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Crawley
Oh you lucky people have we got a show for you, Crawley convention 19th - 21st August from memory the show will include:
Italian German Wheel, Diabolo, Lithuanian Jugglers, Australian skipping and hoops, Rod Lavers new routine of Card Manipulation and probably the old time favorite Ping Pong routine, "Britains Bendiest Woman" a contortionist featuring the dangerous Marinelli bend, the ever popular Ian Marchant featuring his new Vaudeville tricks, Acrobalance and Feeding the Fish, all compered by Jon Udry, I'm sure I've missed someone out but come along and see, it'll be a great weekend.
Sounds awesome. I shall be there.
If I was promoting #Crawley2016 I might also mention that you can buy tickets from the Hawth box office, best to call on 01293 553636 (Monday-Saturday 10am-6pm) don't bother with the website.
Yes promoting it would be an excellent idea, i need to pay for all those acts somehow!
We've got one of those faceache page thingy's somewhere, search for Crawley Circus Festival and you should find it.
Little Paul - - Parent #
I'm very much looking forward to it!
#Crawley2016 is pleased to announce that Simone our German wheel artist in the show will be running workshops for us on Sunday afternoon in the studio.
Crawley Festival
Today is your last chance to get the discounted early bird tickets, call the box office on 01293 553636 today.
The show line-up includes: Marky Jay – Diabolo, Mathew Tiffany – Variety juggling, Helen Orford – Hula hoops, Ulriche Storch – Foot Juggler, the aptly named Kellie Sky on Aerial silks and The Void – Serious juggling all compered by Magician Christian Lee.
The forecast for the weekend is dry and sunny, so bring a tent to make the most of it.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/142648271264/
#Crawleyconvention
Little Paul - - Parent #
Yay! Tiff is in the show!
Deffo bringing my Salerno ring if tiff is about
Little Paul - - Parent #
oh, and yeah - just booked my tickets - because leaving it to the last minute is what all the cool kids are doing right?
Squee! Really looking forward to next weekend.
I bought a load of tickets for most of the TWJC rabble a while ago, still bullying a few more stragglers to come along.
Tickets still on sale at pre reg prices, ring the box office on 01293 553636.
I'm also in the process of putting the workshop schedule together and would love to have some people offering their services, as usual you will receive our heartfelt thanks and maybe even a beer as reward. Contact me direct at davemlaw@talktalk.net
Hope to see some of you there we have a great show lining up nicely details TBA soon.
#Crawley Convention 2015
Just bought my tickets for Crawley 2015. This is a good thing.
#CrawleyConvention2015
Am somewhat disappointed that I can't go to Crawley this year as I will be working in Southampton until 6pm on the Saturday. Of course I could turn up just for the Sunday but I can actually get to lie in on the Sunday if I don't go to Crawley (for the first Sunday this year).
Nigel
Am doing circus workshops. Have never managed to pack away before the finish in all the times I've run them.
It's a shame but I'm resigned to missing Crawley.
Nigel
Richard Loxley - - Parent #
Just booked mine today - looking forward to it.
Surprisingly I didn't have to pay a booking fee. It always felt a bit strange that to get the early-bird price you had to pay a booking fee which cancelled out some of the benefit of booking early. Glad that the theatre has stopped doing that :-)
Little question...
Is the trick that I do at 1:40 in this video actually called flat fronts? Not quite sure as I haven't seen any other jugglers for a while and starting to doubt that they are really flat fronts.
Link: https://youtu.be/7JS-t0neD0A
Thanks for the help!
Mike Moore - - Parent #
Around these parts, those are called dips.
Sjors Stuurman - - Parent #
Hmm alright, so then I guess my record for flat fronts doesn't count.
Sjors Stuurman - - Parent #
What would you call these then? Reverse Flat fronts or Inside Flat fronts?
Ah, I'm familiar with Dips. The video still isn't playing for me, but...
Elbows up, palms down, club heads pointing inwards, ..... thrown in the shoulder-plane, with a thumb-upward/club-head upward movement? Yep, they are Dips.
I do 4 Dips, on every 3rd throw, from 1:57 to 2:05 here:
http://juggling.tv/4170
Sjors Stuurman - - Parent #
Yea, that's what I juggle, except I juggle them continously, thanks for telling me what the trick is actually called ;)
Crawley Circus Festival 2014
Right, what can I remember...
Friday
I arrived on site at around 19:30ish to find Kevin, Simon, Yumi, Paul, Louisa (not Laura), Cat & Karina already set up, Jenny & Matt joined us shortly afterwards. I quickly pitched my tent, had I been more bothered I would have spent more time clearing the hazelnuts from the ground which proved to be very painful when knelt on over the course of the weekend.
I said that it would take 40 minutes to place our order for pizza so I was very surprised when Simon stopped the clock at under 15 minutes, however we did have to restart the clock again when the first pizza place wouldn't pick up the phone, in the end I wasn't far off with my estimate. Come on people we can do better than this!
It was a very wet evening so we all bundled together in the gazebo where we drank the night away, many of us enjoying Paul's homebrew. Cat, Karina, Matt & I spent much of the evening playing Gloom, a card game where the objective is to make your family members as miserable as possible before killing them off while trying to make your opponents' families happier. This is definitely a game for people with a morbid sense of humour. I particularly enjoyed the alliterative story telling required to explain the actions of the cards being played. I was particularly proud of one of my family members breaking through a balcony, bouncing off the boardwalk on Broadway & breaking her bones.
Saturday
My eyes lit up as Kevin pulled out a large black cannon ball from the back of his car. He then threw it at me & I managed to catch it in a panic, only to find it was an inflatable rubber ball. Bastard.
Several kids were enjoying accidentally riding various wheeled contraptions into the large puddles around site. A number of the dogs being walked through the woods were enjoying a paddle too.
We announced the availability of Cinquevalli's cannon ball for perusal on the workshop board ("TWJC present a lump of metal") & had half a dozen or so juggling history spods join us to have a play with it. We looked at old photos, talked about early photography & discussed manufacturing techniques which was all very interesting. All the while we kept passing the ball back & forth, clearly everyone wanted to try a neck catch but no one did. Well one of us had to do it. Am I going to post this again? Yes I am.
https://youtu.be/7lCsnK6T7FE
Various teams from Southend Juggling Club were working their way through a scavenger hunt. The night before I'd heard a rumour that one of the tasks on the list was to kidnap someone so I was very hesitant to get near any of them. However, it turned out that they were showing interest in me because one of the items on the list was, "a zen wrestling match with Jon Relf". I managed to win 2 out of 3 matches.
In the afternoon it was off to the obligatory stealing workshop with Steve & Amie, plus added assistance from Lucas. Not sure we learned much, but that's not why we go. I did employ some of my new salsa dancing skills to come up with a move where I stole a club by the body high up in the pattern continuing the motion into a spin & dropping the club back into the pattern backwards over my head which felt nice.
The Show
Our compère for the evening was Ian Marchant who was smart & efficient plus brought out some very nice balancing & combination tricks in between acts such as balancing a tennis racket on the face while spinning a ring around one foot, while spinning a ball in one hand & juggling two balls in the other. Ian completely upstaged the finale with a balance involving two cues & a billiard ball on the chin while spinning a ring around the foot & two rings around each arm. Top stuff.
Frederike Gerstner & Ben Nicholson each presented a toss juggling & manipulation act, Fred with clubs, Ben with clubs & balls. Both included lots of very nice moves but also had a few too many drops & fumbles.
Graeme & Naomi were great on the trapeze. They were very dynamic with lots of fantastic moves smoothly executed but there was no finish, the music faded & the curtain came down which was a bit odd.
Silvia Pavone performed an ace hoop act. Great costume, very good isolations & solidly performed combination moves. Acrobaffinity performed an excellent Indian themed duo acrobalance routine including a few moves I hadn't seen before. Very enjoyable.
Pete & Russell performed various whip cracking stunts with progressively longer whips much the same as they did at the BJC, but this time with viking themed costumes.
Yam Doyev presented a very impressive, high strength strap act, but also had no real finish.
Closing the show were Pete & Russell again this time with knife throwing, finishing with Russell against the board with pigtails pinned up so Russell could cut them off with his angel throwing axes. Nice but a bit of a let down after Ian's finishing trick.
The star of the show was Florian Brooks who was impeccably dressed & moved with style & grace throughout. His first act was a hat & cane routine that was slick & polished. I find a lot of hat & cane routines are tricks with a hat plus tricks with a cane, but Florian combined both props very well with many tricks involving catching the hat on the cane in interesting ways. His second act was a club juggling routine with the same immaculate presentation. The juggling was flawless, not a single drop or even fumble that I could see. His finishing trick was a spectacular 5 club helicopter cascade.
Renegade
I missed the start of Renegade because I took the opportunity to have a shower. When I joined the audience I found it was being dominated by SJC. Bungle celebrated his 30th birthday by revisiting 10 years worth of Crawley renegade acts which was a tour de force of nostalgia. It included the much loved fire breathing rubber chicken, the Roxanne drinking game, the human BB gun target & my personal favourite: the obscenely suggestive carrot peeling contest.
Sunday
It was another stormy night & sadly the Crawley marquee lifted & went through the side of Paul's tent in the night. I was fortunate though & just managed to get my tent dry & packed away during one of the sunny spells. Win!
Games
Rain forced the games indoors this year. We made the mistake of setting up camp a bit too far back in the tiered seating, walking up & down the stairs in between games was quite tiring! There was a lot of frowning at various games this year. Everyone was using their knees to get under the pole during the 3 ball limbo & the winner of the slowest unicycle race was just riding side to side rather than riding in a straight line slowly.
I thought the stage would be a useful tool for the numbers game in that I could drop superfluous kids off the side of it when they weren't needed unfortunately I didn't get far enough to be able to make use of this tactic.
I dropped very early on in the five ball endurance for no good reason. I wisely gave hopping gladiators a miss this year owing to a dodgy knee, but very much enjoyed Jack's full on opening charge. I was taken out by a wild Glyn after I cornered him at the edge of the stage during three club gladiators. Simon later avenged me though in the game that took place outside later on though.
As ever, many thanks to Carolyn Murphy & Dave Law.
#crawley2014
#Crawley2014
We nearly have the show booked but still have a couple of slots available, is there anybody who you'd really like to see this year?
Has anyone got contact details for Paddy McCrea or Harry Clements I'd like to book them for Crawley but the address I have pjmccrea at hotmail co uk is bouncing my mails.
Thanks
I take it you've tried the phone number & contact form on his contact page?
I found that after I posted, I've messaged him there I'll try ringing him if I don't here anything soon.
Question for past organisers. Can you name one thing that you wish you'd known before organising your event? Is that information easily available now? Was it a question you asked but couldn't get an answer for or something that took you by surprise?
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
How many people would turn up. How many people would buy a t-shirt. How much does promotion affect turn up. How will people respond to this years caterer, how many people will buy extra food from them. What will the weather be like.
Our estimates based on other years were quite precisely met.
I was in charge of promotion and thought I made a bigger effort and reached more people/more conventions with higher quality material than in other years, yet this did not seem to improve the turn up. We did sell more t-shirts than other years though, which depends of course a lot on the design.
Did you have any particular method to come up with your estimates that perhaps could be applied to other festivals?
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
We did know how many people came to the last 4 editions of this festival, with one of them at the same location as ours. From this we created an estimate by our gut feelings. We assumed that there would be an equal amount of extra visitors as there would be pre-regged if we had good weather. I can not remember the exact numbers, but we closed the pre-reg about 2 weeks before the event and we had indeed around as much spontaneous visitors as preregged (though prereg was only for full festival, so possibly some would have preregged if we gave them the option to register for a single day - three days only)
Ah, I just found it again, our stats (only paying visitors, artists & orga make up for another 15 visitors):
170 Complete prereg (Prereg closed 24 days before event)
60 complete (no prereg)
30 2 nights
30 1 night
220 day visits
This and some more data about the NJF can be found here: https://danielsiegmund.nl/981/hoe-organiseer-je-een-jongleer-festival/
In Dutch, but google trans will probably give you the relevant material at the bottom of the page.
I wish we had more information on pre-reg information from previous years: What time did you open, what was the initial amount of registrations and how quickly did this grow and when did you close etc etc..
For this I can recommend people to use prereg.eu, Christoph is working actively on this system which gives you all the statistical data you could wish and makes it easy to share with others.
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
I believe he originally build it for the EJC in Munich, for which he was in the orga team. I don't remember if Lublin and Toulouse used it as well, but it will very likely be used for Karlsruhe 2015 and has been used for the past Berlin conventions..
The Edge is missing a PM system, I'd rather share addresses & stuff trough pms... but you can probably reach Christoph here: *snip*
He is usually enthusiastic to talk about this kind of stuff :)
It wasn't used for EJC Lublin or Toulouse as the EJA weren't prepared Christoph 3% of the convention's gross income.
It has some good features, but with an event that changes it's geographical location each year as well as pre-reg discount and how early pre-reg closes and how good the publicity is there are many variables to working out how many people might come.
It is always hard to calculate how many will come to a convention, BJC in Pickering suffered as there was heavy snow two weeks before which put many people off coming.
A PM system has been requested & I'm still thinking about it. The contact page already works well as a PM system if you want to send me something :)
Ah yes, I remember xchaos talking about a system that he was writing a while ago, but I can see how a 3% cut which is a pretty reasonable for professional software is a very large slice of the pie to a juggling convention.
3% of gross income is 15k on a half million turnover even if the convention makes a loss (which they regularly do). From the organiser perspective that spells OUCH.
Little Paul - - Parent #
3% of gross income spent on a system which may bring in less than 50% of that income seems a bit ambitious to me.
"3% of the gross pre-reg income" would be a rather different proposition. It's still a hefty chunk of cash though to an event which is targeted at "a little over breakeven"
I was speaking to someone who went to the French National Convention in Toulouse (which used the Munich system) who told me from the point of view as a customer it seems surprising at first when everything else is done by volunteers, but when compared to buying a concert or theatre ticket where there is (annoyingly) no way round having to pay a booking fee it is just a few euros.
I would think it is almost total income as the system is also used as an on-site till for selling tickets, t-shirts and show tickets. Obviously income from grants/sponsorship/advertising/concessions-fees (or kickbacks) would not be included.
Seriously, the numbers are the big unknown. I know that Play sells out - so then doesn't sell any tickets on the door. They then know their budget and can work to it.
I've had discussions with people who actually avoid preregistering so that they can "help out" by spending slightly more on the door at EJCs [this is when they don't pre-reg just before it shuts down]. I have tried to explain that this adds to the unknowns - in terms of how many showers and toilets are needed [do you have to hire in more?], also it affects how much space is needed for camping (and hence how much fencing is needed). If you are trying to cover these at the last minute, costs rapidly escalate; but if you over order then you don't have the money to cover the excess cost.
At recent EJCs it has become particularly difficult to predict how many people will arrive without having pre-registered. Back in the mid 2000s, it used to be about a 50/50 split; with an increased proportion preregistering for "peripheral" events - where you had to preplan your travel rather than driving overnight. This has changed in recent years without stabilising, making estimation of numbers extremely difficult, even given pre-registration figures.
BJCs are slightly more predictable, but can be affected by timing [how well do school and university holidays sync], adverse weather [especially last year with the snow just before the event] and moving around.
It would be really interesting if, one year, the EJC announced that there were xx number of tickets available for sale and once they were sold that that's it! The budget could be a lot more realistic. The first time it would have to be near an actual campsite, so that stragglers could be directed there [i.e. you aren't providing them with showers or camping facilities].
Other things that you would like to get from past organisers:
I probably would ask them for a detailed version of their income and expediture accounts... for example, what should the stationery budget be like? How much did getting artists to/from the site cost (so that this can be appropriately modified for your site) - were artists onsite or in other accommodation?
In terms of informal things, it probably would be many of the bullet points (more hassle, not worth it). One of my tasks for volunteers at #BJC2014 is to count the number of live-in vehicles onsite on Sunday. Seems a bit daft, but this year we were going by guessimates based on the size of the car park used in Southend.
Little Paul - - Parent #
Regarding live-in vehicle numbers, counting them should be a reasonably small job, is it worth doing daily (incase the peak isn't where you think it is) I'd be interested in seeing how the numbers change over time.
As I'll be in amongst them (BOV passed its MOT! Yay!) I'm happy to help out with counting duties :)
You're it. It can count towards your "tea drinker" badge. That's my favourite superpower badge this year. I'll make a little tally sheet for you to keep a record on.
We are also interested in actual density of tents, so I'll be looking for others to count tents!
I've remembered a question that I'd ask previous organisers.
Who did you comp in? (Free entry). And why? Were these full week / weekend / day entry complementary tickets?
This doesn't have to name names if people are uncomfortable about it. It could be along the lines of xx circus group was given 2 free tickets for their supervising adults as they were bringing 20 "youths" (so paid entry) to the convention - it was felt that this was a net earner for the convention, so a decision was made by the team to do this.
People were given complementary tickets for doing/providing x y z as it would have cost us a lot more to hire in the equivalent.
A few of these are legacy issues that no-one is really certain why they were getting the form of ticket that they are. This can create confusion / unrealistic expectations and cause unnecessary hassle for organising teams when they try to change things.
I've tried counting tents before, jugglers' inability to camp in nice straight lines & the number of small green Eurohike tents make this really difficult! Plus marking people's tents with a paint as you count them makes people really unhappy.
I have met a guy though who has a rig on his car that extends a camera on a pole some 20ft up in the air to take aerial photographs which he charges quite a bit for. I'm sure the same result could be achieved by sending a small child up a nearby tree/building/telegraph pole/electricity pylon (how sturdy is BOV's roof LP?!) with a photo stitching enabled smartphone. Then counting is just a case of marking dots on the image after the fact.
I remember one convention where people were required to ask for a tag to put on their tent when they collected their pass with big warning that any un-tagged tents would be removed.
I don't know if anyone went round to check for un-tagged tents, but they knew how many tents they should have on sites based on the numbers of tags given out. You could try something similar for live in vehicles (if you asked for the drivers mobile number (and licence plate no) when you gave the live-in vehicle tag, reg desk would be have a list of who to phone when someone found a live in vehicle blocking a fire route.
Possibly at bigger conventions like BJC the arrival desk might be busy enough without yet another thing to give out.
Little Paul - - Parent #
I think Crawley last year were handing out three classes of pass, one for people, one for tents, and one for live in vehicles.
I'm not sure if anyone went round checking them, or even counted them.
We had our tents audited in the TWJC camp. Not sure if this was special treatment for us or not.
We issued tent passes to weekend ticket holders at Crawley as camping is only free to them, day visitors can buy a camping pass if required, the reason for this is our somewhat limited camping space, yes they were checked but I don't think they were counted and yes we did find some people camping without a ticket (camping or convention)when queried the reply was " we didn't think anyone would check" sadly this is the reason why we do the checks as if everyone took that attitude we'd not sell any tickets and not be able to put on the event.
BTW WWW.crawleycircusfestival.co.uk 8-10th August ring 01293 553636 for tickets as the Hawths online booking system can't cope!!
Perhaps someone might have one of those remote control mini quad-copters, we could fly it over the campsite with a small child attached. It would save having to chase them up a pole or if there wasn't a pole close enough to the campsite.
Little Paul - - Parent #
Wasn't Mark T building a quad-copter?
Cedric Lackpot - - Parent #
Juggling conventions nowadays are crawling with extendible sticks (for the Bungay Entrance Exam trick) and small, high-quality cameras that could easily be gaffer-taped to one end, and triggered by remote control or self-timer.
Little Paul - - Parent #
I've made a note to pack my clipboard :)
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