Be part of the joyful clown team bringing Gesundheit! humanitarian clowning to Costa Rica!
Patch Adams MD and the School for Designing a Society invite you to Clowning & Caring in Costa Rica. Since 2008 over 300 clown activists have done wonderful work in San Jose with local healthcare institutions and communities.
Join us in an intense week during which we’ll explore our ways to care in healthcare institutions, endangered communities, public parks and streets; and will learn how to bring joy and imagine a desirable society using clowning, performance, music, humor and play. This experience will change your life!
The trip is for both beginning clowns and performers, and the more advanced ones. You are all invited to open your hearts and celebrate love and change! Everyone is welcome, no experience is necessary.
In addition to performing in clinical settings, there will be daily practical workshops in clown technique, song, poetry, improvisation, along with composing in small groups.
Clowning & Caring is a unique program combining Gesundheit clowning experience with the educational tools offered by the teachers/activists of the School for Designing a Society. Don’t miss your chance to make big changes!
Patch Adams — entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change; promotes and practices living a life of public joy as a revolutionary act; fount of ideas for avoiding burn-out in long-term social justice and health. Enthusiator.
Susan Parenti — composer, tap dancer, accordionist, activist. Familiar with the words “idealist’, ‘romantic’, ‘unrealistic’. Writes theater plays on how she wishes people would speak, rather than how they do actually speak.
Mark Enslin — composer, actor, bassoonist, guitarist, oud player, apprentice tabla player, listener, teaching composition facing the power of the respondent, assignment as an art form.
Dario Solina —composer, performer, storyteller, writer, videomaker, communication designer, since 2010 performs his clown everywhere, every second; Vulnerability for Revolutionaries, teaches the art of Emphasis, MetaClowning maestro.
“Change” – a short documentary about how clowning and this very program
changed Dario’s life, and how strong an impact it could make on your life.
Further playful readings on clowning:
Listen to the voices of both all new and experienced participants sharing their excitement and wonder, while experiencing the 2023 Clowning & Caring program (many thanks to David Naster for sharing the interviews!)
Transportation between San José international airport and the hostel is included.
The detailed day-to-day itinerary of the trip will be available when we get closer to the event, but this is what a typical day looks like:
Discover one of the places we love to visit during the program.
La Carpio is surrounded by the Virilla River, the Torres River, the country’s most polluted river, a gravel pit, and the largest landfill servicing the entire central valley area. Here is where thousands of refugees from Nicaragua have settled. They arrived through the years for a variety of reasons including, the devastation of a civil war, the destruction of natural disasters and the desperation of poverty that led to hunger.
The community counts around 35,000 residents, living conditions are hard, violence, drug abuse and alcoholism are daily challenges, and – although a lot has been done by humanitarian organisations – there is still a lot to do to provide adequate health care education and employment. But the people who made it to La Carpio are resilient, strong and resourceful.
In 2008, Gesundheit! 
Institute started Clowning & Caring in Costa Rica and has brought clown activists on the streets of La Carpio ever since. The most beautiful and powerful connections have been ma
de with the residents through play, love and care.
And over the years a desire to deepen those connections arose and became more concrete in 2014, when for the first time, in addition to the clown visits, we brought teachers to offer free daily workshops to the people in La Carpio throughout the week of the clown trip. Children, teenagers and women have engaged storytelling, percussions, clowning and theater, and at the end of the program have performed in front of the community and the clowns, in an exchange of creativity, stories and care that made all the ones involved dream bigger.
Here is how one of the experiences was described by Gail Nystrom, founder of the Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation (www.crhf.org), our extraordinary link to La Carpio throughout all these years:
“The day wound up with nearly 40 bizarrely dressed clowns from around the world in the Patch Adams group sitting in our Montessori classroom to watch a presentation by the Carpio residents. The “poorest” people in Central America. First, the children of the Model Education Center did a little play and song. Then, the recycling group of entrepreneurs recited a play about their pride in being recyclers accompanied by the life-size recycled doll we had created. Then, the women from las Gradas presented their family tree and talked about their lives, including the shoes they chose to represent their lives. Next, the preteen girls presented a rousing drum dance. Then, the one “boy from the corner” who actually showed up, bravely recited their poem with Steven, their clown guide. As a final show, the Grandmother’s group presented their play about the story of their lives. At the end, everyone stood together to sing the famous Love Grows song. It all ended with a hug for all the clowns from everyone there. This is what was done. What really happened was a shift in the spiral of development. An upward movement for all of us and maybe all of humanity. Many of the clowns and a lot of the Carpianos understood this and were very moved. Conscious evolution. Sacred. Journey. Happening right now, today.”
In 2016 we brought a whole team of people to La Carpio, to offer more workshops, practical and healthcare activities to support the community and artistic events every day during the clown trip, creating the La Carpio Festival, modelled on projects we already successfully brought to other countries.
We have been experimenting with big and small interventions, and once again will bring new ideas and activities this year, of course along with two wonderful loving clown parades on the streets joined by local clowns and activists!
We are so excited to go back to La Carpio this year, get in touch again with the extraordinary local community and continue the work we have been doing for years and which has been giving such beautiful fruits. And you’ll be a fundamental part of a group of loving activists bringing Gesundheit! humanitarian clowning back to La Carpio!
Learn more about La Carpio through the voices of who lives there: Village of Hope: La Carpio
The experience with some of the words from Suzanne, a wonderful and committed human being, who came to Costa Rica as her first clown trip, and keeps on coming back:
“Since my first clown trip, my life changed completely because I met LOVE, the real one, the one from soul to soul, the one with no expectation. I’m a touched soul and I’m grateful.
Thank you for letting me live to my highest potential, thank you for this clown trip that awakens my one hundred percent human fibre. I knew this experience would be the beginning of something great… and it is, one day at a time.”
Cost: $1475 USD covers food, lodging, all educational and clowning events, and transportation within the country. This fee does not include your transportation to Costa Rica. Space on this trip is very limited. Vaccination against COVID-19 is recommended and not required. We register participants on a first come first serve basis.
-> Participantes de Costa Rica residentes en el país, hay un precio especial para ustedes!
Los cupos son muy limitados! Para hacer la inscripción, por favor no sigan el link aquí abajo, escriban a dario@patchadams.org les estaremos enviando un link especial.
1) Download and read the C&C in Costa Rica 2024 Info Pack 1
2) Pay Deposit or Full Tuition and Register through the Electronic Registration Form
Please do not fill out the form unless you are prepared to make your deposit.
-> Not ready to register yet? Write to dario@patchadams.org
3) Email a picture of yourself to Dario (it doesn’t have to be a clown picture)
4) Your Deposit is Non-Refundable. Please have your final payment made before August 1st, 2024. Thanks!
Flights: Please arrive at San José Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO) by the evening of September 1st, depart any time on September 8th.
Passports: No visa is required, check this link for any exception related to your country. Passports can be expedited by your local post office. Please bring two color photocopies of your passport with you. Please check the expiration date of your document, passport must be valid for at least six months after your date of travel.
Vaccines:
COVID-19: Vaccination is recommended and not required.
The following vaccines are recommended: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B (in some cases), Typhoid, Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) and Tetanus-diphtheria. Please check if your country has special vaccination requirements. For example you can check here if you are coming from a country where Yellow Fever is endemic. In any case, you may want to talk to your doctor about the recommended vaccinations for travel to Costa Rica. We will not be in any areas of the country where Malaria is a possibility.
If you have questions which are not answered by the program’s description:
dario@patchadams.org
Dario Solina
Clowning & Caring in Costa Rica
Tour Coordinator
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