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Circus Trans-Formation in Action

2019-1-LU01-KA105-0500842019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: LU|UK|IT|FI|BE|FR|IE|CZ|SI|IS · Grant: €49,957
Inclusion - equityIntercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learningYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

Social circus is an innovative tool for the education and social inclusion of children, young people and adults with fewer opportunities. Started more than 25 years ago in Europe as a pilot experience, social circus spread and proved its value all over the world. In Europe, approximately 2,500 circus schools offer educational circus activities for people with fewer opportunities, and the partner schools of this project provide circus activities to about 40,000 individuals. In his Master of Education thesis (1991), S. Ward states that social circus "offers challenge, creativity, physical and personal development. Because it is non-elitist it is more accessible to young people... than most art forms. It is not an activity that precludes anyone - all can participate and benefit." Targeting specific schools, neighborhoods and public from disadvantaged urban areas, social circus is an intercultural tool favoring community links between participants, raising their self-esteem and confidence, improving their physical literacy and developing their life skills. This has lead to the creation of a new profession: social circus trainer. However, no specific training in Europe existed to develop the competences of new social circus trainers, or to validate the competences of those already working in the field. Therefore, the 5 social circus organisations, partners in this project and/or Caravan members, in collaboration with the Université Libre de Bruxelles also involved in this project, applied for a Leonardo Partnership project (2009-11) to create the "Framework of Competences for Social Circus Trainers". This research developed a proper bottom-up methodology based on field analysis, which enabled to bring up the specific competences a social circus trainer needs to acquire. This project led the PPCM, the Université catholique de Louvain and 7 circus schools (most of them are still part of this project) to apply for a Leonardo Transfer of Innovation project (2012-14) in order to turn the "Framework of Competences" into the curriculum of the 1st European training for social circus trainers. After two pilot experimentation in implementing this training at the international level, Zaltimbanq coordinated an evaluation along with several partners. Together, they identified successes and challenged to this implementation and discussed how to ensure the best quality. This project will highly benefit from this evaluation and following the inputs from other members, Zaltimbanq’ will host for the first time a module.

Project partners (10)