Katie Hardwick brought together a team of circus performers and riggers, to work with Circus Suburbia and Petersham Road on entertainment fo

Katie programmed a selection of sensual and impressive ambient and stage circus acts for a Valentine's masked ball on Raven's Ait Is

This weekend was the third annual arts festival at RHS Garden Wisley. I returned to the beautiful Glasshouse to perform aerial acrobatics, which is my favourite venue in Surrey. I rigged silks and a hoop with the help of the cherry picker which is used to tend to plants high in the greenhouse. I performed four shows of eight minutes daily, each featuring an act on aerial hoop and on silks. My costume was made by Loz at DesignGuise. #WisleyArtsFest #2016 #Glasshouse #Wisley #a

For the International Youth Arts Festival 2016, my social enterprise, Circus Suburbia, created bespoke circus acts for the Riverside Walk restaurants in Kingston. We chose the theme of Alice in Wonderland as the Hatter's tea party is a perfect theme to use to interact with people eating at a restaurant or looking for somewhere to eat. Our youth circus performed on the stairs and balcony areas of the restaurant complex, using acrobatics, hula hoop and gymnastic ribbon to bring

On Friday I took the Ladies stilt costumes out for their first job of the summer. Cleaned and with some new extra feathers, they were fresh and ready for a sunny day in South London - perfect for a sophisticated circus theme. Picture taken by Dennis Tero. Performers - Katie Hardwick & Desiree Kongerod. Swamp Circus booked us for Broomwood Hall's School Sports Day, leading into their school fair, held on Trinity Fields. As the games ended, we blew bubbles and directed people t

This Halloween was a busy one! After a marathon of aerial acts for Bierfest, October was the month for stamina. 31st October saw me performing two aerial shows of twenty minutes in Kingston, followed by a 2.5 hour stilt set in Hoxton. Plus carrying my equipment & costumes across London! It was a lot of fun though and I'd been training my stamina with some hikes in North Wales and long aerial training sessions at the National Centre for Circus Arts. Halloween at the Yard @ Riv

I was asked to pitch showstopping ideas for this year's London Bierfest, an Oktoberfest inspired event in the City of London. The event organisers were keen to use the imagery of aerial circus to wow visitors at the popular event in the Old Billingsgate Hall. With Circus Suburbia, I put together two show options for Bierfest - two circus shows with a variety of aerial and ground based circus acts and a compere, with each act taking on a Bavarian or beer theme. For example, ta

It's raining outside but it's definitely still the British summer time! However, this year, I'm finding myself planning for the Winter season of parties and promotional events in the last week of August. I've recently been submitting proposals for Christmas events, so today I thought I'd create a new collage of entertainment ideas for my social enterprise, Circus Suburbia. There are so many creative and entertaining acts that I've worked with over the years, that the page mak

Beautiful Glasshouse Venue at Wisley Gardens I was extremely excited to be asked to return to RHS Garden Wisley this year for their second annual Arts Festival. The Glasshouse is bursting with the color and frangrance of lush vegetation in summer, with flowers bursting open and leaves illuminated by the sun. One of the gardeners helped me to reach the beams to rig my silks with a cherry picker, which they were also using to maintain plans which have grown high into the greenh

Pop-Up or Swing-Out? Architects design clever aerial rig for Kingston Circus Suburbia returned to the outdoors once more to delight audiences with aerial and acrobatic cabarets in the heart of the London suburb, Kingston. We used the brand new aerial rig in a new pop-up performance space for the very first time, set just back from the riverside. A wonderful organisation called Community Brain, headed by Robin Hutchinson and Aniela Zaba, worked with the developers at Riverside

Macmillan is a great charity doing exceptionally important work for a huge amount of people. Just about everyone I know, knows someone who has benefitted from their support, and this is why I decided to support one of their fundraising events by volunteering my performance services as a stilt walker. I also have a few Youth Circus students who are making the transition to professional performer, so I mentored three of them on their first high profile event after building up y

On Saturday I returned to my home town to be a stilt walking Queen Bee at Surbiton Festival 2014.Since the last time I wore this stilt costume, I have added some hair pieces to improve the regal bee look! As I now live in Clapham, I had a rather glamorous look for a Saturday morning commute! I felt a bit out of place on South West Trains. Last year at the festival I made balloon swords to recruit worker bees to my colony, but this year I took a bubble sword as a sceptre, and