The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Great skills on show as jugglers visit Perth
Convention: Annual event brings amazing prowess to the city centre
Shoppers were greeted by a colourful sight in Perth city centre on Saturday.
The British Juggling Convention was held in the Fair City over the weekend and members st aged their annual games between the City Hall and St John’s Kirk.
The event saw jugglers, hula-hoopers and diabolo spinners compete to be the best in a number of events, including the “blue ribbon” contest – five- ball endurance – which saw contestants aim to keep five balls in the air for the longest period.
Other crowd-pleasers were the Hula Hoop Gladiators, which saw competitors try to dislodge their opponents’ hoops, and the diabolo high toss, where players were eliminated for failing to catch the fast-spinning device after launching it into the sky.
The event ended with the ‘toss up’”, which saw participants simultaneously throw their balls, clubs and diabolos several metres into the air.
The British Juggling Convention was last held in Perth more than a decade ago.
Amy Harrison, a volunteer at the event, said: “We came here in 2005 and it was just awesome – the people are so friendly, the venue at the Bells Sports Centre was just so welcoming and they offered us all sorts of things to help us have fun and get everybody in the local community engaged.
“There’s things like unicycling, diabolo, fire juggling, normal juggling, tightrope walking, you can learn to become a magician and do string tricks, there’s Frisbee, there’s kite-flying, there’s pretty much anything you want to do – and some people, being clever, try to do all of them at the same time.
“You’ll see somebody juggling clubs with something spinning on their head and on a unicycle – which is just showing off, as far as I can see.”