"Wise Fool is truly strengthening this community through creativity, art, theater, and powerful messages." - Billy Blair, former president of the Santa Fe Community Foundation
“You all create an environment that is simultaneously exhilarating and safe. The bravery and enthusiasm that you model – as teachers and community members – permits us to go big places.” - Wise Fool Adult Student
"Wise Fool programs have given my daughter confidence, dexterity, team skills, life skills, etc. I cannot express how important Wise Fool NM is to the youth of our community." - Parent of a Wise Fool Youth Student
"Wise Fool's beautiful and talented mostly female group of performers... guarantees that your eyes will pop, your mouth will gape, and most of all, you yourself will feel a sense of unlimited potential." - Local Flavor Magazine
Mission
It is Wise Fool New Mexico's mission to ignite imagination, build community, and promote social justice through performances and hands-on experiences in the arts of circus, puppetry, and theatre.
Wise Fool is a beloved and award-winning non-profit organization at the center of Santa Fe's community arts scene. Wise Fool serves 2,000 youth and adults with hands-on activities and 14,000 audience members annually with high-quality experiences built upon our core values of community, arts accessibility, and social justice.
As a pioneer in the emerging North American social circus movement and the only contemporary circus arts company in New Mexico, Wise Fool is further evolving circus as an art form by developing quality productions, professional artists, and expert teachers for circus-based arts curriculums. Encouraging audiences to jump the bounds of possibility and recognize that we are all capable of the extraordinary, we offer first-hand explorations and skill-building experiences in which participants discover and develop their own connection to the arts.
Introducción en español
Our Approach
Wise Fool programs are designed:
- To impart life skills and to build self-determination in individuals through positive experiences in accomplishment, self-esteem, responsibility, trust, significance, respect, and teamwork.
- To promote dialogue and teach communication, problem solving, conflict resolution and cooperation skills through collaboration.
- To use art as a vehicle to stand against discrimination and oppression based on race, religion, class, ability, sexual orientation, or gender and to promote education, understanding, and growth towards a more just society.
- To reintegrate art into daily life by making it accessible to all, especially remote, low income, and underserved communities.
- To preserve, continue, and further the folk arts of puppetry, circus, street theatre, and storytelling.
- To provide visual support for community and cultural events and social change organizations.
- To offer artistic spaces in which to create, dream, and transform as individuals and communities.
To learn more about Wise Fool as a "Social Circus", visit this page!
Read our Anti-discrimination and accessibility statement.
