Kitchen Circus Project - Knowle West Media Centre

Kitchen Circus Project 2020 – brought families and artists together to share stories and create work exploring the theme of ‘home’.

Three families from in and around Knowle West, Easton and Barton Hill were working mostly virtually over lock down with artists Megan Clark-Bagnall, Mike Akers, Megan Vaughan-Thomas, Leeza Awojobi and Grapevine.

Central to the Kitchen Circus project is creating time within the home to form connections, experiment with ideas and discover the stories that want to be told… This involves thinking about home in a holistic way, from the physical place we sleep to our wider natural world.

The project is an ongoing collaboration with Cirque Bijou (Easton), Travelling Light Theatre Company (Barton Hill) and Knowle West Media Centre (Knowle West).

During the course of Summer 2020, each family and their artists went along a different routes of discovery and making from conversations to board games, puppet mascots to animation making. They also opened out from working intimately together to inviting other artists, neighbours and wider family to take part in their creations. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, it seems more important than ever for families, neighbours, artists and organisations to reflect on the importance of family and home, and what they mean to us as we move through the current crisis.

Below is a snap shot of what we got up to.

Three Places Like Home

Reginald and Ruby - by Family: Catherine, Rob, Alfred and Harold

: Family Mascot to support and encourage

: Animation still with phone ‘Call Jeff…and get milk’

: Package of Possibilities (toolkit for lockdown)

: Album cover ‘Infected Scab’

: Board game ‘Boiling Island Lava’

: Artworks made by families and artists working together on the Kitchen Circus project.

2014 and 2015 Projects

The first Kitchen Circus projects took place in 2014 and 2015, bringing circus performances, songs and digital arts onto the streets, to explore ideas about identity, hospitality and how we live now.

The 2014 performances around Knowle West included a journey across the neighbourhood and pop-up shows in streets, living rooms and front gardens, combining an enchanting mix of intimacy and spectacle. The artists involved were Dom Coyote, Truan Matthias and Tine Bech.

The 2015 performances in Hengrove explored the notion of ‘home’ and included a circus performance on the green, a trail of illuminated objects and musical performances at local landmarks, including on a boat. This year we worked with circus artists Tit For Tat, spoken word artist Rebecca Tantony and digital artist Dom Breadmore. The 2015 performance was part of Bristol’s Circus City festival.