How it all got started: A juggler and a teacher walk into a bar...
Paul and Dawn met many years ago, fresh out of college and figuring out who they wanted to be “when they grew up.” Paul, eschewing a career in accounting, and Dawn, recently deciding a career in law wasn’t for her, both found themselves waiting tables at the same small bar in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Waiting tables gave them time to pause and begin exploring what might be next. Paul honed his juggling, magic, and comedy skills while Dawn worked part-time at a community arts center, taking photography classes and developing museum education programs for the galleries. During this time they both read and were inspired by the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
During a night out, Paul joined some musician friends on stage at a local bar to put on a show. It was an evening of multidisciplinary art. In addition to the music and the juggling, a couple of friends set up easels and painted as the band played. After the show someone came up and said, “That was great! It was like a circus!” Something clicked for Paul and Dawn – it was like a circus with the unifying element that everyone was engaged and performing within a shared sense of flow… the circus of flow.
And just like that, Flow Circus and our mission to inspire creativity and bring fun and play to life’s messiness was born.