International Clown Festival 2012, Svendborg, Denmark.
provisional dates :- 23rd – 27th May 2012
Last year’s festival
100 clowns from 5 continents joined the 13th International Clown Festival in Sydfyn for a week of fun and games this year.
Children’s shows, family shows, hospital visits, visits to old people’s homes and institutions for the handicapped, street shows, a street parade, the Gala in Svendborg Theatre and not forgetting the workshops in the various clown arts including mime, clown magic, balloon modelling, face painting etc. All part of the program that makes the festival so unique.
It was a pleasure to come back to the newly renovated Borgerforening to perform the children’s shows in the Golden Hall. And to be able to exhibit the hundreds of children’s clown drawings, collected and saved from the last 12 years that the drawing competition has been part of the festival, a quite special event in its self.
Clown drawings, collages and skulptures by children as young as two years covered the available wall space in the “kulturhus”, bringing colour and insight to the children’s fantasy and understanding of the clown.
Rudkøbing and Ringe libraries decided to have their own exhibition of local clown drawings while Ærø sent their drawings to the mainland after they had been used to decorate the venue during the clown show in Rise. (Many of the clown drawings can be seen on the festivals home page www.klovnefestival.dk or www.clownfestival.dk )
On the first day of the festival, 250 Children from Marstal and Ærøskøbing came together in Rise to enjoy the experience created by the clowns that sunny day in May, while another 200+ children met up in Ringe bibliotek, 700 in the Borgerforeningen (Svendborg) and a further 150 were laughing in Rudkøbing bibliotek. Many more shows and visits took place on subsequent days during the festival plus some impromptu requests for clowns to visit here and there were also made possible as there were so many clowns attending this year.
Cooperation and active involvement from each of the 4 areas on South Fyn has been excellent.
(Svendborg, Langeland, Ærø and Fåborg/Midfyn)
The local councils (kommuner) arranged for the children to attend the various clown shows in the libraries, schools and culture houses.
The tourist bureaux dealt with advertising, local press and posters
And the shopping centres (handlestands foreninger) helped in creating the fun atmosphere by decorating their shop windows, handing out red noses and making the visiting clowns feel very welcome, many of the restaurants and cafés inviting clowns to wine and dine.
The 3000 red noses given away to the public was definitely a success, especially in Svendborg during the parade. Two sizes were handed out, large for those with big noses and small for those with not so big noses.
Svendborg became “Clowntown” for a while, adults found their inner child and began to play, laughter could be heard on every corner and who knows what fun followed once the red noses arrived in the various homes?
Most of the clowns attending have made a note in their diaries for next year and many new clowns have already begun to register, wanting to come and join the fun and games.
Many thanks to our sponsors, the volunteers, the Clowns and of course the wonderful public .
Jo Jo the clown