Workshops

Holly’s workshops are designed to be of benefit to both professional performers seeking performance skills training and the brave and curious seeking self-development. Through skillful holding and carefully paced progressions of games and exercises, Holly creates the ideal conditions that allow creativity, play, insight, wonder and discovery to thrive.

Holly has been devising and delivering workshops for adults since 2007. She draws upon her huge history of training and experience in many areas, including: improvisation, clowning, fooling, dance, physical theatre, voice work, creative writing, dramaturgy, dramatherapy, mindfulness, playwork, group process, nonviolent communication and laughter yoga to deliver bespoke, bountiful group experiences. To read more about Holly's experience or see her TEDx Bristol talk, click here.

See below for a full list of Holly's workshops. If you have a company or are an individual artist looking to commission your own bespoke training, have a look at what’ s on offer and get in touch with Holly to begin co-designing your ideal workshop. Holly’ s workshops range from 2-hour play sessions to 10 day residencies.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE

5th December 2021

Hello dear reader,

Holly here, with a COVID update to let you know where I'm at with the workshops.

I'm getting a lot of requests for my in-person Introduction To Clowning Weekend. This makes my heart sing as I used to love teaching this course!

I haven't started hosting my own in-person clowning or fooling workshops again since the pandemic, as I'm in the process of figuring out how to make it safe in the current conditions. So much of my work is about releasing breath as a way of accessing and expressing emotions. If I cut the breath release, we lose the heart of the work!

In June, I held a conversation looking for solutions with a group of improvisers at an online Devoted and Disgruntled Open Space event. Since then I have had many opportunities to try some of these solutions out, through taking on a range of in-person consultancy for theatre companies. With smaller groups and clear boundaries, I've been able to experiment with different ways of working. Clarity is coming, but it's taking time.

In the meantime, I've been writing a book about facilitation (thanks to Arts Council England) which led to developing a new in-person and online facilitation training called The Well-Held Space. This course was designed to work in the current conditions and allowed me to begin a new chapter for Holly Stoppit Workshops in a post-covid world.

The pandemic gave me so many opportunities to reinvent myself. Before we even went into our first lockdown, fellow clown teacher, Robyn Hambrook and I started doing wild experiments in digital clowning. We went on to form The Online Clown Academy, devising and co-facilitating a series of Zoom courses and running two incredible online conferences, Clowns In Crisis and Clowning Out of Chaos. We connected with an international throng of clowns through our events and facebook group.

I also got to learn about digital and hybrid improvised performance alongside my company Beyond The Ridiculous, performing two shows on Zoom, Voices of Lockdown Live and Unleashed and The New "Normal," thanks to The Wardrobe Theatre and Arts Council England for their generous support.

I've been using my creative pandemic experiences, alongside a lifetime's experience of performing, directing, facilitating, project planning, evaluating and deep inquiry to support facilitators, directors, group leaders and artists online and in-person as a Creative Consultant. I've enjoyed this so much, that I've begun training as a Creative Arts Therapies Clinical Supervisor so that I can offer deeper support to facilitators and therapists.

My work is changing, I am changing, the world is changing. Will I ever go back to running my beloved clowning and fooling workshops? At this point, I really don't know. Watch this space and sign up to my newsletter at the bottom of this page to find out!

If you're interested in my Creative Consultancy services, get in touch via email: holly@hollystoppit.com.

Love and laughter,

Holly x

Upcoming Workshops and Events

We are currently creating our 2022 workshop programme. Watch this space or sign up to our mailing list at the bottom of this page to find out what we have in store for you for 2022.