UK's Flying Trapeze Academy

About Us

Our Vision & Venue

Traditionally, flying trapeze is a troupe discipline rarely seen outside the circus big top. While recreational flying has grown significantly in recent decades, most UK facilities operate seasonally on outdoor structures and offer limited access to professional development opportunities.

FlightHouse aims to bridge that gap.

Combining the Hippodrome's rich performance heritage with Steal This Circus's extensive touring experience, we provide a year-round indoor training environment designed to support both recreational flyers and aspiring professionals.

Our mission is simple: build strong technical foundations, develop exceptional performers, and help create the next generation of British circus artists.

Why Train at FlightHouse?

Year-Round Indoor Flying Facilities

  • Fully heated indoor space.
  • 14-metre-high ceiling.
  • Multiple safety line systems, allowing larger tricks to be trained safely in lines without the need for a top line.
  • Cradle top catch with integrated safety line system.
  • Low cradle rigged on a separate structure.
  • Extra-large safety net with minimal bounce and no ridge rope beneath the catch apron.
  • Open training sessions for regular students.
  • Plumbed-in toilets, separate changing rooms, and a reception area.
  • A coaching philosophy built around repetition, strong foundations, and helping students understand their own flying needs.
  • Proudly the only flying trapeze school in the country with its own on-site speakeasy bar — for after class.

Live Performance Opportunities

Working in close collaboration with the Jay family, we will host regular performance nights and public circus shows, giving Industry Pipeline students invaluable experience performing in front of live audiences.

Accommodation & Funding

To support our community, we are able to offer on-site accommodation for select intensive courses.

We also provide subsidised funding opportunities for specific groups and individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds in the interest of making flying trapeze accessible to everyone, regardless of financial circumstances.

More information will be available as the programme develops.

The Team

FlightHouse represents years of dreaming, industry frustration, and a stubborn refusal to give up — finally becoming a professional-grade circus training facility that remarkably includes both a roof and heating.

Our coaching team is dynamic and constantly evolving. Active industry professionals will rotate through the venue between touring commitments, ensuring students learn from current working artists.

If you're interested in coaching, performing, or collaborating with us, we'd love to hear from you.

Mat Herman
Mat

Mat Herman | Founder & Head Chef

Mat has spent more than 14 years touring professionally as a performer, troupe manager, and circus rigger.

Drawing on his extensive rigging experience, he originally designed a system that allowed him to work the platform, catch, and pull safety lines simultaneously. Unsurprisingly, doing all three at once proved ambitious, and additional staff became necessary.

When he isn’t performing or hanging from circus rigs, Mat is an accomplished metalworker and welder who has designed and built multiple flying trapeze rigs, as well as many other circus props.

His ambition for FlightHouse is to combine his passions for fabrication and performance to help train, support, and inspire the next generation of British flying trapeze troupes.

Danny Levy
Danny

Danny Levy | Sous Chef

Also known as Thugz Bunny.

We are thrilled and privileged to welcome a man known from Oakland to Sydney as "The Most Electrifying Man in Circus Entertainment."

After nearly 20 years working internationally in the trapeze industry, Danny established what is widely referred to as one of the best flying trapeze schools in the world: Big Bunny Flying Trapeze in Merseyside.

Now, through a potent combination of sheer luck, the Wu-Tang Clan, and a pure love of the game, he is bringing that elite-level energy and technical precision to Great Yarmouth.

"You can't spell Circus without an 'I'... and an 'us'. So come on down to 'Ze Flight Haus, ja', and fly with the biggest bunny in the game!" — Ya Boi, Thugz Bunny