The Busking Project - Documenting Street Performance Worldwide

Dear friends, fans, buskers and browsers, We have filmed in 40 cities on 5 continents, and have made it home, safe and almost sound. We filmed hundreds of street performances, and we know you want to see more. That’s why we created the following video. I promise you’ve never seen a street performer video like [...]

When The Busking Project visited Vancouver, Dawn Dreams invited us to stay on her couch. She liked us enough to make a video, and then come to Latin America to help us complete the documentary. Proof at last that street performers are crazy: Dawn Busking in Vancouver, Canada: Dawn Busking in Lima, Peru: See more [...]

View of Burrard Bridge from Granville Island    In September The Busking Project filmed on Granville Island in Vancouver, Canada. Traditionally, buskers go to Granville Island to perform because of the general support for buskers there as well as for the convenience of the regulated busking system, which is managed by The Granville Island Buskers [...]

We got the following email off of Richard Hartnell, a resident artist at Flowtoys, a hub of the Bay Area flow arts community, and contact juggler. He’s thinking of making a pocket letter to show policemen that clearly state the street performers’ rights. What do you think — a good idea? “I’ve been performing up [...]

Ad-free living in Havana, Cuba, makes that city seem like a thinker’s paradise, unsullied by toothpaste smiles, lingerie legs or fast food figures. Relaxed, colourful, healthy…a week in Cuba made my 6 years navigating the hive of New York City seem like complete madness. Amerika Psycho, a book I just picked up in a Havanan [...]

The Naked Cowboy, also known as Robert John Burck, has successfully become the iconic figure of Times Square, New York. His naked cowboy act is such a valuable commodity that other potential cowboys (and cowgirls) can licence it from Mr. Burck for a fixed sum, thereby spreading the empire of The Naked Cowboy. Creating this [...]

They say pet owners adopt the characteristics of their pets, or maybe it’s the other way round. On The Busking Project we have no pets (there was Trevor the Tortoise for a few days but that is a different story), but we do spend far too much time with our filming equipment. Our Zoom H4 [...]

A sad experience from internationally acclaimed busker, Space Cowboy: After 24 hours locked up I am now released from jail!!!! All my performance props have been confiscated but I am a free man. I was arrested for entertaining on the streets of New York! They charged me for ‘Disorderly conduct’ and I was locked up [...]

Mark Plessinger is the owner of the Main Street eyewear boutique Frame of Mind and founder of First Thursdays on Main in Columbia SC, a monthly event designed to promote the arts in the SC state capital: Can you tell us a little about the history of First Thursdays and talk about the street performance [...]

A powerful testimony from Asheville busker, Sandra Hess: My hands are getting sweaty. My heart beating harder and harder as I take my seat. The footsteps of the people on the street echo through my mind like a freight train. Confusion and panic start to set in. The cars that drive by feel as if [...]

On the 23rd of August, in a white Volkswagen Beetle, we drove to Walterboro to meet Jim Hadley. We didn’t notice the earthquake because the car was Richter scale eight on wheels, windows rolled down and rattling in the doors. It was a surprise to hear the reports on the radio, tales of dislodged roof [...]

Tourist attractions attract tourists who attract people to sell things to tourists: street hawkers, beggars, ice cream vans, street performers, and sunglass salesmen. In some cases these hyenas of tourism have morphed from periphery entrainment and service into the main source of attraction. The fruit sellers of Pikes Place Market, Seattle; the ice cream comedians [...]

Trafalgar Square is a small galaxy of tourists orbiting Nelson’s Column or fighting it’s pull on the steps to the National Gallery. In time, and with the weight of a thousand photographs, the tourists break free like stray meteorites to explore London’s other gravity centres: St. James Park, Covent Gardens, or Piccadilly Circus. These planetary [...]

Is there such a thing as an overabundance of street performance? Does having twenty buskers in a single city block destroy the excitement and authenticity of acts? What if they all share the same jokes? The three-week Fringe Festival in Edinburgh attracts hundreds of artists from around the world. Buskers and street performers (the festival [...]

Great Dave Billy Kid, Magician Rubber Band Boy Lisa Lottie Dynamike Charlie Chaplin Derek Twin Tango Share and Enjoy:

Benjamin Stein has been making his living on the streets for a few years, playing improvisations and traditional music from Afghanistan, Iran, Macedonia, Turkey, Japan, and Greece, amongst others. He started playing with the guitar, but moved onto instruments with much better names: the bağlama (Turkish lute), the santoor (Persian hammered dulcimer), the tar (Persian [...]

Gold, bronze, and silver. White and black. Demons, warriors, witches, wizards, chimney sweeps, and Sunday afternoon drivers. They sit and stand, silent or with sound. Their painted faces make their eyes stand out – they amuse and scare and amaze and annoy (especially on Las Ramblas, but that’s another story). They are the living mimicking [...]

There is a small hill to the west of Vienna, at the end of the green line, from where you can see two capital cities at the same time. Bratislava lies close to the Austrian/Slovakian border and is just a short train ride away. We didn’t visit Bratislava, but felt that Bratislava visited us in [...]

In Hellzapoppin’s touring Caravan, we interviewed Tim Cridland, known across the street performing world as Zamora the Torture King. Tim is a successful and professional performing artist, and has appeared on a host of television programs. We were lucky to see him performing on stage and on the streets while he was in Copenhagen, Denmark. [...]

We made a last minute stop in Copenhagen because buskers in Stockholm kept telling us we needed to go there, that Copenhagen had a great street performance scene, that Stroget Street attracted professional performers from all over the world, and that audiences there were receptive and willing to pay heartily for shows. They were right. [...]