Brittany

I am the founder and executive director of Ozark Cirque, LLC. I grew up in a farming family of community leaders and educators in Perryville, Arkansas. My upbringing inspired an interest in various community aspects - mainly how art and culture aids in its functioning and resiliency. I struggled as an artist in a monoculture but was thankfully able to see culture as the umbrella under which art resides. Thinking in this way led me to an eventual obsession with circus culture and lifestyle under the conceptual “Big Top.”

I was an avid rock-climber and yoga teacher exploring careers in recreational therapy by the time I graduated from the University of Arkansas in 2009 with a BA in ceramics. Shannon W. had just moved to the area and was my first aerial teacher. By 2012, we were teaching beginner aerial arts at Yoga Deza in Fayetteville, AR and our performance project - Nimbus Circus - revealed a demand for circus arts in Northwest Arkansas as well as its business potential. After the pandemic and becoming a single-mom, I continued to manage circus arts performing operations and taught private aerial dance classes on the side.

The demand continues to grow and - even more importantly - there is an increasing need for circus arts in community settings with its social-emotional benefits and adaptive applications. Upon realizing this increased need - not only in NWA but in the world at large - my recent professional development pursuits include the study of circus arts in settings of community-based art education at the University of Arkansas as well as Circus Arts Therapy and Adaptive Aerial certifications through Circus Arts Institute in Atlanta, GA.