The project focuses on creating social inclusion through arts, circus in this project. The aim is to create materials and a training for circus teachers who work continuously with young people but may not have an education of youth work. The project gives circus teachers an understanding of what it feels like to be excluded and how they can promote a safe and welcoming learning environment for young people of all backgrounds. The project increases knowledge of best practices that allow a diverse young people to take part in circus activities. The project is a cooperation between six European partners who work in the field of youth circus in the national or European level. In the first part of the project, a group of experts creates a model training of 1/2-1 day that helps circus teacher to recognize their role in creating social inclusion and how different ways of speaking or acting can increase or decrease it. The expert group consists of 5-8 people. If possible, they meet to create the model, but it is also possible that they work virtually. Second part of the project is organizing a training for trainers. 2 trainers per partner take part. The trainers make a short text, video or blog, or similar, about their experience that can be shared. Third part is bring the training to national level where the training module is tested. These trainings are for approximately 15-20 people each. 1-3 trainings can be organized by each partner and this is done through multiplier events. The partners make sure that from each training event at least three participants share their experience / thoughts on the training in a form that can be used in the communications of the project (e.g. blog, video, etc.) After the multiplier events the trainers share their feedback from the trainings to the expert group. If needed, the expert group can still modify the training, or create some extra materials. Partners meet during the project in face-to-face meetings as well as shorter virtual meetings. As research has shown that circus as a creative art form is a great tool of empowerment and increasing social confidence and skills, the project aims to making circus inclusive for everyone, including young people belonging to any minorities. Through the trainings and the training materials more circus teachers are capable of supporting young people and aware of what creates a welcoming, inclusive atmosphere.
The project focused on creating social inclusion through arts, circus in this project. The aim was to create materials and a training for circus teachers who work continuously with young people but may not have an education of youth work. The project gives circus teachers an understanding of what it feels like to be excluded and how they can promote a safe and welcoming learning environment for young people of all backgrounds. The project increases knowledge of best practices that allow a diverse young people to take part in circus activities. The target group in the project is circus teachers and trainers. First, we organized a training course for the trainers of trainers, and after that they were able to train the circus teachers locally in the multiplier events.This way we could reach out to a larger group in a more economical way than if we would organize international trainings in the project only. The benefits of the project will go to the young people: if a young person belonging to a minority will be met with understanding and given a sense of belonging in the youth circus, they will stay and have the chance to gain a lot of skills through circus arts, for instance self-esteem, patience and social skills, for example. On the other hand, if they feel that the adult in charge (circus trainer in this case) does not see them because of biases, old-fashioned attitudes or prejudices, they will feel excluded and leave. According to the studies, circus can be especially benefital for those in risk of exclusion. Therefore, this project aims to train the circus trainers so that when ever a young person in the risk of exclusion or discrimination enters a youth circus they would be able to feel themselves included and welcomed. This project was done transnationally because this way we can collect the expertise from many European countries. Due to historical and societal reasons, there are a lot of different focuses in youth work in different countries when it comes to inclusion. For instance, in the UK there is a strong focus on child protection and a lot of protocols concerning the topic, and our partner has good connections to an organisation working with disabled. In Germany, there is a strong focus on antiracism. In this collaboration we are able to collect experts from different countries and bring them together and offer even the experts a chance to learn from each other. It will be an interesting opportunity for them and it will benefit the whole youth circus field, and especially of course those young people who will feel more comfortable taking part in circus activities thanks to the project. In the project, - we organized a pilot training for 13 circus trainers who will be able to run the workshop afterwards - run the workshops for circus trainers in six countries. The participants are circus teachers who meet groups of young people weekly - make the training model available online so that it can be used to create further training workshops With the help of these trainings and materials we want to make youth circus in Europe more inclusive for all young people.
As research has shown that circus as a creative art form is a great tool of empowerment and increasing social confidence and skills, the project aims to making circus inclusive for everyone, including young people belonging to any minorities. Through the trainings and the training materials more circus teachers are capable of supporting young people and aware of what creates a welcoming, inclusive atmosphere. There are resources on inclusion available but according to our analysis the circus teachers and trainers would benefit of materials and a training that are made for them specifically. The reason to this is that many youth circuses already work for inclusion - anyhow they might focus on one aspect (for instance immigrants) and forget or not to be aware of other biases that they may have. Therefore they might not enter a training on inclusion only, because they feel they are already doing it. We can still see that there is a lot to do to make the youth circus field more aware of diversity and inclusive practices, and therefore we wanted to create this training that is aimed specifically for circus trainers.