IJA eNewsletter – September 2025

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www.juggle.org		    IJA eNewsletter
   September 2025Editors: Don Lewis & Martin Frost
(ijanews@juggle.org)

CONTENTS

  • Reddere is Latin for render
  • 2026 IJA Festival Early Bird Registration open!
  • 2026 IJA Festival scholarship applications open
  • Preparing for Giving Tuesday
  • The post-pandemic world of hotels
  • Festivals and connections
  • YJA Badge Book
  • IJA Board meetings
  • Upcoming juggling festivals
  • Latest articles in eJuggle

 

 

Reddere is Latin for render
Benjamin Domask-Ruh

Hello IJA Community!

September has historically sped by for me.  This month holds a couple special anniversaries: The first being my wedding anniversary (6 years!  Hooray!).  The second being the anniversary of my career as a performer!  I started performing in September of 2012 at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on the Witchwood Stage.

IJA chair

But enough about me, what can I tell you about the IJA at large?  The US Country Contacts for the EJC attended our first European Juggling Association (EJA) meeting.  During this meeting, the previous president of the EJA, Jonas Fathy, completed his term.  Meeting him at the EJC was an inspiration and a highlight of my trip.  Many were teary eyed as he said goodbye to the role and responsibilities.  This also means the EJA voted in a new president!  Congratulations to the new EJA President, Simon à Campo.  We look forward to more conversations about mutual support between the IJA and the EJA.

So many developments are underway within our organization.  First, we revisit the annual festival by buttoning up the finances for 2025.  We’ve been looking inwards at the structures of our programming, and how we think about these programs.  From the YJA, IRCs, Championships at the festival, our website and more!  Our board meetings have been quite exciting as of late with many laughs and thoughtful questions as our new board members settle in.  It is a mighty privilege to sit as Board Chair and see all the amazing work our volunteers/officers are accomplishing!

Which has given me a bit of time to sit down with the mission of the IJA.  Do you remember it?  Of course you do!  ‘To Render Assistance to Fellow Jugglers.’ I think these next four updates will be a short dive into each of the keywords of our mission: Render.  Assistance.  Fellow.  Jugglers.

So what does it mean ‘to render’?  We start with a verb in our mission which is a good place to start.  We have an ACTIVE mission in our hands, calling all members to render.  Quick definitions give us the words: Make, Provide, Represent, which if we use these words in place of ‘render,’ we get some sentences which still seem fitting.  (Try it out in your head!)  However, when we go to the etymology of the verb ‘To Render’, the original Latin, we find a peculiar message: REDDERE.  RE – back, DARE – give.  Together?  Reddere means to ‘give back’.

‘Give Back Assistance to Fellow Jugglers.’ I find this a beautiful sentiment.  Physical disciplines in life are possible to learn from a book or a video.  However, to truly learn and understand something physical, you either need to work it out physically, by yourself, or have the knowledge transmitted to you by another human being.  Nearly every juggler I’ve met has had this innate sense to ‘give back’ what they learned from another juggler.  Some may call it ‘paying it forward.’ Either way, this helps put into context our mission even more concretely for me.

Which is why I feel compelled to give back as the YJA Director, a Board Member, and now Board Chair!  If you are ever inspired to ‘render’ in a more official IJA capacity, you can send any thoughts or ideas you’d like to share to me at ija.chair@juggle.org. As a member, you are always welcome to attend our board meetings by sending me an email for a Zoom link.

RA2FJ,
Benjamin Domask-Ruh
IJA Board Chair

 

 

2026 IJA Festival Early Bird Registration open!
Noel Yee & the 2026 IJA Festival Team

Fort Wayne, INHello Jugglers,

Early bird registration is open!  We’ve opened both pricing tiers as well, so you can register at the price that works best for you.  Be sure to get your tickets early and get ready for an amazing year of juggling.  You will also have the opportunity to render assistance to fellow jugglers by purchasing a package that donates 50-100% of a festival package to the IJA Festival Scholarship Fund!  Note: Vendor registration will be opening in the coming months.

We’ve implemented a new exciting idea suggested by the 2027 IJA Festival Team: youth under the age of 18 can access the gym for free!  Detailed information is on the registration page.  If you have questions or if you want to bring a group of youth, please contact registrar@juggle.org.

If you have any ideas or thoughts for the 2026 festival, please feel free to reach out!

More Updates soon!

 

 

2026 IJA Festival scholarship applications open
Afton Benson, IJA Treasurer

The IJA J. Todd Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund is now accepting applications for 2026 IJA Festival Scholarships.  If you have wanted to attend an IJA Festival but have not had a chance and some support would help, apply!  Priority will be given to individuals who have not attended an IJA Festival before.  You can find the scholarship application here.  Please share info about this scholarship far and wide — it is open to jugglers around the world.

Applications close at 11:59pm PDT on March 15, 2026.  Scholarships will start being awarded (and recipients notified) before the application deadline.  The last awardees will be informed by May at the latest.

This fund is named in honor of Todd Smith, one of the world’s top manufacturers of juggling equipment.  Todd was known for giving away props to aspiring jugglers and had the nickname of “the juggler’s friend”.  This scholarship fund will support new jugglers who have not had the chance to attend an IJA Festival.

Big thanks go to the fund’s donors for their generosity: Arthur Lewbel, Mike and Marilyn Sullivan, Unna Med, and a number of other jugglers.  Since 2022, the Scholarship Fund has provided support to 92 jugglers from around the world to attend the annual IJA Festival.

Interested in supporting the J. Todd Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund?  Fantastic!  You can donate here today.  Any questions can be directed to treasurer@juggle.org.

 

 

Preparing for Giving Tuesday
Afton Benson, IJA Treasurer

Giving Tuesday, the largest day of charitable giving around the world, is coming up soon on December 2, 2025.

The IJA exists largely due to the support of our members and from donations.  The Youth Juggling Academy (YJA), Joggling, Numbers, Tricks of the Month, the IJA Annual Festival, IJA Regional Competitions (IRC), the Festival Scholarship Fund, the Juggling Championships, and eJuggle all exist because of the time given by dedicated volunteers, your annual memberships, and individual donations.

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, December 2, and join over 12 million people who donated to make a difference for nonprofits around the world!

In the meantime!  Here are a few ways you can help ensure the IJA continues to serve our mission of rendering assistance to fellow jugglers on Giving Tuesday and any day!

  • Be a member!  Renew your membership, or become a Life Member.
  • Register for the 79th Annual IJA Festival.
  • Donate to the IJA.
  • Share information about IJA programs with your local club, family, or friends and encourage them to support the art of juggling.
  • Check with your employer to see if they offer a matching donation for your contribution; if you have questions about this please contact treasurer@juggle.org.

The IJA runs on the strength of volunteers, and your support ensures they have the tools to make our programs happen.  Please consider donating, becoming a member or renewing, or volunteering for the IJA today!  We need and greatly appreciate your support.

The IJA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and donations (excluding membership and festival registration) are tax deductible in accordance to IRS regulations in the United States.

 

 

The post-pandemic world of hotels
Mike Sullivan, Senior Future Festival Site Coordinator

If you’ve been attending IJA festivals for any length of time, you’re probably aware of the absolutely screaming deals IJA has been able to negotiate with our host hotels.

For this year’s festival in Evansville, for example, you could stay at our HQ hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton Downtown, for just $130/night with tax, and sleep up to four people in a two double bed room.  That breaks down to just $32.49/night per person.

And for that, you get a 24-hour hotel front desk and convenience pantry, bar and full-service restaurant, a swimming pool, a gym, mini-fridge in your room, Wi-Fi internet, free parking in their attached garage, daily housekeeping, free ice from the machines on every floor, big-screen HDTV’s, and a climate-controlled elevated skywalk to the gym.  If you need something, or there’s an issue with your stay, you have someone to call to get it handled, 24/7.

That kind of rate makes choosing an AirBnB look fairly pricey by comparison, when you consider all the things you DON’T get at a short-term rental stay.  Right now, STRs near downtown Evansville start at over $1,000/week, with few of the above amenities — plus you are expected to do a full cleaning and loads of laundry before you check out, and there’s no daily housekeeping!

Your IJA future festival site team works very hard to keep our festival affordable, and keeping the lodging rates as low as possible is the biggest thing we can control to make that happen.  In 2027, for example, we negotiated the hotel rate for our historic 80th annual celebration down from $159/night to $119/night, saving our group a collective $40,000 in hotel stays.

We negotiated the hotel deals for our festivals in 2023, 2024 and 2025 before the global COVID-19 pandemic shut down travel worldwide for the better part of two years.  But the pandemic changed a lot of things, and it definitely changed the world of hospitality.  Hotels went through a near-death experience.  Many didn’t survive, and many others did so only barely.  After the pandemic, hotels raised their rates by 40-70% worldwide.  Our blissful run of getting a hotel deal for 1,000 room/nights across our week in the low-$100/night range ended.

Next year’s festival brings us back to the wonderful city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, considered by many IJA “lifers” to be the best IJA destination in living memory.  Since our first visit there in 2019, the people of Fort Wayne have continued to upgrade and invest in their city.

When we visit next July, we’ll find amazing new restaurants downtown, a beautiful pedestrian entertainment district, a phenomenal new public park and events space, the addition of a third hotel in downtown for our jugglers, an upgraded and expanded Fort Wayne International Airport, the opening of some incredible new venues including The Fairfield, Electric Works, Birdie’s, Club Soda, and more.

With such an attractive destination, Fort Wayne’s hotels are busy almost all the time.  In fact, we had to adjust the dates of our 2026 festival to “fit” between other much larger groups coming to the city.  And when your 2026 festival team visited Fort Wayne last month to prepare for next year, essentially every hotel room downtown was booked with a huge medical insurance convention, paying top rate at each downtown property for their group.

We were delighted to be asked back to Fort Wayne and all the excellent facilities that are so convenient for our festival.  But, the hotel rates have gone up.  We worked hard to negotiate the rates and amenities down as far as we could, but they will reflect the “new reality” of the post-pandemic world of hotels.

So start stashing away a few extra bucks per night for your hotel room in Fort Wayne next year, so you can enjoy the best festival experience in the heart of all the action in downtown.  Our rates will still be FAR below what other groups will be paying, but a bit higher than the recent run of extremely low rates for the past decade-plus.

And then start looking forward to the historic 80th annual IJA festival in 2027, returning to the lovely small city where we have been so warmly welcomed twice before – Cedar Rapids, Iowa!

 

 

Festivals and connections
Don Lewis

I often tell people that the single best thing that they can do for their juggling is to go to a festival.  Just about any juggling festival will do, but the IJA festival is a good one.  The workshops at a festival give you a chance to understand the basics of the tricks you want to learn, and you can observe exactly what they should look like.  Priceless, but most workshops are free.  Jugglers are very open with skill sharing – unlike many other activities.

IJC toss-upAnother great benefit of Festivals is that the people you meet and the performers that inspire you.  I’ve made lifelong friends and acquaintances through juggling.  Here is an example: When I first started juggling I was 45 and somewhat bemused to find myself in the company of young adults who really could juggle.  The first juggling festival I attended was a regional one in Montreal.  One of the performers was a young guy just graduating from the Montreal circus school, Patrick Leonard.  Patrick performed for the IJA and directed the IJA gala show in Montreal 2000.  He was part of the team that developed Sept-doits-de-la-Main, a major producer of circus shows.  I’ve bumped into him from time to time over the years at various circus events.

Recently I attended the St. John’s International Circus Festival in Newfoundland, Canada.  It is a general circus festival with an emphasis on aerial acts.  There was excellent juggling in the shows by Alexander Koblikov.  Nicolas Germain presented an interesting juggling workshop focused on creation.  At the final Gala show, I found a seat in the front row, and later helped a cane ridden senior drop into a seat beside me.  I found myself catching, or picking up his cane each time he drifted off.  After the intermission there was a draw for tickets to next year’s fest.  The derelict guy beside me won.  I began to smell a rat.  He struggled out of his chair to say thanks and practically fell into a tube chair on stage.  He then proceeded to fall in, out, and through the chair for a couple of minutes.  Patrick’s old man persona had totally fooled me.  I hadn’t seen him for about eight years.  We laughed about it afterwards.  Patrick is an amazing showman and totally accessible, as are many of the juggling stars that you will see at a festival.

If you have not been to a juggling festival yet, you really do need to go to one.  Do not be fooled into thinking that festivals are just for good jugglers.  There is something for everyone at a juggling festival, and you can be perfectly comfortable learning at your own pace.  Or, you can hang out and be inspired by the creativity happening all around you in the gym.  There is no extra charge for inspiration.

Some of you who read this are those really good jugglers who go to festivals.  What you really need to do is reach out to the jugglers who are not yet IJA members and convince them.  New people to pass clubs with don’t generally fall from the sky; you have to go out and develop them from timid jugglers.  So get out there and do it.

 

 

YJA Badge BookThe Juggler's Badge Book

Did you know that the IJA’s Youth Juggling Academy has a book?  It does!

The Juggler's Badge Book

The Juggler’s Badge Book is the ultimate companion for aspiring jugglers of any age!  Track your progress, unlock achievements, and earn badges as you learn the art of juggling.  With its engaging format and rewarding sticker system, The Juggler’s Badge Book makes learning to juggle an exciting and fulfilling adventure.  Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned juggler, let The Juggler’s Badge Book be your guide to skillful juggling and a collection of well-earned accomplishments.  Start achieving your juggling journey today!

The Juggler’s Badge Book is $25 and makes a great gift!  Purchase yours today!  Proceeds go to supporting further YJA initiatives and advancing the IJA’s mission to render assistance to fellow jugglers.

Published by the International Jugglers’ Association in collaboration with Modern Vaudeville Press.

 

 

IJA Board meetingsIJA Board meetings

IJA Board meetings are open to all IJA members and are hosted on Zoom.  To find out the times of this month’s vision and business meetings, or to attend, please email ija.chair@juggle.org and say which meeting you’re interested in.

 

 

Upcoming juggling festivals

For a list of upcoming juggling festivals, please visit our friends over at The Juggling Edge.

While you’re there, visit their list of juggling clubs.

 

 

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