Our mission is to improve the lives of the families we serve through the transformational power of laughter. Whether a child is battling cancer or struggling with anger issues, or families are hurting, or a person with dementia needs to feel heard, our job has been to look for the positives and find lightness and humor.
Recent events have made this mission more challenging than ever before, but we believe that through humor we can find hope and with hope healing becomes possible. We will continue do all we can to reach ALL the communities around us with our gifts of laughter and hope.
We at Laughter League have created and committed to a plan of action for anti-racism in our work, our communities and our homes. The entire staff of Laughter League is listening, educating, and acting upon the changes required to truly be anti-racist.
We also recognize that allyship goes way beyond laughter and hope, and while that is our mission, we are also committed to being part of the change we seek in the world. Laughter League has created a plan of action for anti-racism in our work, our communities and our homes. The entire staff of Laughter League is listening, educating, and acting upon the changes required to truly be anti-racist. We want our staff to reflect the diversity of the communities that we serve.
What does that mean for us?
Along with our partners in the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning Organizations, we have already launched an ongoing forum for educating our performers on how we can understand and implement authentic allyship into our daily work as healthcare clowns. This forum will include discussion of reading materials as well as training and workshops.
We are committed to more actively recruiting BIPOC performers. We recognize that recruiting people of color to our work goes beyond posting an audition notice. We plan to expand our recruitment to include a series of free lectures/performances in communities that will allow us to reach BIPOC’s with the magic of the work we do and continue inspiring people about healthcare clowning. In addition, we are committed to creating an internship aimed at developing BIPOC talent for Laughter League.
Laughter League has long been partnering with the school system in Dallas, Texas to bring innovative programming aimed at teaching STEM subjects to struggling students through the use of physical comedy and circus arts. We plan to expand this programming to other market areas where we currently have hospital programs.
Most importantly, we refuse to allow these issues to fade into the background. Every day that we stand in front of an audience, whether it is one person or two thousand, virtually or live, we will be mindful and intentional about walking the walk and talking the talk of anti-racism.
We are here and we see you.