For jugglers not on facebook;

Mïark - 2025-06-03 14:17:20 UTC #

For jugglers not on facebook; update from BJCIC and deadline for potential BJC 2026 organising teams:

It’s update time!
We wanted to release a statement to both introduce ourselves formally and to provide a little more info/context on what we’re doing and why.

Past
The British Juggling Convention has been running since 1988! It started as a 2 day event with a handful of jugglers and has grown into a much bigger event, encompassing juggling and circus skills as varied as unicycle, aerial and German wheel to name but a few of the skills on display over the years. Hundreds of people regularly attend juggling conventions across the UK and the British Juggling Convention is the largest in the UK attracting 500-1000 people every year.
We are a community who get together and pass the baton round, rather than a group who regularly attend a commercial event. The only way the event succeeds is with community members contributing their time and skills to make it happen.
Over 35 events, the BJC has been organised by 30+ different teams. Each year at the business meeting, during BJC, we have gathered to choose who will run the following event. Every event has been run independently, usually with a small box of ‘stuff’ being passed to the next team. The location changes with the team, and has taken place across the country (See map: https://www.jugglingedge.com/groupmap.php?GroupID=1 ).
In the past, local groups like clubs or juggling/circus companies would band together to form an organising team and put together a bid; more recently bids have been led by a smaller local core, with a wider team coming from further afield.

Present
2025 has been a difficult year for BJC. Venue problems meant the planned team had to pull out. Subsequently, a number of parties expressed an interest in taking the event on. In order to maintain the openness of BJC, Jak managed a tender process to enable multiple teams to express interest. In the end there was only one party willing and able to take on the responsibility. Revel Puck stepped forward with a viable plan, tying the BJC into a site they were already using.
Once Revel Puck won the tender process they decided to run the event fully independently as a commercial, rather than volunteer, endeavour. They decided they wanted to pay their professional staff and do it differently to how it had been run in the past. Multiple offers of help from past organisers were not accepted, with the team implying that they felt they had the requisite event organisation skills, and that they would ask for help if it was required. Unfortunately, this approach was not successful; learning which will be taken forward.
We have now officially formed the British Juggling Community Interest Company (BJCIC). Assets and data from BJCs will now be held by the BJCIC so that there is continuity between years; the BJCIC will seek to find grants which previous BJCs have not been eligible for; and the BJCIC will exist to help future teams, it will not exist to run BJCs. We feel it is important that BJC belongs to the community and that its culture is supported.

BJC 2026
Any teams interested in running BJC 2026 will need to submit a tender ASAP.
A tender guide can be found within the British Juggling Convention facebook group or by emailing britishjugglingcic@gmail.com
Tenders due by: 27th of June
Voting opens: 30th of June
Voting closes: 6th of July

Future
We’re excited about the future of BJCs and have formed the BJCIC to make it as easy as possible for a new team to step forward and run a successful event. We’re creating guidance documents, writing policies and collating data, in the hope of enabling teams to focus on creating their event, rather than reinventing wheels.
We also hold the assets from the past few BJCs (radios, PA system, tills, office supplies, etc.) which will be available on an ongoing basis to future teams. It is our hope that we will be able to build up a significant holding of assets, helping to save BJC more money every year. We also plan on making some of these assets available for hire to the wider juggling community at significantly less-than-market price.
Touching a little more on the data, each new team is a separate entity with no access to past events’ data. This data falls into 3 main camps:
1) Jugglers - who’s been before and is interested in attending future events? And who’s interested in helping at future events?
2) Suppliers - finding competitive suppliers (from venues to passes) can be time consuming and can result in teams over spending.
3) Operational - social media, information on budgets, safeguarding, etc.
The BJCIC currently comprises 4 directors:
Jak Bodicoat Elyard
Sam Hardwick
Lucie Ludar-Smith
PJ Perkin
And 3 Associates:
Anna Bodicoat Elyard
Sadie Sareen
Andrew Ludar-Smith
The directorships are on a rolling expiry (with one post up for re-election each year) with a maximum of 2 consecutive terms. Our hope is that, over time, others within the community with the relevant experience will step up as directors in the future; enabling the BJCIC to continue indefinitely as a part of our community, rather than being tied to specific individuals.

from: https://www.facebook.com/britishjugglingconvention/posts/pfbid022xphyMVo15dsrCe36oBLSnHs4gqzDrsMDfuWyvCkDuhrfJxGazTcTuoL6podHYCYl

#BJCIC #BJC #BJC2026