Clown congress 2023!! we meet again

The Clown Congress 2023 brought together 55 clowns, academics, performers, artists, theatre makers teachers, therapists, activists and hobbyists from across the UK and Europe to interrogate our practice and explore what it means to clown in these times. This year's congress will focus on the themes of Identity and Clowning. We wanted to understand how our differences and who we are impact the way we clown as well as exploring and celebrating diversity, inclusion, disability, race, neuro-divergence in and through clowning.

Over three days we came together in the Bristol University Theatre department at The Wickham Theatre in Bristol. We embedded ourselves in the large black box theatre, making use of the large space for massive circles, games, embodied exercises and explorations. We spread out across the building into smaller rooms for open space sessions, in the lounge areas for breaks and lunch and outside onto the steps to get some sun and light during the breaks. They were long and beautifully intense days; from 10 – 6pm.

Each day had two 75 minute workshops with invited contributors, one open space session and one reflective workshop with Holly Stoppit.

The organising committee were Robyn Hambrook, Jon Davison, Jan Wozniak, Aerial Mel Stevens and Holly Stoppit.
An online programme curated by Jon Davison ran simultaneously and included interviews, discussions and workshops by international practitioners tackling the same themes. Around 275 people across the world engaged with that programme.
This year’s Clown Congress was only the second of its kind. The idea behind the Congress had come from a collaboration between myself, Jon Davison and Hilary Ramsden in 2022. We had connected on Zoom during the Pandemic as we begun to research and interrogate ways of working and performing with clown both in the studio and on the street as we sought to create new forms and processes that address political, societal and environmental issues. We received funding to carry out research in Athens and had wanted to extend our questions, experiments and discussions to the wider clown community.

You can read about each day of the 2023 Clown Congress here:
Day One by Holly Stoppit
Day Two by Jan Wozniak
Day Three by Robyn Hambrook
Plus How was the Congress...  reflections from participants
And The Clown Congress in Prose by Beccy Golding