This blog tells the story of the first ever Clown Teachers’ Lab, which took place at Hawkwood in Stroud in February 2025, thanks to funding from The Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust.

The Backstory

Fellow clown teacher Robyn Hambrook and I have been collaborating together since the very start of the pandemic. To help our clown friends, colleagues and students survive the isolation of lockdown, we started making short video clown workshops (called Clown Workouts), set up a facebook group and encouraged clowns all over the world to play and share their clown discoveries with each other.

Responding to demand, we cajoled a whole gaggle of our clown comrades to make more videos (you can still access them all on youtube). Soon the growing throng of  clowns let us know that they wanted more direct interaction with each other! So Robyn and I started figuring out how to teach on Zoom, which led to us setting up The Online Clown Academy.

We developed a whole series of Zoom courses, which flowed into organising two clown conferences, ‘Clowns in Crisis’and ‘Clowning Out of Chaos’.

Our union has proved to be very fruitful over these past 5 years - not only in terms of our prolific output, but also as two independent clown teachers inspiring and supporting each other. We have very different focuses and approaches - Robyn is a clown activist and I am a clown therapist, Much of Robyn’s work is political and public whereas much of my recent work has been personal and private. Yet the space in which our work meets is a potent cauldron of alchemy. 

The Birth Of The Clown Teachers’ Lab

This year, Robyn and I wanted to open up our peer support network, to spend a week collaborating with a small group of clown practitioners from diverse backgrounds, to explore new paradigms for teaching clowning in response to the pressing challenges of our times. We applied for an artists’ residency at Hawkwood Centre For Future Thinking, in Stroud and got in! 

We put out a call-out and recruited four wonderful clown practitioners who all use clowning in different ways:

Clare Parry-Jones is a Giggle Doctor who works in hospitals, an artist who integrates clowning into her visual and performance art, a clown teacher and shamanic practitioner.

Katharine Markwick is a theatre maker and Humanitarian Clown, taking clowning to kids who really need it with Clowns Without Borders UK.

Amy Rose is a Play Provocoteur, stirring up trouble wherever she can, she’s also a clown practitioner and play academic.

Sophie Besse is a clown theatre maker and director who works with refugees, as well as being a Psychotherapist.

We had five glorious days together at the end of February 2025, in a light, airy space, surrounded by early spring flowers and beautiful trees just coming into bud. The incredible Hawkwood kitchen team provided seemingly endless nutritious, delicious food and we each had our own simple rooms to rest in.

Each person was invited to bring a warm-up game or two for the first day and prepare a session for everyone, exploring anything to do with our three central questions:

• What is the future of clowning in turbulent times?

• How can we use clowning to build community, empowerment, and resilience?

• How can we make our teaching methods more relevant and accessible?

Day 1

Arriving in a kerfuffle of colourful clothes, ridiculous objects, ideas for games and hearts bulging with curiosity, we made our way to the bright, spacious studio at Hawkwood. 

“How do we begin?” I asked.

Somebody suggested: “We must all find a hat to wear!”

So that’s what we did, sporting an array of stylish and ludicrous headgear, we introduced ourselves and began to co-design a collaborative process of playful inquiry.

In between the homemade biscuits, healthy, scrummy lunch, mid-afternoon cake and sumptuous supper, we took it in turns to offer games and exercises to introduce our practices and to help us get to know each other.

I brought the holding, making space for everyone to speak their needs. Katharine brought the fun, with daft warm ups and name games. Sophie brought freedom, through playing with restrictions. Amy brought intention, inviting us to create an avatar of ourselves holding a flag with an intention for the week. Robyn brought deep irreverence, inviting us to perform “The Dance of the Dying Flower” for each other. Clare brought trust, inviting us to walk and then run into her arms, blindfolded. 

Day 2

After connecting with our bodies and each other through movement, we dived into our central research questions: 

• What is the future of clowning in turbulent times?

• How can we use clowning to build community, empowerment, and resilience?

• How can we make our teaching methods more relevant and accessible?

We discovered a flurry of further questions, connecting us with the personal, professional, philosophical and political realms of clowning. We pinned our burgeoning swarm questions up on the wall and came back to our bodies, moving, stretching and dancing our way back to presence.

Holly’s Session - Giving and Receiving

I led a connection-through-play session; inviting the group to explore ways to give and receive attention, care and focus. In groups of three, we took it in turns to ask for something we needed (a massage, to play, to sing, or whatever), to negotiate until the other two really felt happy to give it and then to go ahead and give and receive that thing. 

We played a few warm-up games, bringing movement and sound together, before we played The Game - a copying game where there are no leaders. This gave us opportunities to really attune to each other's qualities of play. 

Then The Game changed and anyone could leave the pack and perform a solo, with choral support from the rest of us. When the soloist finished, we then needed to figure out how to re-incorporate the player back into the group - did they come to us or did we scoop them up?

I hoped this game would bring embodied permission into the room for any one of us to step into the leadership role and be supported by the rest of the group throughout the week.

Sophie’s Session - Visual Poetry

Sophie handed out a bunch of bamboo sticks and invited us to play with them in pairs. Holding the sticks between us with just the tips of our fingers, we started to find simple ways to move together. Building in confidence, we began taking more risks with the sticks, finding a range of games. 

We found ways to bring our games together, becoming a stick wielding throbbing blob. Sophie invited us to begin to find images together with our sticks and our bodies. Sophie then offered a witnessing area where we could drop out of the game and watch for a bit, before rejoining - enhancing the scene or proposing something new. A kaleidoscope of scenes emerged; one moment we were skiing, the next we were in prison, someone swang from a trapeze, then another rode on the subway. 

These simple games seemed to help us get into the spirit of play - encouraging us to say yes to our own impulses and find ways to support each other - both through joining in and witnessing.

From here, Sophie introduced her idea: to use the stuff in the space to represent the unspoken burdens that people carry and the unseen barriers that people face. 

One group explored unseen barriers using a lot of chairs. Katharine tried to get from A to B, whilst Amy moved piles of chairs to create obstacles to prevent Katharine crossing the space. Sophie suggested Katharine should try having a normal phone conversation whilst trying to do the task, which brought even more poignancy to the scene.

In our group, Clare and Robyn played old friends who’d bumped into each other in the street. Whilst they had a fairly mundane conversation, catching up on the details of their lives, I lumbered them with blankets, cushions, suitcases and chairs to represent what was not being said.

Through these exercises, Sophie invited the flavour of visual poetry into our process, trusting the image to tell the story.

Day 3

We started the day as baby dinosaurs, hatching out of dinosaur eggs. Then after a check in, we came back to the now overwhelming wall of questions. Amy invited us to take the questions off the wall and start to play with them spatially on the floor, finding different ways to group them so that they made more sense to us. 

We spontaneously began to move and sound in response to the questions and the feelings they evoked in us. 

Amy’s Session - Finding Genius through embracing The Worst Ideas Ever

Now that we’d played with the questions and got them out of the overwhelming heady place and into our bodies, Amy invited us to come back to our central questions and write The Very Worst Solutions we could possibly come up with. 

We found this to be a very liberating and illuminating exercise - as we shared our terrible ideas with each other, we discovered there was genius amongst the ridiculousness! Collectively, we decided to act out some of our Very Bad Ideas. 

We decided to go full red nose and performed an improvisation that could now be called: The Worst Clown Workshop Ever. In the performance, two of us played high status characters, and formed a clown regime. They forced two very vulnerable low status clowns to enact their worst traumas, under the very worst conditions imaginable. 

It felt icky and gross to really go there and we needed to hold each other so tenderly afterwards as spirals of shame, pain and repulsion echoed around the space. With a lot of care and kindness, we honoured the feelings that arose and held each other until they dissipated.

Enacting this scene led to a rich and juicy discussion around boundaries, access, inclusion, playing with trauma, power dynamics, duty of care / responsibility in workshops / theatre making and aftercare for participants and audiences. 

Robyn’s Session - The Oracle of Play

Later in the afternoon, Robyn led us back into the play zone by inviting us to race around Hawkwood. There were winners and losers, cheats and mavericks. Continuing to gently entice us back into the land of play, Robyn got us to dance for each other, tell stories together and pretend we had eels living inside of us (but also try to pretend we didn’t). 

Once we were bubbling with giggles, Robyn split us into three groups of two and gave us our new identities. For the rest of the session we would be pairs of Politicians, Shamans and Academics. Each pair were given a question to grapple with from the wall of questions, the idea being that perhaps these clown characters could find solutions that we could not.

The Politicians developed baffling and contradictory policy, the Academics got lost in their own questions and the Shamans went out onto the land and came back with a message from the trees: we need to rebrand clowns and clowning to ‘pips’ and ‘pipping’ (the apple trees came up with that).

Play allowed us to hack our way into huge questions that had previously felt impenetrable. We might not have come up with the ultimate answers we were looking for, but play loosened up space around and within the questions to make room for curiosity, creativity and genius to get in.

Day 4 

We started the day with a body scan and a massage circle before checking in. Sophie invited us to give movement and sounds to our emotions, mirroring each other and turning it up to help each other find the full expression. 

Katharine’s Session - Moments of Wonder

Katharine began her session with a quote: 'The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.' G K Chesterton

She invited us to connect with and draw a moment of wonder or joy from our performance past and a moment of wonder or joy from this week at Hawkwood. We shared fragments of our memories, amplifying the joy and gladdening our hearts.

Katharine then set us a task in pairs, to explore The Future of Clowning. We were to take on the personas of Corporate Executives, Primary School Teachers and Community Workers who had all embraced clowning. Each pair had 10 minutes to prepare a short presentation about the value and impact of clowning in our settings. 

This next section was written by Amy, who was the documenter that day (I’ve edited it a little, just for the sake of the word count):

The corporate executives, who had strong American South accents, had initiated a morning clown session into their work with excellent results and good profits. They found that the practice infused the rest of the days’ work, and could be called upon by pushing a red button. Lots of jazz hands, broad physical clown, exaggerated expression. Their organisation was called MAFA (Make America Fun Again). The Q and A period included questions about whether the work enabled better profits (it did) or productivity (big improvements in productivity and focus). 

The primary teachers were gentle women who were excited to share the results of their experience of having clowns in residence in the liminal spaces of the school– corridors, playgrounds etc. The clowns’ presence supported children’s emotional intelligence, transitions and behaviour. Clowns were able, for example, to offer songs and games that embedded rules or timekeeping, they were able to help children express their emotions, they also supported teachers and parents. They were also available to support assimilation of lessons and learning, by, for example, helping a child to embody a cerebral process such as maths…

Finally the community workers shared the evolution of two initiatives– both a result of tight funding and resourcefulness, but which nonetheless achieved positive outcomes. The first involved playworkers and a sort of all-age play initiative. This proved most successful with the children, but less so with parents whose needs were perhaps more specific or practical; a need for connection, confidence-building, public speaking and interview skills, for example. In a serendipitous moment, the community workers met a clown called Hulawump, who offered free clown workshops for the adults. The outcomes were extensive, with ripple effects through the wider community. We heard about a woman who reported feeling isolated, was, following the clown workshops, able to enter into a long-term relationship, organise a street party and start a book club. Another workshop attendee, who had been unemployed, found confidence and capacity to pursue work, because of the workshop. And, in his new employment, started an internship for young people at risk of exclusion from school, and some opportunities to share clown play with the young people, following Hulawump’s approach…

Katharine's invitation to open to wonder seemed to invite in the magic to our collective dreaming.

Clare’s Session - Clowns Go Outside

This next section is also written by Amy:

We walked together to the outdoor classroom. We lit a candle to create a base.  Clare invited us to find a fruit tree in the orchard just below the classroom. We had a very open brief– go and be with the tree, in whatever way(s) arose for us.  

We returned to base then were set another activity. To go into the woods, to wherever we were drawn– a place of magic, perhaps. We would go solo into the woods for 20 minutes on our own, then return, map the spaces and share in whatever way we liked. Each of us set off, and had our experiences. 

We reconvened as a group and moved through one anothers’ places/experiences. So, I described encountering a long bramble, which found its way around my ankle and which I played with for a while, until it led me up a path to a resting place, where I lay among the brambles and looked up into the trees blowing in the wind. We then encountered Robyn, who, in red nose, led us on an urgent walk through the woods to try to find a good/safe/private place to pee. We rambled together on this mission and she finally found a good spot and had a wee.  Shortly after, Holly led us through the woods, also in red nose. We were invited to find a stick (she had two she was carrying with her). The sticks became musical instruments against a wooden railing that led to a magical spot overlooking the woods where we stopped a while and enjoyed the views.  

I remember Sophie then daring us to climb down a steep slope to explore the huge cracks in the ground and Katharine inviting us to lie down beneath the trees and look up at the leaves and the sky. I felt so grateful for the invitation to spend time playing simply in and with nature. It felt to me like this was the only sensible course of action at this stage in our intense process! Nature held us, soothed us and inspired us, providing answers to our questions in the most unexpected of ways.

Day 5

On the final day, we moved, we wrote and we each took 20 minutes to share some of our personal and professional learning from the week. We finished with a song, a laughter meditation and a clown ritual. 

The week held so much bounty for us, it’s hard to capture it all in words, so here’s the consolidated version that we penned for Hawkwood’s blog.

Robyn Hambrook:

“It was day five. As we gathered in our spacious, light-filled room to reflect on the week, I was struck by the expansiveness of my thoughts. Just a few days ago, I had arrived exhausted—disconnected after months of relentless work; the bane of the freelance existence. But in these five days, I had formed a deep bond with these five women, shaped by our time in this room - where we met in play and practice, in laughter and tears, in collaboration, and in our shared dreams and visions for clowning.

We were held so fully by our surroundings: the beauty of nature, the nourishing food, the inviting couches, and the hospitality of Hawkwood's warm embrace. I loved the twists and turns of the week as we took turns sharing our practices, responding to both individual and collective inquiries.

This reminded me of my Master's - of the sense of allyship I developed within my cohort. Each of us followed different lines of inquiry, yet we came together to offer support, insights, and encouragement for one another’s projects. That kind of fertile space is so essential yet so rare.

As solo practitioners, facilitators, and directors, we are often expected to always know, to never doubt, to keep moving forward. But here, we found the spaciousness to breathe into the not-knowing. To explore. To be.

I feel fuelled, inspired, and connected in ways that could never have happened in the familiarity of our cities or homes. We had to step away from our lives to find this space.

Thank you Hawkwood for providing that.”

Clare Parry-Jones:

“The residency at Hawkwood with my fellow clown teachers gave me space and support to explore not only my own ideas, thoughts and provocations, but that of the whole group. We were able to question ourselves and each other, to be open and vulnerable, supported by each other, the space and the nature surrounding us. I feel more empowered, knowing I am not alone in my questioning and curiosity about how to offer my unique wisdom and experience to others, and to learn to value this more.”  

Katharine Markwick:

 “What a week! It was fantastic to be able to share practice and build connections and relationships with clowns from such a wide range of practice specialisms. I've been thinking a lot about ways to introduce humanitarian clowning into different contexts, particularly schools and workplaces, and it was great to be able to dig into this with the group and get their perspectives re: the opportunities and challenges here. I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation and to new collaborations that may result. Watch this space!”

Amy Rose:

“I feel nourished on all levels from our week together. The generous accommodation, food and welcome from the Hawkwood hosts provided such a strong foundation that enabled us to focus, play, work, grapple and rest, all of which enabled rich outcomes. Since returning, I've been attempting to replicate some of the conditions and approaches; cooking good food, taking full breaks, and making time for, and trusting, play as a way of knowing.”

Sophie Besse:

 “The role of clowns in turbulent times. What a difficult topic, especially nowadays. It was so interesting exploring this and I am leaving with a lot of food for thought especially with this idea we evoked of having clowns in liminal spaces. In those difficult transition times in life where we might feel scared, sad, lonely, invisible. We mentioned primary schools but I would love to push it to the adult world; like funerals, fertility clinics, Home Office for people seeking asylum in this country (why not!) places where our inner child gets damaged and where a bit of company could help out and avoid more anger, bitterness and resentment.” 

Holly Stoppit:

“This was an incredible week of exploration and discovery both on a personal and professional level. We co-created a rich and fertile lab, spending time making a safe container and building trust, before tackling our questions with the spirit of gung-ho clown-adventurers.

Our inquiries bounced between serious discussions and frivolous play as more and more questions emerged. Organically, we began to take it in turns to experiment with finding different ways to answer the questions, through play and performance. 

It was like living in a surreal soup of dancing dinosaurs, wriggling eels, dying flowers, half-naked banshies, moustasioued authoritarians, wise shamans, wordy academics, sweet school teachers, silver-tounged politicians, earnest community builders, big business owners and simple red-nosed clowns, as our parade of changing characters all had their say in our discussion.

My personal inquiry was all to do with shared leadership and collaboration, so I was delighted to have a whole week to experiment, learn and grow with these incredible practitioners in this extraordinary setting. Thank you Hawkwood for providing such a gorgeous space and nourishing us with such divine cuisine. I am sure this week will have reverberations for all of us, for years to come.” 

Massive thanks to The Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust for funding this extraordinary week and a raucous round of applause to all the Hawkwood staff who supported us to do our work.

Hawkwood Artists Residencies are open to applications from any UK based artists. Find out more here.