January 5th 2015.
Happy New Year everyone! As 2015 rolls in we have decided to roll out a brand new (fancy) blog to keep you all up to date with our efforts of driving circus arts through our region. From time to time people ask us ‘who are CircusMASH and what does it mean when you say you are driving circus arts in the region?’. Well, we introduce you to the Mashblog… the source of information that is going to tell you exactly what’s going on and how we plan to make Birmingham a city of circus! 2014 has been a fantastic year for us and we are very excited going forward into the new year.
It was four years ago that Zaq Andel and Joe Fearn planted the roots of CircusMASH in Birmingham after returning to the city. At that time, Birmingham had a few circus practitioners around and there was a juggling club, but no professional artist community here, with no place dedicated to train in, and be introduced to circus arts in a variety of forms. Birmingham, at that point had not been acquainted with aerial circus so when we started classes back in early 2011, they boomed. As time went on we started introducing aerial into various Theatre and Dance companies through Birmingham, whom now adopt the art form into what they do.
Our mission is to develop circus within the West Midlands and make it accessible for anyone who wishes to be part of it. London, Bristol, Cardiff and Sheffield are big circus hubs for professional and community circus in the UK. As circus takes off, cities are working together to build circus arts nationally and we are at the heart of the Midlands doing our part to make circus accessible and work to build circus here.
Now that the stakes have been firmly hammered into the ground and the foundations are set we are ready to take CircusMASH and it’s regional and national community to the next step. As a lot of you know we have spend the past 18 months securing the development of All Saints old church hall in Kings Heath to become a centre dedicated to the growth of circus arts in our region. We are very pleased (after so long) that we are taking over the building from next month and it will be all ours! Swing on over to next weeks blog and we’ll give you a good old run down of the timeline from now until the opening.
We have a big connection to Circus. Learning and developing our own understanding, skills and knowledge of circus has made us who we are and we find nothing more rewarding than passing the lessons we have learned on. Our desire to create opportunities grows the more we see new people connect with circus.
See you next week!