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C4C hospital clowns receive Advanced Medical Clown Diplomas after a series of professional workshops, culminating in a weekend of seminars with Belgian ‘Clowns without Borders’ co-founder, Kevin Brooking.

“There is a world of difference between circus or stage clowning and hospital clowning”, explains Rafal Wojas, C4C’s co-founder and ‘Uber-Clown’ of the Dr. Clown program. “Hospital clowns must undergo specialized training to be able to besensitive to the particular needs hospitalized children have.”

While traditional circus clowns perform at a distance from their audiences, usually following a rigid script, the medical clown is in close proximity to his audience, very much relying on improvisational skills and flexibility, says Rafal.

 “Besides the clown’s ability to convert any given hospital room into a spaceship or a tropical forest, empathy and playfulness are the foremost requirements for a medical clown”, elaborates visiting Kevin Brooking, explaining thatmedical clowns have to be able to create their own environments when visiting children in their hospital rooms and beds.

The seminars received an enthusiastic response from C4C’s clowns, most of which have been involved in hospital clowning for many years.

“This series of seminar was just what I needed”, says Irena, who has been a C4C hospital clown for 4 years. “There is so much to learn in this challenging and complex field and input from real professionals, like Kevin Brookings, is invaluable.Kevin really gets his points across.”

In the end, all clowns were awarded their well deserved “Advanced Medical Clown” diplomas, having successfully completed their training sessions and seminars, as mandated by C4C’s Dr. Clown initiative.

May they spread their famous “laughter therapy” far and wide to children affected by the “Hospital Blues” in hospitals all across the country!

A big THANK YOU goes to all the sponsors who helped make the seminars & certification possible:

·        Brussels Airlines: they cared enough not to let Kevin walk the distance

·        The Hilton Prague: they made sure Kevin slept comfortably and didn’t starve to death

·        The Prague Shakespeare Company and the Kolovrat Theater: they kindly let C4C use their premises for the final series of seminars.

Thank you so much, everybody - we couldn’t have done it without you!