We are very excited to have joined the Caravan Circus Network connecting us with Youth Circus groups all around Europe!

Caravan was established as a non-for-profit organisation in 2008 and is an international youth and social circus network of circus schools from across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

With a common goal to use social circus as an educational tool and to dedicate this work to groups from disadvantaged backgrounds with specific needs. Caravan Circus Network is committed to developing the sector and empowering its members and participants.

Caravan Circus Network members are closely connected, and these links have been created through various projects: youth festivals and exchanges, training for trainers programmes, capacity building, volunteer exchange, production of research, seminars and gathering of resources.

For more information: https://www.caravancircusnetwork.eu/

On 30th September our Artistic Director Joanna Williams was invited for a chat on Tipp FM to talk about Cloughjordan Circus Club, our programmes, performances and exchange trips, the upcoming Irish Youth Circus Gathering in November, and classes in St. Kieran’s Hall, including our fun & creative Beginners Class (Enrolling now!)

‘It’s all about play, it’s all about having fun, and learning through playful interaction with all the different objects. We teach all the manipulation skills, like juggling, diablo, hat tricks and hula hoop, we teach a lot of balance skills, like stilt walking, tight wire, and physical acrobatic skills, like pyramid building.’ – Joanna

If you would like to listen to the recording of the interview, please follow the link below!

You can also listen and download recording in Mp3 format here!

We are very proud to share that they are one of 4 national projects in the Cruinniú na nÓg programme this year. Circus Explored aims to encourage every child in Ireland to learn to juggle. Over 5000 FREE juggling balls are being distributed to every county in Ireland. Pick up your set by registering with www.isacs.ie and then receive 4 online tutorials in ball juggling. https://isacs.ie/isacs/circus-explored-register-now/

Tipperary Arts Office have teamed up with Cloughjordan Circus Cub to ensure that this opportunity is available in Tipperary too! Once registered you can select from a number of libraries including Nenagh, Roscrea or Thurles to nominate your collection point.

All participants will also receive a link to four juggling tutorials made by Juggling Ambassadors from each youth circus project including Galway, Cork, Dublin and of course our very own Cloughjordan Circus Club. Millie Sheppard and Anouk Baldin-Merer from Cloughjordan Circus Club have created a 4 minute video with lots of ideas for juggling with a friend.

On the 4th of May, Millie and Anouk were also chosen to represent the youth circus sector at the national launch of Cruinniú na nÓg Launch with the Minister Catherine Martin (Department of Tourism Culture Arts Gaeltacht Sport and Media) at Kilruddery House in Wicklow. They even interviewed Minister Catherine Martin. Millie asked Catherine Martin what creative activities she enjoyed as a youngster and was amazed to hear about her early song writing and musical interests. The Minister also showed a keen interest in their juggling skills and was impressed to hear how they had made juggling balls during lockdown so they could practice

Cloughjordan Circus Club will perform on Saturday 11th June on the Cloughjordan Village Green at 2:30pm!

Excitement in Cloughjordan as the Circus comes to town!

Last weekend, was a magical moment in Cloughjordan when a small circus trailer appeared in the field opposite Cloughjordan GAA! It was followed by more trucks and trailers and then in an amazingly quick transformation a small but beautiful red and white stripy Bigtop filled the field! The visiting Circus Elysium, is part of the Corvienio’s Circus who are the oldest circus family in Ireland.

The excitement and anticipation generated across all the generations in our village was really wonderful to behold and it tied in beautifully with our ongoing project, ELEPHANT!  Inspired by oral history gathered by the Cloughjordan Heritage Group, Cloughjordan Circus Club has been undertaking this ambitious project for the last 18 months.

In 2020 Cloughjordan Circus Club, a youth circus project which gives young people from all over the area opportunities to learn a wide range of circus skills and explore their creativity through this exciting art from, was 10 years old! To celebrate our 10^th anniversary I worked with the young people to devise an exciting show which took it’s inspiration from a piece of oral history which recalls the excitement of when the Circus came to town and the school children would be allowed into the yard as the circus Elephant and the Horse would be led down the main street to drink at the river.

From this starting point 50 young people who are part of our regular youth workshops have devised a beautiful narrative which was to be performed using circus, puppetry and narration in April 2020. We were delighted to receive support from the Arts Council Young Ensemble Scheme as well as Tipperary Arts Office for the young people to work with professional circus artists and puppeteers to create our most ambitious performance to date.

Sadly, that public performance never took place, as Covid-19 arrived in Ireland and two weeks before our performance the first Lockdown was announced.  Since then we have re-inventing our show as a film and have been working, as governmant guidelines allow, to film the various scenes including shadow puppetry, large scale puppetry and circus.

The excitement generated last week gave us all a real experience of the atmosphere and magic that are recounted in that oral history. Over summer 2021 we have been filming parts of our story against the backdrop of Cloughjordan. We dressed as “olden days” children and performed hula hoop and skipping acts in the playground of the local school, we’ve paraded our giant Elephant, Lightfoot with stiltwalkers, unicyclists and jugglers down the main street creating a similar stir to that recalled in the early 1900’s.

But the icing on the cake has definitely been to see a real traditional circus arrive in town. Brandon and Shane McCormack of Circus Elysium were really generous in their interactions with our group chatting with them after their show about life on the road with a traditional circus and the many roles each performer must undertake from setting up the tent to selling popcorn, the shows the relaxing part they said! And on the Sunday morning some we were delighted to perform and film some of our Acts prepared for the finale of our film inside their beautiful tent!

Our film “Elephant!” is almost complete and we hope to show it in the local cinema so the wider community can celebrate the talents of our local young people.Classes with Cloughjordan Circus Club are ongoing, they take place in St Kierans Hall, Cloughjordan and new members are always welcome!

Do you have stories or memories in your family about when the circus came to Cloughjordan? If so we would love to hear from you.

Thanks to support from Creative Ireland we are able to run 2 summer camps in summer 2021. Both Camps will be from 12th -16th July, outdoors by our base in St Kieran’s Hall, Cloughjordan.

Booking is now open!

Places are limited, as we need to keep within Covid guidelines so do book on soon if you are interested.

We will be learning juggling, hula hoop, tightwire, rola bola, diabolo and clowning!

Cost is €50 and there are some bursaries available too!

Contact us directly if your circumstances mean that it would help to avail of one.

We are delighted to announce that Circus is leaving our front rooms and going outside! No more dropping juggling balls on our laptops and knocking the lampshade with hula hoops while teaching online for our tutors Jo and Ria 🙂

During May and June our classes will be outdoors, on the the green by St Kierans Hall.

Classes will be small, with just 12 places in each Monday Circus Class and 8 in our outdoor Wire Walking Classes.

For the moment this means we can’t accept new members on Mondays but …. everyone is welcome for Wire Walking!

So if you fancy getting outside and trying something different have a look on our booking page and sign up for a class …or 2!