CIRCUS STARS OF TOMORROW

Inside the Academy of Circus Arts
tent as dressed for the filming
of the BBC1 sitcom Big Top.

Free Show

If you want to see the circus stars of tomorrow for free, get along to Hampstead Heath at 2pm on Friday, October 2, for the Academy of Circus Arts Graduation Show.

Martin Burton, of Zippos Circus, set up the Academy after booking a trapeze act trained in a conventional circus school. They had a great act, but because they’d trained in a place where the trapeze was permanently set up, they didn’t know how to rig their own apparatus. They then proved unable to adapt to life on the road in a caravan.

Zippo’s solution was to start a travelling circus school. Each week, the students not only put on a show for the public, they build up and pull down the big top, drive the lorries to the next town, put up posters, work in the box office and do all the other things that are part of life in the sawdust ring.

The result is graduates the world’s circuses can’t wait to snap up. The graduation show is a unique gala performance devised and presented by the students and teachers - and you can see it for FREE, in the Zippos big top at East Heath Road, Hampstead on Friday, October 2 at 2pm.

Seating is unreserved, so just turn up - sorry, I meant to say: roll up, roll up - in good time to get the best seat.

Click here to read an interview with Zippos founder Martin Burton