Hoopy Happenings 2010 – 2023: 11 years of retreats

Written By Jewelz Hanssens

Hello, I’m Jewelz the Creatrix and founder of Hoopy Happenings.

Hoopy Happenings ran 11 times from 2010 to 2023.  Yes, that should be 14 years - so what happened to the missing 3 years?

In 2013 I didn’t run the retreat because my dad was diagnosed that January with Multiple Myeloma, which is a blood cancer, and I just didn’t have the energetic capacity to organise and run a retreat. 

Covid Chaos impacted everyone and HH2020 got rescheduled to HH2021. We thought we might have a chance but then “BAM” we were in lock down yet again!

 

The Seed gets planted...

Picture this - it is 2009 at Tasmanian Circus Festival (which has run every other year since 1989). The festival consisted of a 5-day training week then a long weekend where the public could come to learn circus skills and see amazing shows. In the training week you could learn all sorts of things; aerials, clowning, tumbling, tightrope, viewpoints, act development, juggling etc and there was 1 hoop class a day. 

Just ONE!?

So, at this 10th incarnation and my second time at the festival I thought WHY? 

Why is there not an Australian hoop festival?

I, as a Hoopologist (the humble plastic circle being my main weapon of distraction) was wanting more!

During the training week I was in conversation with my sister Lisa Hanssens and fellow hoopers Heidi and Tanya.  I said “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a hoop festival? We should create one!”  

When I got back to the mainland the idea was in my head and wouldn’t go away. So I started an email thread about a potential festival. Ideas flew back and forth about where and when and what name. Everyone had great ideas but no cohesive plan.  Somebody just needed to decide and obviously, it was me! 

The Name…

I searched the internet to see what other hoop events were called so that I chose one that stood out from the rest.  The biggest hoop festival at that stage was in the USA called HoopCamp.  Somehow I landed on Hoopy Happenings - gosh now I can’t even remember why and how this name came to be. Maybe the Hoopy came from my tag line “Hoopy Loopy Happiness”? 

I attended HoopCamp in 2009 and wow….

300 people and a gazillion workshops. I shared a room with fellow Aussies, Bunny HoopStar (aka Bee Star) of Hoop Empire, and Jo Mondy, (now in the UK of Live Love Hoop). It was so much fun  and so much going on! Too much choice, what to choose?? This was something that stayed with me when I curated Hoopy Happenings.

I wanted to be able to do everything on offer.

The When…

Wanting not to clash with other festivals and not too close to Xmas because of gigs for teachers/performers and everybody gets pretty busy in the lead up  to the end of the year, I chose the first weekend in November. 

The Where…

Govinda Valley, the Hari Krishna retreat at Otford which was not far from where I lived. Perfect! Bushy location just outside the Royal National Park, great vegan food, comfy rooms, you could camp if you wanted but there was one downfall – no coffee and some people said it would have been nice to have a drink in the evening, but it was an alcohol-free space.

I knew some teachers that I wanted on the program, and I put a shout out for people to apply. I doodled a drawing of a heart tree with some seedling trees sprouting up with hula hoops around them and the name “Hoopy Happenings Down Under” were the roots.

Check out my doodle!

I think there were 25 participants plus teachers… all the workshops were curated with the hula hoop in mind.  Creating character in the hoop, burlesque, hoop fitness, plus more…

So many manipulations of props flow into each other and skills can be transferred. For example, learning Poi skills that transfer to the hoops. That is why hula hooping and other props have evolved but that is another blog for another time.

The first night after everyone arrived, we had the cabaret night where the teachers performed showcasing their style and creating that excitement to be learning from these people.  The hall wasn’t big enough to fit everyone in together for workshops so we had split groups- one in the hall and one outside. If you were in the outside group when a hoop flung out of your hand and you didn’t catch it in time it rolled down the hill, giving you extra exercise! The next night was fire spinning and then after another full day of hooping we packed up and left. 

The feedback was great, including“Yay, awesome” and “we want more hooping”, and some requests for coffee and an opportunity to have a cheeky drink in the evening!

The Move…

The following year I found the Heathcote Scout Camp that was near Govinda Valley and was just what we needed.  It had an industrial kitchen, a big hall, a secondary smaller hall, rustic bunk beds and plenty of flat land (so no chasing hoops down hills). Govinda Valley catered for the event and so I got to tick the requests off the list. Bonus, it sits on the edge of the Heathcote National Park so the sunsets were stunning!

The Research Tour in 2012…

How lucky was I? I applied for a grant with the Ian Potter Cultural Trust to go to different retreats/conventions overseas, see how they ran their events and to learn from international teachers. It was a brilliant educational trip, networking and connecting with overseas hoopers that I am still friends with today. The events were as follows: Hoopurbia (Berlin, Germany), UK Hoop Gathering x 2 (Shropshire, UK), European Hoop Convention (Sheffield, UK), German Hoop Convention (Hannover, Germany), Hoop Camp (Santa Cruz, USA). 

The trip inspired me to invite international teachers to Australia. We are so far away from much of the world and it’s not cheap to travel here. So Hoopy Happenings contributed towards the funding to bring out one international teacher for the lineup.

Hoopy Happenings was never intended to be a big convention-styled event. Rather it was an intimate retreat to learn, play, share, create and perform. Back then I got a lot of slack from other prop-wielding folk about my pricing.  I received lots of comments asking “Why is it so expensive?”. And I responded -  “Well, I pay my teachers. It’s not gig pay, it’s community rate, plus they get accommodation and  food.  When they are not teaching they can join in the workshops and get really good vegetarian/vegan food and  snacks!” “Oh!” they said!.  It wasn’t like I was raking in the money -  some years I only just covered costs.

How was Hoopy Happenings described and promoted? 

Australia’s first all-inclusive hoop retreat with delicious vegan/vegetarian food, dorm accommodation, 10 ++ workshops with international & national instructors, a Cabaret night, a Fire/LED evening and Renegade.

An intimate retreat with numbers limited to 26 participants – just like a big pyjama party – just add hoops! 

Amazing sunsets over the Heathcote National Park!

A welcoming space to share, to learn & to connect.

The End…

In 2023 I made the tough decision to stop curating this annual retreat because:

  1. It’s a lot of work for very little money, sometimes only just breaking even which means I didn’t actually get paid for my time during the year organising it.

  2. Covid hurt Hoopy Happenings momentum plus some other personal stuff

  3. Marketing has never come naturally to me - and now with more events to compete with for people’s money in a cost of living crisis… well you know!

  4. I started touring my preschool show regionally and I literally didn’t have time!

  5. I hit menopause in 2021, brain fog crept in, couldn’t focus and it was super bad. Someone mentioned “you know you most likely have ADHD and when you hit menopause it exacerbates the ADHD” (another blog on this coming).

But I do miss it?! And did I cry about it?

Yes! 

I created Hoopy Happenings for purely selfish reasons. I wanted more hooping workshops than the circus festivals at that time were offering.

But it became so much more. The connections to community, friendships, growth and discovery. I’d never run a retreat before (although I did run a travel agency for expats in China, but that’s another story for another time).

In all the swirl of emotions I was late to renew the domain name for Hoopy Happenings.  When I tried to renew it, somebody else had bought it. It would have been too expensive for me to get it back so I thought Humpf, NO! The domain www.hoopyhappenings.com is no longer mine and now that I stopped running the annual retreat, I wonder if it is really worth trying to get it back?

There are ideas floating around in my head for other events that will fall under the Hoopy Happenings banner, but I don’t need a separate website for that. It all falls under Jewelz A Hoopz anyways. Any future events will be promoted on Jewels A Hoopz Facebook and Instagram.

Stay tuned for some future hoopy loopy happiness to gather together happening hoopers to a Hoopy Happenings. 

Glossary + References:

Jewelz Hanssens
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