Ali Williams at Elemental WM
(Here are some edited snippets from Ali’s notes for the presentation)
NoFit State circus is 23 years old this year. It was started by a group of students with a common interest in juggling, getting stoned, and avoiding having to get grown up jobs when we graduated.
when we started we were not very good! But the important thing was we believed we could be, and as we had never seen contemporary circus we had no reference as to just how truly awful our first shows were! Fortunately neither did our public who appeared to enjoy our work.
In the late eighties we managed to see some companies like Ra Ra Zoo, Mummerandada and Circus Oz and began to have a vision of what new circus could be like!
By 1990, by living off a government training scheme called enterprise allowance that paid us £40 a week to run our own business and by saving everything we earned we had bought our first little big top which we toured in for five years, performing across the UK for local authorities and festivals.
Our motto was if we can’t get bigger and better each year then we will give up and go and get normal jobs.
NoFit State is now a registered charity with an annual turnover of 1.2 million last year. The title of this section is Taking Risks (successfully) which is good because that means its not about taking risks (without having a clue what you’re doing and dealing with dire if not catastrophic consequences . We have quite a lot of experience of that too).
Key risks (No Fit State have taken) can be summarised as:
There are some big challenges for us now:
We want to create new work both for the silver tent and for other environments and contexts. We want to do this with the same creative integrity and freedom with which we created Immortal but we want to do it in less than 10 years and we want to do it at the same time as touring Immortal.
We want to continue to inspire, nurture, develop and support circus peformers at all levels of experience and we want to build a thriving circus community around our new training space in Cardiff.
The risks are now different but no less alarming to manage: Reputation, Profile, Artistic development and innovation, Company well-being as well as Financial. If we’re still here in 10 years time, we’ll let you know how we get on…
And if we’re not we will surely go out with a bang!
To download the presentation above please click here, and for the full notes document, please click here.
For more about the West Midlands event and theme please click here.
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