Social Circus Advocacy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social Circus Advocacy

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Social Circus Advocacy was a two-years-long project for social circus project managers. It started out of a need for skilled project managers in the social circus community in Europe to ensure the smooth running of social circus projects and creation of new ones.

There have been many European projects supporting the development of social circus teaching but none that would focus on the project management of social circus projects themselves. By training project managers we raised a number of successful social circus projects happening all around Europe.

The project offered trainings in the following topics: digital communication, cooperation with institutions, fundraising, PR, marketing and evaluation. Those were the skills identified as most important and lacked in the organisational teams of participating organisations.

These topics were covered during four joint staff trainings of five days attended by 36 travelling participants + 8 extra participants from the hosting countries. Each training was lead by an experienced expert in the specific area together with circus professionals to make sure it would contain all the specific issues brought in social circus work. Every training consisted of a theoretical part and a practical tasks where the participants worked on their own projects under the supervision of the workshop leader.

Participating project managers were chosen by their motivation and the expected impact on their future work, we were making public calls open to circus professionals in all four countries and we always tried to pick those that would benefit from the trainings the most. The training schedule was then adapted to the group of chosen participants to ensure they would get the most of it.

The direct project results are improved project management skills of participants which do and will lead to a higher level of project management of the partner organisations and in a bigger picture into more social circus projects delivered in high quality. This will impact thousands of clients of social circus projects as well as circus and social work professionals.

Social circus is recognised in Europe as a tool of social, community and youth work that improves the physical and mental well being of its clients.
Long term projects have bigger impact than random social circus activities. This project was teaching the participants how to keep the projects running and make them sustainable for as long as possible. Continuation of our social circus projects and new projects to come will be an ongoing process of passing the know-how of Social Circus Advocacy project in future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 59100 Eur

Project Coordinator

CIRQUEON, o.p.s. & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• MAGYAR ZSONGLOR EGYESULET
• CirKusKus
• ASSOCIACIÓ VALENCIANA DE CIRC