Program will return in 2025.
Be on the Waiting List for Clowning & Caring in Italy 2025 -> HERE!
Be part of the joyful clown team bringing Gesundheit! humanitarian clowning to Italy!
A unique event with an even more unique program, in exclusive collaboration with the Smile Clown Festival of Napoli.
Patch Adams MD and the School for Designing a Society are excited to announce the 1st Clowning & Caring in Italy!
Join us in an intense week during which we’ll explore our ways to care in healthcare institutions, endangered communities, shelters and streets; and will learn how to bring joy and imagine a desirable society using clowning, performance, music, humor and play. This experience will change your life!
The trip is for both beginning clowns and performers, and the more advanced ones. You are all invited to open your hearts and celebrate love and change! Everyone is welcome, no experience is necessary.
Napoli is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. Throughout the centuries it has been founded, refounded, conquered, inhabited by Greeks, Romans, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Normans, Germans, French, Austrians, Spanish.
This incredible, unique melting pot of cultures and influences throughout its 3,000-year history is still vivid and present in the streets, sounds, language, and smiles of the marvelous people of Napoli. Art, music, creativity, beauty, flavors, and joy are intertwined with the complexity and contradictions of Southern Italy‘s largest city.
In this energetic and unparalleled context, we will explore humanitarian clowning and humanitarian design, with daily clown visits to a variety of institutions, communities, streets, and daily practical workshops in clown technique, love strategy, care and reflection on where we are. Patch Adams will conduct 2 workshops and be part of the group for the whole week.
Furthermore, our association with the Smile Clown Festival, a big event celebrating caring clowning taking place in the city during the same week, will provide the opportunity to witness performances by artists participating in the Festival.
Here can you find some of the beautiful landmarks around Napoli you may want to visit if you have the chance stay for a few extra days.
Introduction to humanitarian clowning: A way to bring love close.
A Care Pandemic: In this time of uncertainty, instability, and change, of war and uncaring, we will practice listening, receiving, being safely present and vulnerable. And goofy. The more what we don’t want becomes clear, the more we will ask: What do we want? If another world is possible, what is the world we envision? How would we like things to be different, and what will help bring that about?
The Red Nose of Courage: if courage means doing the needed thing in the face of fear, when is clowning a courageous act?
Re-Designing the Character of the Care-Actor: an inquiry into the character of care-givers. How can we expand it? How can we protect it?
Listening: Experimental composition invites experiments in listening. Exploring the difficulties of listening, particularly in situations of social inequality.
Clown technique I: the Art of Making Small Things Big and Big Things Small. Sometimes stressful situations disturb our sense of proportion — and clowning can help us playfully restore our sense of what’s important. Desire statement exercises. A workshop in play and imagination.
Clown technique II: Role play with performers workshop. The art of engaging people through humor and performance techniques.
Synthesis of our week’s experience. Talk-back sessions: Have I changed? What’s my next step?
Patch Adams — entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change; promotes and practices living a life of public joy as a revolutionary act; fount of ideas for avoiding burn-out in long-term social justice and health. Enthusiator.
Susan Parenti — composer, tap dancer, accordionist, activist. Familiar with the words “idealist’, ‘romantic’, ‘unrealistic’. Writes theater plays on how she wishes people would speak, rather than how they do actually speak.
Mark Enslin — composer, actor, bassoonist, guitarist, oud player, apprentice tabla player, listener, teaching composition facing the power of the respondent, assignment as an art form.
Dario Solina — composer, performer, writer, videomaker, communication designer, since 2010 performs his clown everywhere, every second; Vulnerability for Revolutionaries, teaches the art of Emphasis, MetaClowning maestro.
– SPECIAL GUEST –
Ginevra Sanguigno — actress and dancer and since 1981 she has been using theater as a vehicle for social change. Ginevra is a clown, instructor, enthusiator, and the founder of Clown One Italia in 2000, Gesundheit’s official partner in Italy. She has been organizing humanitarian clowns mission worldwide since 2003.
“Change” – a short documentary about how clowning and this very program
changed Dario’s life, and how strong an impact it could make on your life.
Further playful readings on clowning:
Listen to the voices of both all new and experienced participants sharing their excitement and wonder, while experiencing the same Clowning & Caring program in Costa Rica (many thanks to David Naster for sharing the interviews!)
Transportation between Napoli international airport and the hostel is included.
The detailed day-to-day itinerary of the trip will be available when we get closer to the event, but this is what a typical day looks like:
Cost: $1675 USD covers food, lodging, all educational and clowning events, and transportation within the country. This fee does not include your transportation to Italy. Space on this trip is very limited.
Vaccination against COVID-19 is recommended and not required. Some institutions where we are going to be clowning may require wearing a mask and/or to be tested at the entrance. We register participants on a first come first serve basis.
1) Download and read the Clowning & Caring in Italy 2024 Info Pack 1
2) Fill out the Electronic Registration & Payment Form >
Please do not fill out the form unless you are prepared to send the deposit ($600) or the full amount.
-> Not ready to register yet? Write to dario@patchadams.org
Deposit and Full-Tuition are Non-Refundable. Please have your final payment made before April 5th, 2024. Thanks!
Flights: Please arrive at Naples-Capodichino International Airport, Napoli by the evening of May 5 – Book your flight back home any time on May 12.
Passports: No visa is required. Passports can be expedited by your local post office. Please bring two color photocopies of your passport with you. Please check the expiration date of your document, passport must be valid for at least six months after your date of travel.
Please check if your country has special vaccination requirements: for example if you are coming from a country where Yellow Fever is endemic.
If you have questions which are not answered by the program’s description:
dario@patchadams.org
Dario Solina
Clowning & Caring in Italy
Tour Coordinator
We ask you to fill out the following forms:
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