Plant the Future of Circus by giving today
In January 2025, we moved out of our studio on Siler, ending a remarkable chapter of our history. While we are sad to lose the space, our story is far from over. Indeed, your generous donations (including an angel funder who gave $150k!) at the end of 2024 saved us from closing for good.
Thanks to you, we have been able to focus on our programs and restructuring to a traveling circus model. Now it’s spring, and it’s time for us to bloom! This new chapter has encouraged us to lean into the very resilience that we teach our students, giving us the opportunity to reconnect with our origins – and our roots. You, our community, are both our foundation and our future.
The Traveling Circus
Reaching new audiences through community partnerships
After losing our long-time studio home this year, we transitioned to a traveling circus model, expanding our outreach by bringing more of our programs directly into schools and community spaces.
And so far, they’ve been a success! Our current partnerships this spring and summer include Santa Fe Children’s Museum, Teatro Paraguas, NDI Albuquerque, Girls Inc, and Desert Montessori School.
Our youth programs integrate movement-based, non-competitive learning with social-emotional development and are supported by the City of Santa Fe Children and Youth Commission. We work with 16+ skilled coaches, including experts in supporting youth with disabilities.
Our long-standing partnerships with local schools and community organizations ensure sustained impact, and we provide scholarships to support increased access. Over 20 years of success stories highlight the profound impact of our programs!
What We Risk Losing
When the Safety Net Isn’t Guaranteed
Access to Youth Programs
Long-term we may not be able to sustain our youth programming in borrowed or temporary spaces without receiving sufficient funding. This means fewer opportunities for the children of our community to experience the transformative power of circus – especially those from marginalized communities.
Our Coaching Family
Without a consistent space to offer both adult and youth programs, we risk losing our tight-knit community of passionate teaching artists – some of which have been with Wise Fool since they themselves were kids! Our coaches are truly the heart of our organization.
Events & Productions
Santa Fe lost one of its only mid-sized, affordable venues for performances, rehearsals, and community events with the loss of our studio. We no longer have the ability to host our own productions, and instead must rent external venues – which has significantly increased our production costs. This puts future performances at risk, and makes it harder for us to offer low-cost and sliding scale ticket options to our audiences.
Presence & Momentum
Wise Fool has consistently offered programs in Santa Fe over the last 20 years! Without a home, adult classes have been on hiatus for nearly 6 months, and our youth programs have been running at reduced capacity. This means years of trust, relationships between students, and presence in our community could begin to fade – making it even harder for us to find a new home.
A Circus Rooted in Community
In 1998, California-based artists from Wise Fool Puppet Intervention joined queer women activists from New Mexico to explore the intersection between circus arts and social justice. Two years later, Wise Fool New Mexico was born. After two and a half decades, we’re still here, standing strong on the foundation those first artists created, one of community, arts accessibility, and social justice.
Today, we carry on this tradition of tackling social justice through art, performance, and humor. We do this by offering scholarships and free programming, addressing social issues in our performances, and bringing art and spectacle to protests and political events. But our social impact runs much deeper. Wise Fool classes and programs build creativity, communication, resilience, teamwork, and problem-solving. By offering these tools to underprivileged populations, especially youth, we are working to rectify societal disparities and empower the next generation of leaders.
The impact we’ve had during this time has positioned Wise Fool as a leader in the community arts in Santa Fe. Last year alone, we provided nearly $35,000 in scholarships to support both individuals and programming for schools and community organizations.
Every year, we are proud to touch:
Our Circus Comes to School Programs serve:
As a founder of this essential organization, I have been witness to the past 24 years of this organization's impact on literally thousands of youth. Every year Wise Fool has continued to thrive and grow, and I believe it will continue to if given the support that it deserves.
Alessandra Ogren
Feeding the Roots So the Circus Can Bloom
This new chapter has given us the flexibility of a traveling circus and the opportunity to return to our roots. With the help of partner organizations, we no longer need to operate out of garages and old horse corrals, as we did in the early days. But our roots have always been in the community and in order to bloom, we need nourishment from these roots. Without an official space, we need your help more than ever.
Right now, the biggest difference you can make in our next chapter is to become a recurring donor.
Monthly donations allow us to be consistent with our offerings, maximizing the ongoing impacts of circus education. Here are a few examples of the difference a monthly gift can make:
- $15 covers basic supplies for youth programs, like juggling balls and Diabolo sets.
- $50 supports paying 1 coach a living wage for teaching a single class session of Circus Comes to School.
- $100 sponsors a month’s worth of After School Fools program for 1 youth.
- $300 covers half our monthly storage fees for equipment (while we are on a traveling circus model).
Beyond monthly gifts, any extra funds raised during this time will go into a Seed Fund.
This money will be used to outfit a new studio with all the equipment we will need for it to become our new training facility and home for our programs. It will also cover general moving and renovation costs. Since the loss of our studio, there is no longer any dedicated aerial training facility in Santa Fe. The Seed Fund will help us bring one back!
So whether you give $20 every month or a one-time gift of $3,000 (which allows us to purchase a new mobile aerial rig), we are grateful for your support. It’s thanks to you, our community, that we have thrived for two and a half decades, working for social justice and spreading the joy of circus. And it’s thanks to you that we survived the winter.
Your donation helps ensure our students still have a stage
Plant a Seed For the Future
Please help us create the foundation to keep thriving and serving you for another two and a half decades – and beyond!