You might also be interested in:
Take Care – Circus life in a swing
Circus City are excited to announce our involvement as an associate partner in Take Care – the first-ever EU project dedicated to supporting mental health
Building Circus Routes in South Bristol
In 2023 we began working with Filwood Community Centre on a pilot project, Circus Routes, to explore what a circus programme in Filwood might
New Authors 2023 Commission Update
In November 2023 Handstand Arts awarded our first New Authors Co-commission alongside partners The Lowry, Deda, Jackson’s Lane and Worthing Theatres to Farrell Cox