St. Paul’s Bristol Telephone Box Given New Lease of Life as Community Defibrillator and Bleed Kit Station
Circomedia and fellow members of the St. Paul’s community have today launched the new, public use, community emergency care station on Portland Square, Bristol. Located in the newly renovated King George Telephone Box outside of St. Paul’s Church, the new emergency care station contains a defibrillator and a bleed kit, generously donated by Great Western Air Ambulance Charity and Bin the Blade CIC respectively.
For the last six month, members of the St. Paul’s and wider Bristol community have worked together to give the previously derelict telephone box a new lease of life. Acquired by Circomedia in 2024, the telephone box has since been cleaned and painted by student volunteers from the City of Bristol College and the Prince’s Trust; received new glass panels; had metal work refabricated; and received the professional electrical install required to charge the defibrillator. Almost all of the resources required for this renovation have been generously donated by local businesses and tradespeople, who you can see listed below.
Following an official opening ceremony on Saturday 28th June 2025, where a circus aerial silk was untied in an official opening moment, Circomedia and the many project partners are keen to spread the word about this resource within the local community to ensure anyone who may need it can reach it quickly and easily.
The community organisations, businesses and individuals that have supported this project include:
Askew Architects – Architectural design and planning
Bin The Blade CIC – Donated Bleed Kit and Guardian
Bristol Design Forge – Fabrication and signage
Bristol Sparky – Electrical Install
Circomedia – Project Lead
City of Bristol College & The Prince’s Trust Students – Painting and decorating
Cllr Tim Wye – Planning and local Council support
Great Western Air Ambulance Charity – Donated Defibrillator
Olly Hallett – Metal Fabrication
Roman Glass – Glass replacement
Trimite – Donated Paints
And many other local individuals.
Thank You for Supporting Our Arts for Impact Fundraiser
In March 2025, we took part in the Big Give’s Arts for Impact fundraising week, with our Come Join the Circus campaign.
Through this campaign, we aimed to raise £5,000 to fund 30 bursary spaces for children from local low-income families to attend our Youth Circus classes, and contribute to Youth Circus Assistant costs.
Through this match funded campaign, where every donation we received up until £2,500 was DOUBLED by our Big Give champions, we are delighted to say that we reached our £5,000 goal!
The resulting bursary spaces will be available from Summer 2025.
My Marketing Placement with Circomedia
By Stella Hammersley
From January to March 2025, Stella Hammersley interned with us as part of her Professional Development scheme with the University of Bristol. Stella is currently in her third and final year as a Theatre and Performance Studies student, hoping to go on to study a Marketing master’s next year. During her time with us, she acted as a marketing assistant to help support Circomedia’s ever busy marketing team, and create promotional material for the company.
To read more about her experience with us, click here to read the full blog post.
Claire Williams Steps Down from Circomedia Board after 11 Years
The staff and Board of Trustees at Circomedia would like to extend a huge thank you to Claire Williams who has retired from the Board as Co-Chair. She was a Trustee or Chair for 11 years and saw the organisation through a period of considerable change when the founder and CEO left for pastures new, through the Pandemic and into new leadership.
Claire has committed a huge amount of her time and given great care to this role providing guidance, expert knowledge and support to the organisation throughout.
We wish her the best for the future and look forward to her being able to relax and enjoy taking part in that aerial class she has always meant to do but never had the time!!
YOUTH CIRCUS CROWDFUNDER SUCCESS
We are delighted to share that we surpassed our £3,000 target for our Youth Circus Equipment Crowdfunder! Our heart-felt thanks to those who generously donated and kindly helped spread the word to help us reach our goal – we have been blown away by the support we received.
The funds raised through this Crowdfunder will be used to help replace and update some of our much loved Youth Circus equipment and improve the accessibility of our Youth Circus offering. This means that we can continue to offer high-quality, safe, accessible, and fun training to the young people in our communities. Thank you!
Marketing Internship: My Time at Circomedia
The internship Circomedia provided in conjunction with UWE has been fantastic for both my personal and professional development. Throughout my time here I have been given the opportunity to work across the whole marketing mix whilst also learning about the niche world of circus. Each day at Circomedia brought new and exciting opportunities, from crafting promotional emails and posters to watching developing street performances… Read the full blog post here
ITVX Feature: Behind the scenes at the UK’s biggest circus school
ITV News recently filmed a feature about Circomedia which you can now watch on ITVX!
“Bristol is one of the most important cities in the world for training circus performers – and has been for 30 years. We went to find out more…”
VOLT Scratch Night Panellists Announced
We are excited to present the panellists” for our VOLT Scratch Night 2023, presented in partnership with Circus City!
VOLT is Bristol’s regional circus scratch night, creating an opportunity for circus artists in the South West to share work-in-progress pieces in a professional environment with the opportunity to receive live, constructive feedback
Read more about our scratch night here.
ZANNAH CHISHOLM ANNOUNCED AS CIRCOMEDIA’S NEW CEO
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Zannah Chisholm as our new Chief Executive Officer.
Zannah, who joined the Circomedia team as Interim CEO in July, has an extensive background in the arts having spent over 10 years at Pavilion Dance as CEO and Artistic Director as well as a Regional Producer. She took the helm at Circomedia on 1st August 2023.
I’m thrilled to be joining the team at Circomedia. The love of the organisation is really clear – from all those who expressed their delight when I first joined as Interim CEO, through to the passion and commitment of the staff and wider Circomedia family. I’m looking forwards to leaning into the future of contemporary circus to nurture new generations of circus artists, and seeing where our imagination will take us.”
BBC INTERVIEW 18 JULY
We were delighted to feature in the BBC’s recent coverage of higher education on Tuesday 18 July.
Rod Laver, Higher Education Course Leader summarises the interview:
“Circomedia is made up of committed and talented staff and students who work incredibly hard to produce challenging work that feeds into the exciting and diverse world of contemporary circus and related performing arts.
We have strong retention rates and students who are realistically prepared for the challenging modern marketplace they will be entering which is the case across many professions.
We would welcome the chance to show Rishi Sunak how physically and academically challenging our degree is. Our students understand what our course entails through open days and audition. They choose us and we choose them very carefully. They consider our degree high value, and we value them highly in return.”
Freya Sofia, Contemporary Circus student adds “It’s [studying at Circomedia] been the best decision of my life, I’ve been able to connect to my truth and what I really want to do”
Sign into BBC iPlayer and watch here (8min 23 sec in).
Could you be our next CEO?
Circomedia are looking for a world-class leader to help us continue our mission to create the next generation of contemporary circus in Bristol, the UK and the world.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to be able to juggle, fly or perform (we have lots of phenomenal people that already do that!), but we do need you to lead the way for us to do what we love. This is a rare and unique opportunity to lead a renowned circus arts charity in the centre of Bristol, which is revolutionising the world of contemporary circus.
For more information, including how to apply, please visit our jobs page at www.circomedia.com/jobs. The application deadline is 5:00 pm on Tuesday 4th July 2023.
Circomedia Welcomes Zannah Chisholm as Interim CEO
We are delighted to welcome Zannah Chisholm as our new Interim CEO. You can find out more about Zannah’s background here.
“I’m delighted to be working at Circomedia in Bristol as Interim CEO to support the organization through transition as Nic retires from the role in June. It is a real privilege to work with such a unique organisation and group of industry experts who are striving to create the next generation of circus performers, creators and directors.”
The Board are currently in the process of recruiting our new CEO – please visit our jobs page to find out more.
Nic Young Retiring as Circomedia CEO
After nearly 8 years of dedication, leadership and commitment to Circomedia our wonderful Chief Executive Nic Young has made the decision to retire from the role and will be leaving the organisation in late June. Nic has been a crucial part of leading Circomedia as well as ensuring our survival as an organisation through a global pandemic. The Board would like to recognise Nic’s achievements as CEO and thank him for what he has brought to the organisation. The Board are now making preparations to find a new leader for Circomedia.
Claire Williams (Circomedia Chair)
