‘Circus has always been an accessible form of entertainment’

In 1768, Philip Astley Esquire marked out a ring of 42 feet in diameter at his riding school near London’s Westminster Bridge, put on impressive displays of trick riding and horse training, including one pony that could supposedly add and subtract numbers. As his new entertainment format took hold, one of his competitors borrowed a Latin word and declared the circus to be open.

250 years later, circus has undergone countless transformations and reinventions, not least in Bristol. This city has established itself as a hub, and visionary individuals have been pushing forwards since the 1970s with the goal of propelling the discipline away from the sideshows and into mainstream culture.

Astley’s circus drew on far older traditions. The St James’ Fair, an annual knees-up that attracted travelling acrobats, conjurors, mummers, puppet shows and performing animals to an area near Stokes Croft, was first held in 1238 and ran for 600 years. A research project to uncover Bristol’s circus heritage, run by Circomedia and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, has uncovered evidence that Bristol’s first permanent circus building was built in 1832 at Backfields, near the site of Lakota nightclub.

The city was firmly on the map of travelling shows by 1891 when the cast of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West paraded from Temple Meads to Horfield Common. From the 1930s, huge shows including Bertram Mills’ International Circus and later Billy Smart’s New World Circus and Chipperfield’s Circus regularly visited with their traditional brand of family entertainment: performing horses, lions and elephants, saucy showgirls, daring acrobatics, strongmen and clowns.

Gerry Cottle pictured with Sonny Fossett, aka Stripey the Clown, who was part of one of the world’s oldest circus families

“When I had my circuses, we were always down in the West Country. We were coming to Bristol ever since the 70s, to a site in Eastville where IKEA is now,” recalls Gerry Cottle, the former circus boss who now owns Wookey Hole Caves and runs his own youth circus on the site, putting on a slick, fast-paced show full of aerial, juggling, escapology and unicycling three times a day.

In 1985, Gerry brought the Moscow State Circus to Durdham Downs for its first ever UK performance, but elsewhere in the city a new style of circus was being pioneered by a group of individuals including Richard Ward, Audrey Michel, Franki Anderson, Henry Bassadone, Mick Wall and Bim Mason. After running experimental shows in the early days of Glastonbury Festival, they discussed the idea of setting up Britain’s first circus school and on April 1 1986, Fool Time opened in St Paul’s.

Bim Mason teaching a fire-eating class

But the backdrop to this wasn’t all peace and love: “Inner-city riots had occurred all over the country, including in St Paul’s where vans filled with ready-and-waiting riot police could be seen on street corners. New Age Travellers took refuge in the city after being harassed by the police in the countryside,” wrote Bim Mason in Flying High, a book capturing a sense of Bristol’s ‘new circus’ movement.

“Circus, too, was divided between those who were keen to preserve as many of the traditions as possible, including performing animals, and those who were more interested in re-inventing the genre. Fool Time became an international hub for this new circus.”

More experimental circuses from around the world had begun to tour the UK by the late 1980s, including Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil. One group that made a huge impression on Bim was Archaos, a radical French outfit founded by Pierrot Bidon whose shows were full of fire, chainsaws and motorbikes. Gerry Cottle helped bring them to Brislington in October 1990. “They were coming to the Downs but people got wind of how radical they were and they got banned – we made sure they were banned,” Gerry recalls with a smile, always a master of publicity.

Having seen what international circus could encompass, and with revolutionary work being put on like Helen Crocker’s Dreams of Flying, a show uniting dance and theatre, Bristol was at the cultural cutting edge. Fool Time folded in 1993 but a year later Bim teamed up with Helen to establish Circomedia at the Kingswood Foundation Estate, and started a one-year private circus course with the ethos of integrating circus and theatre.

Back in St Paul’s, Billy Alwen and Jim Brown set up The Albany as a training space, while next door to Circomedia a dedicated youth circus, Circus Maniacs, was established by Jackie Williams. She was discovered by Gerry Cottle during open auditions, pinched from a tax office in Dagenham to learn trapeze, and later worked for Cirque du Soleil before coming to Bristol to start her own school. Several years later Billy teamed up with Julian Bracey to found Cirque Bijou on Mivart Street in Easton, and now the city had several powerhouse circus companies training artists and producing work to send around the world.

Circus Maniacs youth circus school ran from 1995-2010

After the turn of the millennium, contemporary circus was finding its footing in the cultural landscape. Thousands had seen the circus show at the Millennium Dome, Cirque Bijou were programming a circus stage at Bristol Harbour Festival, London’s National Centre for Circus Arts, formerly Circus Space, was going from strength to strength and Circomedia’s graduate showcase was being performed at Bristol Old Vic.

Kate Webb, now their Circus250 co-ordinator, joined Circomedia in 2001. “We were always fighting to be considered an artform,” she says, “and then we were constantly transforming the artform; it was a melting pot of skills.” Off the back of the success of the one-year course, the team created a pioneering circus BTEC in 2004.

Circomedia’s second space is a Grade I-listed church in St Paul’s that had been derelict for years

This was also the year that Circomedia took on their second space, the derelict St Paul’s church. The Churches Conservation Trust allowed aerial equipment to be fitted around the Grade I-listed building, including a flying trapeze rig, while just a little further down the road Doug Francisco, one half of The Invisible Circus along with Win Penhaul, was also putting on performances in unusual spaces.

“We started out doing stuff in the extension on the back of a house that was squatted,” Doug recalls. “We immediately outgrew it – we had the riot police outside and hundreds of people trying to get in. There was a big Audi garage over the road that was getting more dilapidated. The house got evicted and we didn’t have anywhere else to go, so we started our first big project in that building.”

The four-storey garage on Cheltenham Road was used as an arts space during summer 2006 and gave Doug the confidence to start negotiating for other spaces. The following year The Invisible Circus performed at the Pro Cathedral, which had been empty for 30 years, drawing on the talent in the city to fill it.

“There was already a big community of all kinds of artists, and circus performers here,” Doug recalls. “A lot of people had been through Circomedia, fell in love with Bristol and stayed here. But there wasn’t a lot of outlet for it here – they all worked elsewhere. Occupying spaces and putting on big crazy shows hadn’t really happened here, but a lot of people were up for doing something in their hometown and bringing the community together.”

The Invisible Circus’ Carny-Ville events took over the old Bridewell Police Station complex between 2007-2009

In 2008 Circomedia developed a degree programme, a BA in contemporary circus with physical theatre. “We wanted to extend the rigour of training and research into the artform,” Kate Webb says. “Doing it in the form of a degree meant that there were loans available for course fees. It made it more accessible, with more diversity in the stories that can be told. Wider participation is the key to expanding the artform.”

Both Circomedia and Cirque Bijou have been focusing their efforts on diversifying contemporary circus in recent years, the former with I CAN workshops for young people aged 6-16 with special educational needs and disabilities, and the latter with Extraordinary Bodies, in partnership with Diverse City. “Our show Battle of the Winds launched the 2012 London Olympic sailing events,” says Geraldine Giddings, senior producer at Cirque Bijou.

“The project integrates disabled and non-disabled artists and is breaking new ground for what we’ve seen in circus. We’ve got a drummer with no legs doing a handstand on a spinning platform; we’ve got an audio description that enhances the narrative of show. It’s a new way of doing circus and we’ve got funding for the next four years so we’re excited to see where we go with it. It’s the inspiration of seeing circus artists – essentially humans doing amazing things – and adding another layer. It’s exciting.”

Bristol’s love affair with circus has undoubtedly changed the city, but perhaps not just for the better. “It’s the classic thing that happens when artists come to a place: it’s cool and lots of stuff happens, and then the powers that be use that to sell a city,” Doug Francisco says.

“It’s sanitising it as it spreads. Bristol’s definitely got a cool, edgy reputation and it’s down to us to keep a bit of that going on. But you sign your own death warrant, unfortunately!” He’s seen rising house prices force out many of the pioneers, empty buildings that could be used as arts spaces are being sold to make developers millions, and outside the behemoth circus organisations there are only so many jobs.

“I do sometimes feel responsible that we are further saturating the market through our courses,” laughs Kate Webb. “But we have to be entrepreneurial and think of new ways of using the talent. Circus performers are some of the most resilient, hardworking and adaptable people. There’s a great spirit of collaboration here.”

Circomedia’s annual graduation shows have been put on at Bristol Old Vic since 1998

Gerry Cottle too has concerns about circus growing, but also with homogeneity: “There’s a lot more competition now. Most of my life there were 20 shows in this country; there are 30 now without the contemporary ones. If circus is fun and it keeps you fit that’s one thing, but if you’re going to make it your career after doing a course, I don’t think you’ve learned enough.

“I don’t like being critical of new circus because I don’t know what’s going to come from it, but what I’d really like to see is something super-duper, another Archaos, something mind-blowing.”

Cirque Bijou celebrated being part of the Olympic Torch relay in 2012 in impressive style

Since 2015, biennial festival Circus City directed by Kate Hartoch has been bringing international acts to Bristol’s venues, introducing new audience to works that cross artforms. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, worldwide, we see a trend towards more radical work being made and programmed,” Kate says. “I think Bristol already has that energy.

“For Circus City, we’re excited about the next five festivals but we’re feeling negative impacts from Brexit. Issues like visa applications and a poor exchange rate have the potential to negatively impact our ability to present work from outside the UK, as well as making it harder to travel with work coming out of Bristol.”

For the artists who started here and stayed, or used Bristol as a springboard to travel the world, their lives have been changed entirely by this city’s love of circus. “I would never have found circus if I’d grown up anywhere else,” says Nicole Pearson, an aerial artist who began with Circus Maniacs before moving to Montreal as a teenager to train at the Ecole Nationale De Cirque and going on to work with Cirque du Soleil.

“I started quite young, before the internet popularised aerial and circus as hobbies that anyone can drop into a class and try. I was very lucky to have a really good school on my doorstep which I stumbled across by accident.”

Professional aerialist Nicole Pearson started training in Bristol as a teenager. Photo by Pete Muller

Events to celebrate Circus250 include The Invisible Circus’ Renegade Fabulon at the Loco Klub from August 30-31, Doors Open Day at Circomedia’s St Paul’s Church on September 16 and Circus Spectacular: Museum at Night at Bristol Museum on October 25. “This year we are celebrating 250 years of circus, but circus is celebrated in Bristol every year because it is so well embedded in the calendar already,” says Kate Webb.

“We’re really aware of what’s gone before us, and that circus has always been there as an accessible form of entertainment that is classless and brings people together. It’s something contemporary circus needs to be careful of, not to be perceived as highbrow and inaccessible, but circus can be so full of symbolism and narrative and I hope there is more of that in the future.”

Circomedia’s Autumn Programme this year will be a showcase of artists from or work created in Bristol and the South West. Find out more about Bristol’s Circus250 celebrations by visiting www.circomedia.com/circus-250

Main image: Cirque Bijou helping to launch Bristol’s year as Green Capital in 2015. Photo by Andre Pattenden