The strategic partnership project “On the Wire - balancing our fear”, organised with in the partnership of Circus CABUWAZI, Ecole de Cirque de Bruxelles in Belgium, Cirkus Cirkor from Sweden and Zahrada, o.p.s. CIRQUEON from Czech Republic aims to create innovative pedagogical methods in the field of trauma release, related to a refugee context. Contributing to integration of refugees has become one of our commitments as an organisation. Especially many young refugees suffer from trauma, which can manifest in daily life as social anxiety, isolation, behavioural disorders. That’s why we want to create new methods to cater for the need of these disadvantages. This project will be an international project aiming to develop these new methods and to educate trainers combining circus pedagogy and modern therapy methods towards trauma release. Circus pedagogy has huge potential to support the trauma release process with children and youngsters based on their physical activities, which will be explored with the support of professionals. Especially “Funambulisme” (from French “wire-dancing”), a technical term for wire walking with a balancing pole, matches well with the goals of our project as it is surprisingly easy to learn for beginners, yet pedagogically intense, as the wire can be set up on different heights ranging from 20 cm to several meters (with a safety leash). Our project will create the curriculum and framework, so pedagogues can develop their competences in working with traumatised kids and youngsters utilizing “Funambulisme” as a medium. The main objectives of this project is to bring together knowledge from psychosocial empowerment and circus pedagogy to develop a new approach on integration and empowerment taking into account the special needs of the young refugees. By combining these two fields, our goal is to develop a strong pedagogical method to deal with the different challenges we experience in our daily practice with young refugees suffering from trauma. As this issue is rather new we need to implement new ways to reach out to this target group. We expect that the application of these methods will improve the well-being of the young refugee community and contribute towards their integration within our society. The circus space is a social place which allows people to overcome their blockades and fears indirectly through several practices. We believe resolving those issues will strengthen young people’s sense of initiative notably in the social field, allowing them to fully take part in society. Circus pedagogy is a very effective field of social work which is creating strong experiences for children and youth where they can overcome blockades and inner tensions through positive, empowering experiences of success and social acceptance. We want to develop the necessary competences for the pedagogues working in our circus projects with traumatised refugee children and present it to the wider field circus pedagogy as an effective method to deal with trauma release.
The strategic partnership project “On the Wire - Balancing our fear”, has been organised within the partnership of Circus CABUWAZI, Ecole de Cirque de Bruxelles in Belgium, Cirkus Cirkor from Sweden and Zahrada, o.p.s. CIRQUEON from Czech Republic. It aim was to create innovative pedagogical methods in the field of trauma release, using the the circus pedagogical tool of high-wire walking. . Our project was aiming to train youth workers combining circus pedagogy and modern therapy methods towards trauma release. We are now convinced that circus pedagogy has huge potential to support the trauma release process with children and youngsters based on their physical activities, which we had explored with the support of professionals. “Funambulisme”, the high wire walking with a balancing pole, had been the main tool in our project to develop the competences of the youth workers. It has been a very effective way to work with different target groups, as it is surprisingly easy to learn for beginners, yet pedagogically intense, as the wire can be set up on different heights ranging from 20 cm to several meters (with a safety leash). As Outputs of the project we have created the curriculum and pedagogical framework for the youth workers to develop their competences, and in the research report we reflected and described the potential in working with traumatised kids and youngsters utilizing “Funambulisme” as a medium. The main objectives of our project was to bring together knowledge from psychosocial empowerment and circus pedagogy to develop a new approach on use Funabulism as a tool for youth work, with the specific focus on trauma release. To show its potential for integration and empowerment of young people with the special needs, in particular young refugees. By combining these two fields, our goal was to develop a accebile and clear pedagogical method, which can be applied in the work with young people with refugee backgroud by training youth workers. We have discovered that the application of these method had improve the well-being of the young refugee community and contribute towards their integration within our society. The circus space is a social place which allows people to overcome their blockades and fears indirectly through building trust and a feeling of belonging with the circus. We had contribute to the empwoerment of young people involved in our local circus activities those issues, allowing them to fully take part in our local community. The project has proven that Circus pedagogy is a very effective field of social work which is creating strong experiences for children and youth where they can overcome blockades and inner tensions through positive, empowering experiences of success and social acceptance. We want to continueto work on the development of the necessary competences for the pedagogues working in the circus field to work especielly with excluded youth groups, like traumatised refugee children and present this outcomes to the wider field circus community field as an effective method to deal with integration and empowerment.