Bubbas watching rehearsals

I can do it!

Folly Farm is a hive of activity today...from sets, props and scenery being made to the band practising!

These two lovely young horses are meeting the musicians for the first time.

WANTED - any old / antique tack, such as old flat nosebands, or cut away flat saddles, maybe even with linen linings...CASH PAID...for this years tour.

Outside our house there are caravans, tents and wagons everywhere. The army is here! An army of musicians, composers, artistes, jugglers, gymnasts...... The barn is full of scenic painters, the tent is up in the garden, our new director is due to fly in from new York at the end of the week. It is nail bitingly exciting and nerve wracking.

We have just been to a vintage market in Newbury where we will be going instead of the old Hay on Wye ground - there and to a beautiful little arts festival on the edge of Oxford. I can't wait!  We are all feeling so excited about getting out on the road and doing what we love - entertaining people.

Folly Farm is now buzzing with circus acts, student artistes, designers - the countdown to opening night starts now!

Red and Cecil are increasingly excited about the circus in their garden and stand on the porch heckling their favourite people to come over and chat to them.

It is a white knuckle ride in so many ways. If any one out there can help us push out fliers, posters and tickets PLEASE let us know. We are also available for talks, assemblies and farmers markets....

Thankyou!

The barn we are ready to start set painting

Red, Cecil and Auntie Lydia

Red with Tom the tiny pony!

The tent is going up for rehearsals this week at Folly Farm

Thanks to everyone who sent messages after Countryfile on Sunday.

Planting a parterre at Folly Farm

More planting

 Circus nights

Do watch out for us on Countryfile this Sunday (4th March) BBC1 7pm - Jules Hudson tries his hand at vaulting, meets the animal stars of our upcoming show 'The Saturday Book' and chats to Nell ans Toti about the Circus and Folly Farm.

Take a look at the Countryfile website for more information about the episode

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dbbnv

Jules Hudson from BBC 1's Countryfile trying his hand at vaulting, watched by Nell and Red

Cotswold Wildlife Park - the best zoo ever!

We always ride like this!

Red showing Bibi and Tweedy how it's done!

Cecil gets in on the act with Tweedy and Red

Red and Cecil with Bichu, one of our jugglers!

All our horses spend some of the year outside, in the field, being normal horses. They get hay and hard food and grow long coats.

The working horses have a very carefully thought through time table of work to make sure that they don't get too tired, and have plenty of time to rest. They are also turned out when we are on tour so that they can graze and walk freely about. They have regular visits from the dentist, vet and back specialist.

Sometimes we sell horses. I always make sure that they go to good permanent homes. For example the black horse from last years show I sold to a lovely lady who teaches autistic children to ride. He is now one of their favourites and spends a lot of his time being kissed and cuddled by the children. We sold another pony to an RDA group called The Fortune Centre. He is a much loved pony there and because of his experience in shows he takes part in their annual Carol concert!

I have just been to the Tales on Moon Lane bookshop in Dulwich. It is the best children's bookshop in the world you have to go there it only 10 minutes from Victoria on the train. It stocks all the children's books that I remember from childhood - Asterix, Baba the Elephant, Tintin, the pop up haunted house by Jan Pienkowski. This photograph is of a cartoon drawn by Jan on the wall in the bookshop. It all stocks all the great new children's books as well as little cardboard theatres, shadow theatres, pom pom making kits and lots of sweet and affordable toys and delights.

Look out for Giffords Circus on Escape to the Country on BBC1 Wednesday 22nd Feb (tomorrow) at 2.15pm.  We filmed the episode with them in Barrington last summer.  Presenter Denise Nurse tried her hand at some circus skills with our jugglers Bibi and Bichu and our clown Tweedy was on hand to cause some mischief!

Photo: Michael Seadon

Countryfile presenter Jules trys his hand a vaulting, watched carefull by Nell and Red!

The Crew at Giffords Circus are sending Rob Mann much love x

We have been filming for Countryfile all day . It will be coming out next month so look out for it. Also next week are on Escape to the Country.

Thanks to all the mechanical geese people that got in touch we have now someone to make them but have kept everyone who replied on file for future projects.

We have just got some new fliers printed so if any one in involved in a shop/ nursery group/ school, and would like some fliers and posters to give out, please let me know. Just email nell@giffordscircus.comI am so excited about this year. The horses are all going really well, the boys are looking like proper circus riders, spring is in the air, the programme is coming together -it is all to live for.

Toti and I saw Warhorse and really enjoyed it. But the constant pretend neighing and fake horse acting does grate. Warhorse the stage show was genius because it turned puppets into horses; Warhorse the movie turned horses into puppets. Less magic.

We are still searching for a hard working groom, someone who is willing to throw their lot in with ours, show initiative, work long hard hours and devote themselves to our circus horses! 

Please only apply if you are confidant, competent, had previous experience working with horses and able to take sole charge!

Ability to drive a horse lorry, tow a trailer an advantage.

Acommodation provided.

Please contact our Yard Manager Mark Davies on 07582 827731

If you are interested for applying to work in the Giffords Circus stables the job interview will include a morning's work at our yard, and you will need to show that you can work under your own steam, cleaning, mucking out, tacking up - if you stand about waiting to be asked to do something you won't get through!

Red & Cecil having fun in the snow at Folly Farm!

Red take a tumble, but Cecil lends a helping hand!

Folly Farm frozen solid. In the spring this will be full of music.

Practise WILL make perfect. Training in the barn.

In october of 2007 whilst walking in St Germain in Paris I heard a brass band playing that to me just sounded like the sound of happiness. The band joined our circus the following season. They are called the Fanfare Suivante. They worked for us for several seasons and were consistently creative and energetic with a touch of genius. Thankyou Fanfare people, wherever you are now and wherever your adventures take you!

We had a really exciting meeting with our new director, Cal McCrystal on Thursday.  We are looking for a clever artistic person who would be avaialble in April to design and build some geese that can play music, drive cars and fly about. To the right person this will all seem entirely normal!

Please email me if this short contract appeals to you nell@giffordscircus.com

The Ardenne ponies are going really well. Time and patience, time and patience.    A lot of circus people have been offering us help with this act, which is so nice. For example Yasmine, Mike Austin, and Carlos MacManus. We feel really honoured to be in a small way keeping a circus tradition alive.

I saw a photograph of Joey, one of the horses used in Warhorse. I felt really annoyed that it was an Andalusian. It is such a complete and utter nonsense that an English farm horse before the war would be a Spanish bred. It's so sad. Call me a nerd but the whole history of civilization is right there embedded in the horse breeds of the world. I think that a massive budget movie like Warhorse should get it right. I know Spanish horses are photogenic and trainable, but Joey would have been an Irish Draft, and it just silly to make him into a fancy European breed.  

The new year is here and the birds sometimes make a sound like it could be spring .... circus time approaches...

RUNAWAY and JOIN THE COMPANY.

I am looking for a fluent French speaker who would be willing to joint the team from April to September as an au pair / tutor to work alongside Red and Cecil's nanny and teach them (and maybe me) French. It would mean living in a caravan and watching two circus shows all summer every day with the twins. If you know anyone interested then please contact me on nell@giffordscircus.com

We also have some touring intern/work placement positions working front of house on the show. Sequins provided! Again please email nell@giffordscircus.com

Happy New Year everyone 

In the Ashmolean museum the day after Boxing Day.

Jimmy Joe's favourite thing in the museum, good choice!

My favourite thing!

Brilliant news! We are going to be visiting the lovely Victoria Park in Newbury from the 31st May to 5th June.  We are so excited about this. The Park is a lovely town pleasure ground with a glassy lake and an exquisite bandstand. The town council have been so great to work with and we are really excited to be a part of the Queens Jubilee celebrations on Sunday 3rd June. I can see lots of tea cups, colourful bunting, the band playing and children doing dressing up games. The park feels just right for the circus - elegant and civic. It is so important that the circus is sited in a place where it feels welcome, public and celebrated. When I worked in Europe on circuses all those years ago I realised that this was one of the secrets of the success of continental circus. The grounds were always in some ways a celebration of the circus. The circus is an installation - the white tent, the burgundy wagons, the fairy lights - it brings diversity and popular culture. If it is shoved to the outskirts of the town, to wastelands, rutted fields and places that no one loves, then the circus itself appears unloved. When I worked for circus shows in the UK in the early nineties this is so often where we would play - on bits of rough ground, ground ear marked for development, even dumps. And this drags down the cultural status of circus, and I think it was a part of the decline in UK circus in the nineties. We want to feel that we are in a public space, open and on view, a beautiful temporary arrangement to be looked at and visited. It is an interesting psychology.

More on Victoria park soon..... 

Giffords Circus is a miniature village green circus. I think that a beautiful circus with ponies and dancing girls and a live band is the perfect use of an english village green. It is all too easy in this age of licensing and legislation to end up just playing on purpose built show grounds. When Giffords Circus comes to a village we bring laughter, glamour and entertainment for all the family. We are always on the look out for lovely village greens or playing fields where we can work with the local community to create a really special annual summer event. For example when we are in Barrington in Gloucestershire we work with the local pub, The Fox Inn, to provide drinks in the interval, and the pub serves up lunches and dinners to the everyone for the week we are there, as well as breakfasts for hungry circus folk on build up morning. At Frampton on Severn the local church holds a lovely family service in the big top on Sunday morning. We structure our show times around the service, and the band help with the music. At Minchinhampton the local unemployed young people who hang about the town square do litter picking and car parking in exchange for free tickets.

If you are part of a community that runs a village green, and would like to be considered as part of the Giffords Circus tour, then please do get in touch with us. We need to be somewhere within about an hours drive to of Oxford. There are lots of things to chat through, for example parking, licensing and working with village events, but we are really used to talking through this stuff and finding solutions. If you are interested then please do email me, Nell, on nell@giffordscircus.com

Hay on Wye

I know that there is alot of confusion about whether or not we will be at Hay festival again this year. I am so sad to say this but the answer is no, we won't. We were booked to play at the festival on the castle ground, but two weeks ago the castle trust suddenly withdrew our permission, as Hay Festival want to use the site as music venue. An alternative site was found for us in town but we have a license for the castle and do not want to keep having to apply for a new premises license each season. The alternative site was off the beaten track. We did feel it was unfair of the castle to change their minds at such short notice for 2012 as it takes time to open up new grounds, and we had publicised the Hay dates and put tickets on sale. I am so sorry to anyone who has bought tickets, or was looking forward to seeing us at the festival. The tickets will be refunded or exchanged, and there are other venues around the South West where you can see Giffords Circus perform.

It is sad not to be going to Hay festival. It is such a brilliant event we love it, and thoroughly recommend it for a weekend or week of complete escapism

There's a wire up at Folly Farm!

Russian vogue came to Folly Farm at the weekend to do a fashion shoot. They had the most amazing diamond jewels with them. The model was sparkled and twinkled amongst the bare winter apple trees like an exotic bird.

Bob Dylan in concert on Saturday night. Amazing!

What style! Ballet on horseback training commences at Folly Farm

Look our for Giffords Circus on Paul Merton's Adventures on Channel 5 tonight at 9pm!

   YYou absolutely have to check out the little video of the Lula fashion shoot by Ellen von Unwerth at Giffords Circus. It is so adorable http://vimeo.com/30871156

Meanwhile back at headquarters the new Giffords Circus vaulting horses have started their training. They are so good. Here is a picture of Savvy.

The other horse is called Militaire. I feel lucky to be working with these gentle animals who are so co operative and calm. Inside the twins watch a dvd of French logging horses on an endless loop....

Tomorrow Toti and I are driving to Belgium to look for a small heavy horse for next season. We are looking at the ardennes breed, the oldest type of heavy horse in the world. It's very exciting. I love getting new horses in for training, it is such a fun moment in the year.

Please email press@giffordscircus.com

Red and Cecil feeding the horses at Folly Farm

Giffords Circus Season 2011 - War and Peace. Check out this video which captures all the highlights from this years show from the early rehearsals to final show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRDyiFsTPFI

The next door neighbours Sophie, Phoebe and Elodie came to make biscuits .

Next year, 2012, the show is called The Saturday Book. The Saturday Books were annuals published between the 1940's and the 1970's and in their own words were " based on individuality in the choice of words and pictures, on attention to those things which result in a handsome looking book, and quite simply, value for money." The articles in these annuals were eccentric and diverse - there might be series of colour plates of different horse paintings, or an essay on William Morris, followed by a photographic section looking at Victorian ladies hats. It often featured articles on music hall and variety artistes. The Saturday Book was a humorous look at the culture of the first half of the twentieth century.

I think it will be fun to do a show that is a series of acts, vignettes and illustrations, focusing on this period in time, and that celebrates the music hall era. Last year we did a very different kind of book, a giant Russian novel. In 2012 the subjects are lighter, there is no direct story line, and the intention is comedy.

Read the fantastic blog of the Giffords writer in residence Beth Timmins.

Gifford's family bonfire at the weekend!

Last night I went to Wiltons Music Hall to see Britannicus directed by Irina brown. It was great - intense classical drama like walking into someone's house and watching as this terrible row erupts. I totally recommend it.

Taking a show based on Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ to the Hay Literary Festival could not have been more perfect. Our setting on the Castle Grounds overlooking the rolling hills of Hay-on-Wye was also something very special. And so in true Giffords Circus style, we dispatched two of our team to help spread the word…little did we know that their picture would start to appear on every magazine and newspaper in the area. Well done Kitty, Scarlett and Molly for spreading the Giffords Circus glamour amongst the Hay festival-goers…

At the weekend we went to Emma and Matthew's new house for croquet. Matthew and I saw this little owl sitting on a post.

This is the twins playing in Windsor great park.

This is Tom the tiny pony trying to hide from Red behind the sofa in the playroom. I bought him for them on Thursday he is wonderful.

Red, Cecil and I have been clearing the garden, raking up leaves and having a big bonfire. We are getting everything ready for the winter, and for the training next spring. We found this birds nest in a shrub. It has a strand of fibre woven into it that is from the ring boxes.

We are back with a new show!!!!

Expect thrilling scenes inspired by this epic Russian novel re-imagined for a family audience. New costumes, new choreography, new artistes, and an original score by the Giffords Circus band, as well as Giffords Circus favourites such as Brian the Goose, Tweedy the Clown and Red the Horse. The show is produced by Nell and Toti Gifford, written and directed by Irina Brown, with music by Sarah Llewellyn and choreography by Fleur Darkin.

And as with every tour, Giffords Circus will travel across much of rural Gloucestershire and the South West with the show, bringing families and communities together to share in this magical circus experience. The tour will start on Thursday 19th May 2011 at Gloucester, travelling through Hay Festival, Cheltenham, Broadway, Tackley, Stadhampton, Lechlade, Barrington, Frampton, Minchinhampton, Marlborough; and ends in Cirencester’s Stratton Meadows on Sunday 11th September 2011.

In 2011 we also welcome back Circus Sauce, the unique forty-two seat travelling restaurant that is part of the circus on tour. After the show, we serve a starlit sumptuous dinner, using fresh seasonal and local ingredients, to the artistes and the audience. Circus Sauce is also open during intervals for freshly baked cakes, traditional ice-cream, teas, fruit drinks and other tasty refreshments.

Click here for 2011 venues and dates.

Toti, our twins Red and Cecil, Brian the goose and Kwabana Lindsay and I attended the Gloucestershire performs event at Gloucester Cathedral this evening!

Some pictures below:

Eclipse's two foals are back from their summer grazing. Here is one of them.

It's so amazing to finish the season on such a happy note. The season went by in a flash, definitely the fastest season ever for me. I say a little prayer every time we finish a season with no major dramas and no accidents. Every year that goes past I become more and more aware of how potentially dangerous circus work is. Every show is a negotiation with danger. Thats why circus people are so careful, so precise. There is no recklessness in circus. You can't just hope to get through it somehow - there has to be a solid technique to everything, that makes it work every time. There is an immense pressure to sustain that technique and keep applying it with rigour, and so when the season ends, that pressure has suddenly gone. It is strange.

We have been home from tour for two weeks. Most of the time we have been unpacking wagons, boxes, lorries, baskets, bags - it takes ages, much longer than you think it is going to.

The garden is full of vegetables and fruit so we have been making apple sauce for the freezer.

The horses go straight out at the end of the season. The chestnut horse red and the black and white mare Eclipse are such old hands that they just stroll out into the autumn and get their heads down. I am sure that they know it's the start of the holidays for them.

I miss the show, the company, the endless stream of friendly faces passing by, the chat and the noise of the show. The silence does ring in your ears when it is all over, the silence and the stone house. The circus is noisy, flapping, banging, shaking - every wall is canvas or thin timber, the ground underneath you bumpy and ever changing, the music constant.

Maisie, the lovely girl who runs the pizza wagon , showed me these photographs recently. They were taken at her sisters birthday party about 30 years ago. Clover and I provided the entertainment in the form of a miniature circus! We borrowed this little white tent which we decorated with cardboard flowers. We did dressing up and egg and spoon races. Our lodger was there dressed in his hunting clothes - I think he brought some hound puppies along that we we walking. We took a pony and cart. I dressed up as a ring master. There is Maisie serving up the cakes. Nothing changes!

I think that this is a very early sign of Giffords Circus...

We are off on holiday at the end of the week, just us four.