AOIFE RALEIGH

Aoife Raleigh is a multi-disciplinary award-winning circus artist, producer and facilitator. She is committed to creating new and exciting opportunities in circus across the community, through socially engaged street performance, colourful pop-up shows, community building workshops and empowering youth programs.

Specialising in hula hoop, foot juggling, feats of strength and acrobatics, Aoife uses physical metaphors to simply reflect everyday nonsense in a funny but poignant way. As a strong woman she uses her physical strength to portray strong female characters. She holds a degree in Electronic Engineering and  has in the past few years been drawn to investigate the crossover between performance, education, engineering and the arts. 

Aoife is half of the duo StrongWomen Science, an educational circus show which reveals the science behind breath taking circus skills such as fire eating. This show has been performed at national and international venues and festivals since including Buckingham Palace, Abu Dhabi Science Festival and Cork Midsummer Festival. Also winner of the Best Family Event at the Fantastic Families UK Awards 2020.

She is a founding member of an acrobatic ensemble Síolta Circus who created their first show in 2019 and recently debuted their second show "On Tish", This company broke the mold for street performance in Ireland creating a highly skilled ensemble acrobatic piece that is funny and makes you gasp. They have performed at both national and international festivals including Cairde Festival Sligo,
CircAire Festival, Mallorca and Spraoi Festival, Waterford.

The co-founder and coordinator for Dublin Circus Project youth programmes 2016-2022, in this time the programs experienced rapid growth bringing circus arts education to young people from diverse backgrounds and abilities with a strong focus on bringing about social change trough circus. Its Halloween project in D10 was nominated for DMR West Garda Youth Awards 2020.
Aoife was also Project Lead of the Street Activations for UEFA Euro 2020, developing and coordinating large scale street arts performances at locations across the city.

Aoife is a former board member, chairperson and programme leader for Clowns Without Borders Ireland, a charity which embraces the therapeutic value of play in workshops and performances for refugees and asylum seekers. In February 2020, she coordinated and co-developed a show by young asylum seekers which launched the Mother Tongues Festival 2020.