Circus as Intercultural Encounter Erasmus Project

Project Title

Circus as Intercultural Encounter

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Integration of refugees

Project Summary

Social circus represents an innovative field of youth work, whereby social circus trainers operate as youth workers through the tool of circus arts. The positive impact of social circus on participants’ development and well-being, as well as for community empowerment and social transformation has been highlighted by extensive research. On the other hand, critical analyses and reports of international meetings highlight a gap in intercultural, reflective skills and awareness about power sharing dynamics that shape the relationship among circus trainers, managing staff of circus organisations, and the communities and participants with whom they engage. This is of central importance in European contexts, where youth, culture and arts sectors increasingly play central roles in efforts to achieve socio-economic transformation and social inclusion, and where innovative, participatory approaches to deal effectively with intercultural encounters in everyday life are evermore crucial. Social circus trainers increasingly face the challenges of working with diverse groups and managing intercultural encounters. There is thus a need in the social circus sector to investigate intercultural dynamics and relationship building as they play out in youth and social circus settings to improve youth workers’ understanding of and ability to operate within intercultural society.

The proposed project takes circus programs involving newly arrived migrant and refugee youth as a starting point – for analysis that will inform the development of a training programme that will build the intercultural skills of circus trainers and organisations, advancing their effectiveness to foster inclusion and participation of this vulnerable and marginalised social group, and contribute to wider efforts to tackle racism and discrimination.

The main activities of the project are: research, design of a new training programme for trainers and publication and dissemination of a Training Guidebook on the social circus methodology for youth workers operating in intercultural settings.

The research will allow us to identify the main challenges and needs that social circus trainers face when working in intercultural settings. The research evaluates meanings of diversity, interculturality and power relations in the interaction between social circus trainers and students, and good practices in the engagement of diversity. The consortium consisting in 6 circus schools, the international network for youth and social circus, Caravan; and the University College Dublin, will collectively be involved in the design and conduction of the research, contributing with their knowledge and experiences working with circus in intercultural contexts
The research will allow us to employ methods of reflection across organisational, practitioner and societal contexts in order to critically and constructively explore the dynamics of power, relationship building and critical self-reflection involved in intercultural circus practice.

The identification of power relations and good practices through the research process will inform the design of the new training programme for social circus trainers working with refugee and newly arrived migrant youth. The programme will propose innovative methods to address the needs and challenges observed in the delivery of social circus programmes, and a set of innovative skills and competencies of teaching and pedagogy, creativity and management/leadership. It will highlight and construct from the best practices observed in the partners organisations to engage refugees, newly arrived migrants and other groups taking part in social circus programmes.

The Training Guidebook will gather and document the whole experiences providing a detailed guidance that will include different approaches to diversity, interculturalism and power relations observed in the research projects. The publication and dissemination of the Training Guidebook aims to extend the experience and knowledge to other social circus organisations worldwide and social art projects. All together will allow to introduce the skills of critical reflection and intercultural dialogue in relation to diversity.

Following this project, the following impact will be observed :
– Partner organisations will have more awareness over the issue of interculturalism and more skills in addressing it
– Partner organisations will become more diverse
– Research tool set is developed for analysing intercultural issues
– Training module is developed for addressing and improving interculturality
– A Training Guidebook of good practices is developed
– National and international youth and social circus (umbrella) organisations will spread the good practices of the project in the partner countries and beyond
– Partner organisations form close contacts and a support network for each other

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 179269 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zaltimbanq a.s.b.l & Country: LU

Project Partners

• Sirkus Magenta ry
• CARAVAN RESEAU EUROPEEN D ECOLES DE CIRQUE A FINALITE PEDAGOGIQUE
• ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE – SPORTIVA DILETTANTISTICA GIOCOLIERI
• Zavod Salesianum, OE Skala
• UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
• Palestinian Circus
• Circusplaneet vzw