Oral History recording

The Organic Circus (It's good for you!)

Oral Histories

The Archive Project title is, in full, From Balls Up to Bianco - Circus Stories from the NoFit State family. In its most literal sense it is the oral histories that bring to life NoFit States story over 3 decades.

This is an extract from the application form to the Heritage Lottery Fund, which lays the basis for the oral history part of the project:

Until the early '80's contemporary circus was fairly unknown: practitioners across the globe were working independently of each other and in Cardiff a group of friends were learning to juggle in a community hall. Little did they know this lesson would eventually result in the formation of the UK's leading contemporary circus company, NoFit State Circus.

The company evolved organically, there is no single definitive true version of what happened and how it shaped what came after; it is the collective stories held in memory of hundred of individuals that when brought together make up the heritage of the circus.

Almost 30 years on NoFit State is now engaging with second and third generations of audiences. 2014 marks a sea change moment for the company, with touring work across the globe and the opening of the company's permanent circus centre in Cardiff, this is  a poignant time.

By drawing together the collective memories of the performers, crew and community members and integrating them with the extensive archive of images, videos, props and related artefacts we will secure this unique oral heritage for future generations and enable a new audience to engage with the history of contemporary circus.

The oral histories are being recorded at a rate of 3 to 4 a day by various trained volunteers

The oral histories, in one form or another will be uploaded to the digital archive. For the website this was the designers own vision:

In the NoFit State oral histories project we see an opportunity to create a fun, light-hearted online experience – not only an archive and record, but a website that collects NFS’ exceptional range of wild and unlikely stories, that celebrates the collective and participatory ethos of the company, and that charts a huge 30 year journey.

The final website will interweave an array of material including video interviews with the NFS creative directors, audio interviews and roundtables, performance videos, text recollections and snippets, photographs and posters, as well as some offsite material (e.g. reviews of shows hosted on other websites).

We see the website as an experience that rear- ranges itself flexibly to meet the interests of the user. If they want to explore the archive chronologically then they can do that through the timeline; if they’re interested in the stories of a specific company member then they can access all material related to that person. In this way, we can draw users into a deeper relationship with the archive.

The number of oral histories are increasing every day.