Clown Congress 2023

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS


The Clown Congress will take place this year in the Wickham Theatre at Bristol University between Saturday 28th and Monday 30th October with confirmed contributions from:

Quiplash Arts - exploring clowning made by disabled and neurodiverse artists

Fatina Cummings - discomfort and how to clown it - white and black artists working alone and together

Michelle Matlock - sharing insights from ‘The Mammy project’, which transforms an oppressive stereotype into a celebration of the power we gain from knowing and understanding our history.

The organising committee are now seeking additional proposals for contributions that address questions of clowning and identity. We welcome proposals from anyone with an interest in clowning: performers, practitioners, researchers (academic or otherwise), teachers and encourage you to distribute this call as widely as you can to your networks.

We envisage this as an event which can advance projects concerned with clowning and how this practice goes forward. For this reason, we are seeking proposals that enable inclusion of the full congress (between 20 and 40 delegates) in events. These could be in a range of formats, including exploratory workshops, focused discussions, open spaces, informal get-togethers and sharing individual projects and personal artistic experiences. We envisage timings for activities ranging from half an hour to ninety minutes, but will be open to proposals for longer activities where appropriate.

The questions we are asking ourselves about clowning at this time include: 

  • What potential does clowning hold for staging of our identities, of our hopes, anxieties and debates around who we are? Who (and how) are we as clowns in the world?  
  • Who am I when I clown?   
  • Who gets to clown? Clowning has often been dominated by privileged identities: we are interested in diverse ways of clowning that emerge from diverse identities and in continuing to explore the artform in ways that encourage greater diversity and inclusion? Who is included in that ‘we’ and how can this be widened and diversified? 
  • How do diverse identities clown together? 
  • How do we understand clowning? How do we expand our understanding of what clowning is beyond rigid dominant definitions? How do we cultivate diverse approaches that emerge from our diverse identities? 
  • How does the clown look globally?  
  • What is the difference: between clowns, between selves and between clown selves? 
 
However, we also want to be as open as possible to YOUR ideas and The Congress will be organised according to the nature of the proposals included. 

We encourage proposals which explore and challenge clowning practices from a range of view and particularly encourage contributions from more marginalised communities, such as PoC, trans, queer and disabled. 

Please submit your proposals to [email protected] in writing by 31st August 2023 as follows: 

  1. No more than 300 words please at this stage, to include: 
  1. A title 
  1. Brief description of activity 
  1. How this addresses issues of clowning and identity 
  1. Form of contribution, eg practical workshop, discussion 
  1. Length proposed (from 30 -90 minutes)  

If you have any queries about the event or your proposal, please feel free to contact Jon Davison ([email protected]), Robyn Hambrook ([email protected]) or Jan Wozniak ([email protected])

Download Call Out as PDF