**From the discussion about the clown as an agent of social change.. Photo by Nathalie Choquette**

**From the discussion about the clown as an agent of social change.. Photo by Ron Anglin**

My clown weekend in Montreal ended with the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning Organizations' (NAFCHO) Meeting of the Noses Conference in late April. This meeting is the fourth NAFCHO Meeting of the Noses conferences.

These conferences have grown to have special meetings for me. Spending time with folks working in the same specialized small industry is nice. I've met and known many of these people online over the past several years, so it's especially cool to get to see those people in real life finally.

This conference was unique because I participated in a panel discussion on the first day.

Also on the panel were

Melanie Raymond, artist, Dr Clown Foundation, Montreal
Pedro Fabiao, artist, clown trainer, Portugal
Amrita Kaur Dhaliwal, clown artist, medical clowning, and educator with USC and The Idiot Workshop
Vanessa Rigaux, artist, Artistic-Director of Montreal Clown Festival

Earlier that week, I took a three-day workshop taught by Pedro. Melanie was one of the other artists taking that class. I met Vanessa several days earlier at the Montreal clown festival. I know Amrita from Clowns Without Borders's Board of Directors.

The topic for the panel was "How is a clowning agent of social change? Should that be the role of the clown? How can clowns help society?

I thought about this topic a lot, and I felt some extra pressure because I was expected to comment on it. Clowns can be agents of social change, and our organizations should play a role in that. That said, during the panel, I focused on how difficult change can be.

So much of our society is built upon structures that have been around for hundreds of years, and in my experience, it's challenging to change these structures. It takes labor to work on making some of these social changes. I focused on the social changes and the effects of our work with Clowns Without Borders. I should also mention that Amrita, who serves on the board of Clowns Without Borders, was on the panel, too. I see our clown work not only as bringing laughter and joy but also as an example of how this change can have a positive social aspect.

So, I talked about how Clowns Without Borders intentionally works with local organizations and local artists who collaborate with us in our shows and presentations. By doing this, we can gain a window into the needs of the areas, cultures, and regions we serve.

To make that point, I gave an example of how working with local artists can help us serve our audience better when we perform. I remembered my most recent CWB tour of Turkey in 2023. One of the clowns in the show, Andres, finished his yo-yo routine by having his pants "accidentally "fall to his feet. This is funny for many audiences. However, it would not be appropriate in some religious and conservative areas. This dynamic came up early when the team rehearsed and performed our first few shows. To address the situation, we relied on our Turkish artistic partners, led by Güray Dinçol, to let us know when it would and would not be appropriate for Andres to drop his pants. At some shows, our audiences were organized by religious and conservative people. In those instances, Güray told Andres not to drop his pants. In the other camps where Güray felt the pants drop would be funny, he told Andreas that he could drop his pants. We relied on the local artists to help us manage the cultural and religious standards. It was only possible because the tour was organized to have the Turkish artist with us to help us both perform and to guide us this way.

After the panel discussion on the first day, I could enjoy the other workshops and classes at the conference.

Some of the highlights were the class by Selena McMahon

"The Extra-Ordinary". It was about finding ways to keep your clown work consistent and dealing with distractions that can take you away from your focus as a performer. This topic arose on my next work day with Ron Anglin when I returned to Georgia. The approach she used helped both of us do better work.

I also had a blast attending Maxime Larose's slapstick workshop. This class was encouraging because it reminded me of some of the slapstick elements I can add to my work. Doyle Ott led an excellent workshop called “Beyond Bubbles and Lullabies”, which encouraged me to find new ways of interacting with younger children, especially ways of exploring the different senses that young children have and how they use them to interact with the world.

In Jon Luongo's workshop, "The Delight of Loose Parts," we explored the idea of turning hospital equipment into tools and toys for clowns.

On the last day of the conference and my last day in Montreal for the week, I finally had the opportunity to do my presentation/workshop on social justice. This presentation focused on my work at Emory University as an Arts and Social Justice Fellow. For the fellowship, I was partnered with Dr. Khaalisha Ajala, an emergency room doctor at Emory University and a professor at Emory University School of Medicine. The class we did together focused on narrative medicine. Narrative medicine is a medical approach that focuses on the patient's story. For the presentation, I shared the parallels between narrative medicine and the hospital clowning work I've done since 2000. I also touched on some of the social justice work I was involved in with other clowns as part of the Drive Forward team and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work the Laughter League is doing.

I was struck by how eager many people were to address social justice issues in their work. Several people shared some of the problems, difficulties, and successes that they have had with their programs. Each location has its own set of issues to address. I wasn't able to provide many answers for the specific situations. However, I hope they can be better equipped to work with them by talking more openly about these issues.

That day, I finished my day at the conference. I was glad to be able to attend the NAFCHO conference. I've been to all of the previous meetings dating back to 2018. The first Meeting of the Noses happened in Dallas. This meeting brought about the creation of NAFCHO, the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning Organizations. Since then, there was another meeting in 2019 in Atlanta and 2020 in January in Dallas. During Covid, there were several virtual meetings of the noses. I've been able to participate in all of them, and this meeting in Montreal was the best of all of them thus far.

I had a blast in Montreal that week. You can read more about Pedro's workshop I took earlier here and the Montreal Clown Festival, which happened earlier during the week, here.

Clown Week in Montreal, Post #3 Meeting of the Noses Conference