OUR TEAM

Founded by Vivian Gladwell in 1990, Nose to Nose is a team of people with diverse experiences in the fields of theatre, community building, teaching, storytelling, play therapy, counselling, Special Needs and organisational consultancy. Our influence and training ranges from The Bataclown (France) and the Roy Hart Theatre.

OUR CORE VALUES

We are all trained and accredited facilitators with Nose to Nose. This means that as part of the team we are committed to inform our practice of teaching clowning through a team process of supervision, peer review and co-facilitation.

Through our willingness to explore positively issues of communication and collaboration within our team, we believe we practise the central message of the work we teach – an approach and philosophy that sees clowning as a social playground for exploring our humanity.

This collective intelligence (as opposed to an individual one) contributes to the creative diversity and quality of our work.

Vivian Gladwell

FOUNDER OF NOSE TO NOSE (1988)

Vivian is the founder and director of Nose to Nose and has given hundreds of workshops around the world. He lives both in the UK and France where he started clowning in 1978. He speaks French and English fluently.

Vivian began teaching in 1988 as part of the Lifeways Festival at Emerson College – UK. He trained as a facilitator with the Bataclown in 1990 and joined their team in 1991 also working as a modern day Court Jester (Clownanalyst).

He created Nose to Nose UK in 1990, Nose to Nose of North America in 2006, Nose to Nose Germany in 2008, NTN Italy in 2016 and Fool View, the Social Clowning group and has trained facilitators in the UK, the USA, Germany and Italy – view history.
He continues his role as ambassador for the work by researching the applications of clowning in the context of teacher training, medicine, conflict management, ecology and intercultural work in many countries (South Africa, USA, Senegal, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Italy, Germany, Norway…)

He holds clowning as a social playground for exploring our humanity.

 

Alison Stockford

Ali participated in her first Nose to Nose workshop in 2000 and fell in love with the work. Since training as a facilitator she has worked with Nose to Nose for over 5 years . She holds this work in high esteem as a perfect grounding for all creative work and the bigger picture of trusting ourselves and life. Alison is a qualified and experienced teacher of over 25 years having delivered Performing Arts workshops in mainstream and special schools and older peoples settings. Dancing since the age of four she is drawn to facilitating how others explore the dimension of movement in their clown.
Performing experience includes: tap dancing and comedy in café-théâtre with Les Amuses Gueules Lille, France; Street Theatre and Theatre in Education with Inside Out Theatre Company, Hastings. In recent work for Nose to Nose Ali has presented trainings for the Giggle Doctors – Theodora Foundation and for Lis’n Tell Speech and Language Practitioners, UK. Ali speaks both English and French.

Carol Thompson


Carol's training was in English and Theatre Arts at the University of Toronto and the Drama Studio in London. She worked in Education and Theatre for some years and then qualified to be a Psychosynthesis therapeutic counsellor and an NLP Master Practitioner. Carol took these skills into business in the private and public sectors as a Communication Skills Trainer. In recent years she has become involved in the positive psychology movement as a Laughter Leader and now a Clowning Facilitator, combining her interests in education, theatre and psychology.

 

Catherine Bryden (Canada / UK)

Catherine has been teaching at the Rudolf-Steiner School in Gröbenzell, Munich, Germany since 2001. In Canada, she studied Developmental Psychology, Theater, Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), and Translation. She has taught ESL in Canada, Taiwan, Singapore and Germany, where she founded and directed children’s summer language camps in French and English. In the last 5 years, she has been conducting workshops for teachers and student-teachers in communication, improvisation and clowning in Stuttgart and the Witten Annen Seminar for Waldorf teachers, as well as at her school in Munich. She has been coordinating various UNESCO projects, in conjunction with students, parents, and colleagues. For the last two years, she has been training and practicing conflict and mediation. She speaks English, French, and German.

 

Jessica Hernandez


Born in 1981 a grown up in Luxembourg. Studied Speech and Drama at the Goetheanum, Dornach (Switzerland) and at Artemis School of Speech and Drama, East Grinstead (West Sussex). She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, German, Swiss German and Luxembourgish. She lives in England and works as an actress and drama teacher / workshop facilitator. Her work frequently takes her to Scotland, Switzerland and Luxembourg. She has worked with Special Needs.

 

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