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.

...Robyn Hambrook 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....

Hello dear reader! 

For those fresh eyes I am Charlie, a clown, facilitator, performer, host and other titles.... 

...in March Holly and I spent 2 whole days in a process called ‘Assemble Your Inner Cast’. Backed up by Holly’s knowledge of Internal Family Systems and Fooling, this 2-day process was to get to know better the some of the many parts of my internal psyche, and then to reconstitute this map of me.

The Guardian's science corespondent, Linda Geddes had come across the term,“lemonading” - the ability to turn lemons into lemonade, recently coined by scientists over in the States who discovered from a study conducted during the pandemic, “…people with high levels of playfulness may be better equipped to cope with the dud cards life throws at them.” Linda spent a week hanging out with playful people to test this theory out for herself.

Mid February 2025, as winter released its final flurries of sleety snow, I was blessed with a heart-warming, life-affirming, well-filling weekend of play, connection, irreverence and depth in the enchanting Forest of Dean. 

This blog describes some of what we got up to on our Fooling Nerds Holiday.

Last week, Amelia Hill, senior reporter at The Guardian interviewed me, along with a gaggle of clown teachers and students, to find out about the therapeutic benefits of clowning. She’d gotten wind of a growing trend of clown teachers offering workshops - not just to train people to become professional performers, but to also offer spaces for self-discovery and healing - and she wanted to know why!

Happy New Year! 

To mark the transition, here’s a wee muse on the theme of beginnings and endings.

A few weeks ago, in the final session of my online Creative Facilitation course, we explored the theme of beginnings and endings through play and reflection. Here follows a few of my experiences with beginnings and endings, along with an outline of the groups’ playful explorations and a poem I assembled from their musings in the Zoom chat-box.

2024: A year of relentless experimentation, research and development: on a quest to find more sustainability in work and life. 

In 2024, I planned to try out various types of work and different living situations, reflecting on how they made me feel. I wanted to know: What feeds and what drains me? What makes my heart sing? What extra boundaries and support can I put in place to make sure I don’t fall back into my old patterns of burnout as a life-style choice? I was hoping to find the formula to living a life free of burnout by the end of 2024!

Here follows an outline of my 2024 workshops, courses and projects and what I learned along the way.

Hello! We are Holly Stoppit and Robyn Hambrook and we are looking for four established, UK-based clown teachers to join us in a 5-day clown teaching lab in February 2025.

I am delighted to announce a fifth season of one-one-one Creative Clarity, Supervision and Creative Consultancy sessions online on Zoom!

From January-April 2025, you can book a series of 6 or 3 one-hour sessions to explore yourself, your work, your creativity, or your path.

One-off sessions are also available for anyone wanting to dip their toe in.

This blog explores the pain of polarization (an IFS term describing when two or more parts have conflicting ideas about how to keep us safe) and paradox. We’ll be meeting some of the internal parts who have been involved in my decision-making about trying to find a place to live. We’ll be zooming in on the parts that don’t want me to settle down and exploring the impact they’ve been having on my system and my life. I’ve included a bit of backstory for those who are new to the blog (Welcome!). I hope you enjoy travelling with me, deep into my psyche and I hope my reflections support you with yours.