“It isn’t art unless it has the potential to be a disaster”

If you don’t know Junior Day is the calendar highlight of the Young Magic Circle, the club for magicians aged between 10 to 18. It is packed with lectures and competitions.

What it is also full of is, support, laughter and joy. Those kids really can teach us adults a thing or two.

You wouldn’t know there was a competition as such, the nerves were minimal from the competitors, they were all just thrilled to have a chance to perform their acts. To have the opportunity to do their hobby and have a lot of fun doing so.

And they could feel like that because they knew they had the full support of every other member in the club. Everyone was a well-wisher.

The mixture of this safety and their youth produced such a diverse set of acts, routines, and styles that it was far more entertaining than watching an adult competition. They were prepared to take risks, be themselves and execute their own ideas with 100% commitment. To take their concepts to the very limits of their imagination.

These risks meant the magic felt much more like art than craft. To quote Banksy,

“It isn’t art unless it has the potential to be a disaster”

As we grow up, avoiding that disaster becomes more important than trying to achieve the original art we are capable of. We take it all too seriously and fear takes over. We worry about the ‘Rights’ and ‘Wrongs’ of our craft when there really are none. We restrict ourselves due to imaginary constraints, maybe from a perceived piece of wisdom handed down, a quote in a book or others judgement.

Magic isn’t hurt by people breaking the ‘rules’ they are pushing it forward, it is those following the rules that are holding it back.

Let’s be big kids!