Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival
We are a group of people in the Atlanta metro area who enjoy throwing things around for fun. We have weekly meetings on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at the Little Five Points Community Center in Inman Park near Little Five Points. These meetings are free and open to the public. Jugglers, some just beginning and others quite advanced, get together to promote the art of juggling and share in the fun.
A typical meeting will draw between five and twenty jugglers at all levels of ability to bone away at individual tricks, show off new stuff, or pass props in complicated games of catch. Some civilians occasionally come to watch, especially in the summer months when we are outdoors. We are always happy to teach juggling to anyone who's willing to learn.
We hold an annual festival on the first weekend in February. It's called the Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival. Our first festival was in 1978 and it's one of the oldest regional juggling festivals in the country. Here's a history page of our festivals.
Members participate in community events around the Atlanta area. We juggle and/or teach juggling at festivals, outdoor concerts and parades. In the past few years we have taught juggling at Brainfest, GMAAC, and the Clarkston International Festival. We once fed a troupe of stranded Soviet circus performers.
The Atlanta Jugglers Association was founded by Rodger French, Toni Shifalo and Bill Giduz. All of them have moved out of the Atlanta area but continue to support the club and often return for our annual festival.
Regular meetings began in 1978 at what was then the Moreland School and is now a community center. We rent a room on the third floor and we are the oldest tenant of the center. Little Five Points Community Center (L5PCC) is a non-profit entity composed of partner organizations, community leaders, and neighborhood representatives. All resident partners are non-profit groups with a wide range of goals with the common thread of community awareness and improvement.
In 1979 a small group of jugglers calling themselves the Atlanta Jugglers Association decided to throw a party and invite some other jugglers. The Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival was born. Every year since then jugglers gather in Atlanta on the first weekend of February for fun and partying and juggling.
On Saturday during the festival several jugglers compete for the infamous PHIL trophy. Here are the locations of the festival and winners from past years.
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