Press Cuttings (2005-Present)

Chartered Institute of Personnel Development
(13 September 2007)

My first Motivational Speaking
Circus Workshop!
(click image to enlarge)

Stirling Obeserver
(5 December 2007)

Alloa Advertiser (21 June 2007)

This article is about a Circus Skills Workshop I ran at St John's Primary School as part of an activities week.

Street HeART Magazine (April 2007)

Interview conducted with Claire Charras for Street HeART Magazine.

Steven’s passion for juggling started when he received a set of juggling balls for Christmas in 1993. He was 15 years-old and a painfully shy person who found in juggling a reason to show himself to others and gain confidence.

Says Steve: “When I started getting some tricks done, I wanted to show people, so I went from shy to performing and I saw that juggling was good for me.”

In less than five years, Steven Thomson had set up his own on-line juggling store and has made a name for himself as professional juggler in Scotland.

He is called out for birthday parties, festivals, workshops, seminars or school shows and enjoys every moment of his career.

Steve explains how he got started: “In 2001, I left university with an Information Management Honours Degree and couldn’t find a real job after I tried for a year. Someone suggested that I could juggle at a kid’s birthday party and a parent who was there then hired me for their kid. I realised I could use my degree for my own business.

At the start, Steve got the chance to take a business start-up course to have a better idea of what he was doing. They offered him a £500 start-up fund with which he bought a new computer, new equipment and improved his website.

He then applied for a number of grants to help him take his business a little bit further.

“In 2002 I started up my own online store. When I ran workshops I realised I could make a bit extra by selling balls and spinning plates.”

All sorts of juggling props are sold on his on-line store from the simple set of balls or spinning plates to the more elaborate poi propeller as well as books and DVD’s showing different routines for balls, clubs or contact juggling.

Steve says: “The propeller poi just came out a month ago. I showed them to a group of jugglers and they really like them. The concept of these poi are that you attach the propeller at the front of the poi and the more you spin it the more light it produces.”

One of Steve’s specialties is his one man one hour Christian show. Steve performs for the major Christian Festivals.

Steve explains: “You can draw lots of parallels between juggling and religious beliefs. For example dropping a ball can be seen as a sin and so on.

“For example, tonight I am going to be doing a 15 minute fire juggling routine called “Jesus beat the Devil”, centred around Easter. Although I am a Christian I am still using a Devil Stick. The two hand sticks represent Jesus and the Devil Stick represents the Devil. It’s a really good stick routine. In the Bible, Jesus beat the Devil by using two bits of wood (the handsticks) on which he was crucified. You can find over 200 Christian Gospel routines in the books I sell on-line.”

On his website Steve has written about the benefits of juggling whether they are educational, physical or social.

An elementary school in Missouri included juggling in PE classes and realised juggling enhanced the children’s ability to concentrate, enhanced their eye-hand coordination and self-confidence.

Researchers from the University of Regensburg in Germany did a study on a team of 24 people. Only half the people were asked to learn up a routine and juggle for 3 months.

It was then shown that the ones who had been juggling had in effect increased the grey matter, the nerve cells. But this was only a temporary effect and the brain would go back to its original size once the experiment stopped.

As far as physical benefits are concerned, juggling improves your balance, motor skills and ambidexterity.

As for social skills, communication and socializing is necessary to learn new tricks and routines. Juggling involves a lot of perseverance, as it can sometimes take weeks to get one move that might then unblock a whole range of other moves.

Although Steve usually works alone, he is sometimes called to perform along with other jugglers.

He says: “I work mostly by myself but I have five or six agents and when they find me work there’s a good chance that I’ll be working with two or three other jugglers. It’s good fun, it makes a change from working on your own.”

His business is going well and juggling has now become a career as well as a passion.

He says: “It used to be a hobby, now I hardly have time to practise at all because it’s a career. I would say juggling is a passion and I’d love to find more time to practise.

“I did about 100 gigs last year but even if sounds like a lot, in January or February I would do maybe two gigs a month and about two gigs a day in the summer. The store is the main income and I made 1300 sales last year.”

Steve’s website: www.jugglingworld.biz