Canberra Circus Festival 2025
Call out to the Warehouse Community - we need your help!
Dear Circus Enthusiasts,
As many of you may know, we are running the Canberra Circus Festival from Sep 26th - Oct 5th, 2025.
🎪The festival is three big things all at once:
It's a festival of amazing circus shows! Great performances from artists around the country, and some home-grown local legends, including two new shows from our hard-working talented performance troupe. All in the beautiful May Wirth Big Top (plus one very special outdoor show from our Performance Troupe).
It's a youth circus training intensive! A week of training, shows, act development and performance for Performance troupe members of Australia's youth circuses. We already have young artists enrolled from both Canberra and Melbourne so far, with only half the spots left to enrol in. Places are filling up fast!
It's a circus market! Maker's stalls, community stalls, free circus workshops for the public, food, drinks, boutique fancies, and heaps of outdoor performances from Australia's street circus artists, from our own troupes, from the kids at the camp, and local community arts performances. So much to do all day, and free entry to the market for everyone!
👪For kids and families, there's shows for days!
Our very own variety show extravaganza, The Great Big Circus Gala(h),
Alongside a brand new theatrical work from our Performance Troupe of Warehouse Circus,
there's a pirate adventure with Swash Buckling Circus,
Old-timey variety fun (and a penny farthing!!) from the Gagliardes Family Circus,
Amazing magic from Tricky Nick,
Amazing Bubbles from Dr Hubble,
Incredible BMX stunts from Scott Hone,
Wonderful comedy and clown from The Drawing Show (a show about a drawing that has come to life and needs your help to colour it in and teach it about the world);
We have a very special guest performance from Tasmania's Rooke, who wowed us last festival with their incredible acrobatics and artistry, humour and warmth;
A spectacular line-up of Australian and international circus acts in Popcorn Circus!
And the launch of our very own, brand-new Canberra circus companies, with the premiere work from Circoscope launching at the festival, and our very own emerged artists, Estella, Jade, Charlotte producing their first independent work Out of Bounds.
For the adults, we have late-night variety show The Grapes of Bacchus,
And Linus the Line will reappear for its own late-night experience!
It's going to be a really special festival, celebrating all types of amazing circus. Tickets and timetable will be launched very soon, so keep your eyes wide for that one. 👀
🤹Stuff you can do at the Canberra Circus Festival!
There's heaps to do! Buy tickets to shows, enjoy the shopping opportunities, or come and enjoy the free activities at the market.
If you are an active member of Warehouse Circus, and/or work for a not-for-profit/community org in Canberra, you can get a stall at the market to raise awareness of what service you provide to the ACT community, and /or sell hand-made craft goods or home made treats.
Apply here, and mention in the application that you are a member of Warehouse Circus Inc.
https://forms.gle/q6nnmUtmGNLF2JpH6
If you would like to run a carnival game to help us fundraise for the festival, we'd love to work out an arrangement with you! We're interested in old-timey carnival games and activities that you might like to run. Apply at the above link and chat to us about what you would like to do! 🎠
💜Help us get stuff for the Canberra Circus Festival?
We are running this fest with next to no dedicated funding, off the hard work of our staff, circus artists, discounts and generous arrangements with artists, sponsor business partners and our amazing members. We work hard to ensure this festival is accessible and engaging for everyone we can, and we can reach more people and achieve these goals with your help.
With that in mind, are you, or do you know a person or business who might like to help us obtain the following?
Sponsorships, in-kind donations or discounts are all very welcome!
2-weeks hire of a 3t, all terrain forklift with at least 7m lift height
Bunting and low energy solar lights to decorate the site (clearly labelled with the owner's name!)
An industrious love of recycling, compost and waste management, and some appropriate receptacles - We have support from ACT Events Sustainability team, so signage and labelling are sorted.
Access to high-quality lighting stock - 800w - 1000w equivalent LED theatre lights we can borrow?
Site volunteers who would like to work a 3-4 hour shift once or twice across the week
Beanbag covers that look like juggling balls as part of the site furniture
Vehicles and/or their owners time to drive them?
Patrons who might like to donate to our Save-A-Seat campaign (Buy tickets to shows on behalf of charities to donate to their clients)
Charities with a client base of people doing it tough who might like to be recipients of our Save-A-Seat campaign!
We appreciate any help, any leads, any volunteering or any discount that you can offer, or hook us up with. This festival has always relied on our amazing community; we really can't do it without you. Even just by attending, spreading the word to audiences who might like a nice time, sharing our socials posts with your networks is doing heaps. Thanks for all that you do!
And finally:
🎫 Would you be interested in a Season pass to the Canberra Circus Festival Big-Top?
For a special pre-sale price of $430 full/$340 concession, you can get yourself a fancy lanyard or pass that allows the wearer access to Every session of every show in the Big-Top!
That's a big ol' saving. For 14 unique circus shows, it's a saving of at least $100 off the full price of seeing every show, and works out to just $30 per ticket. Plus, if you really wanted, you could watch literally every session of every performance, representing a saving of, like, $400.
To book your pre-sale season ticket, you just need to click here!
🎂 Warehouse Circus - Celebrating 35 Years
Each week, we will be sharing a small piece of Warehouse Circus history to celebrate our 35th birthday!
This week we’re looking back at 2003!
The circus is rendered homeless when the Belconnen Youth Centre changes management and program funding allocation. We spend the year floating from home to home, including backyards, parks, the Orana School, and more, but are given safe harbour by the Northside Community Service, thanks to some friends in high places… (Kylie. It was Kylie again.)
Kylie O’Keeffe and Skye Morton go into overdrive doing whatever they can to keep a homeless circus going. Trainers, staff, parents, participants and board jump in however they can, it is all hands on deck!
Skye makes a move to incorporate the circus, doing the legwork to make us an independent organisation. She is the first manager under incorporation and does an enormous amount to help the circus survive.
That year featured the infamous 24-hour non-stop circus-a-thon to raise money and awareness for Warehouse Circus’s plight. Non-stop performances from Warehouse circus members past and present made sure there was never a moment where there wasn’t something interesting happening on stage. Acrobats performing in the frost at 3am in Garema Place was a sleepy sight to behold! Lewie West, Ali O’Dea and Owen Abbott are a force to be recognised as they commit to being on stage all night. All the rest of the troupe are asleep in the back of the truck.
In October of 2003, the Circus incorporated, becoming an independent body. The original Warehouse Circus Circus For Life Festival ran from September 4 to October 8 to celebrate these dates.
Steve Goodman becomes the organisation’s first president.
Warehouse Circus performed in a massive Big Top at the National Folk Festival in the biggest circus show yet presented at the National – a collaboration between local Canberra acts and national acts (including Kronik).
Paul O’Keeffe is our first alumnus to be accepted into the National Institute of Circus Arts.