Between March – June 2026, Upswing’s lead artists Brendan Patrick Rogers and Charlene Low spent three months working with people living with Parkinson’s at University Hospitals of North Midlands, running Homemade Circus sessions in Stoke-on-Trent to learn directly from participants what worked, what didn’t, and what needed rethinking.
The goal was to let the sessions reshape the Homemade Circus Toolkit, so that it fits the specific ways Parkinson’s can show up in a session, from freezing of gait to fatigue to facial masking, rather than treating those symptoms as an afterthought to activities built for a different group.
The PDF guide we created sets out how Parkinson’s tends to show up in a circus session, symptom by symptom, and the specific adjustments we made. If you’re planning to run a session with a group who has Parkinson’s, or already do and want to sharpen how you approach it, this is where to start.
See the ‘Useful Links’ menu on the left for the Circus and Parkinson’s Guide for Facilitators.