<< Background >>In the last 15 years, the circus education sector has grown strongly, in Europe and in the world. In parallel, there is a growing awareness that safety and prevention in the institutions must be a priority. Even though expressing emotions in the circus arts is closely linked to a certain representation of danger, artists have to learn from an early stage to manage and control risks.Furthermore, circus arts are evolving, enriched by artistic, aesthetic and technical innovations as well as by industrial and technological developments. Contemporary circus arts relate to a multitude of technics, disciplines, mixing various art forms which have an impact on the technical requirements and the safety of the environment. It is crucial that the circus arts education sector stays adequate to this evolution with a set of unique, specific and up-to-date safety and rigging measures.Inside circus institutions, “riggers” are the specialists dealing with all aspects related to the safety of those working and training to become artists. They have many responsibilities, going from buying and maintaining the relevant apparatus, taking care of the equipment and training spaces, ensuring that the safety rules are understood and shared by the staff of the institution, transmitting the basic rules which will become the working rules of an artist’s life.In Oct 2019, FEDEC organized a first International Riggers Meeting, on the requests of various institutions: SKH, AFUK, ACAPA and other circus Institutions. This was a starting point to identify needs that cannot be solved at local nor national level. The analysis of the needs was further developed early 2020 when the COVID-19 crisis hit the educational sector.According to the report on the impact of COVID-19 on Circus institutions, published by FEDEC in 2020, most of the FEDEC members underlined that: • Riggers in circus institutions are often working in isolation with a heavy burden of responsibility on their shoulders. They lack chances to meet and share with their peers from other institutions. • There is a lack of reference documents, methodologies, tools and state of the art on how to asses risk and ensure safety in circus institution equipment, spaces and apparatus. • Circus students, teachers and professionals are increasingly traveling from one country to another, and from an institution to another (in institutions located in the EU and the UK, almost half of the students are coming from other countries). Despite of this, there are no common international state of the art nor methods of Safety & Rigging in the institutions.• Circus institutions are finding it difficult to recruit new riggers, since there is no common agreement on what should be the responsibilities and the expertise required for a circus school rigger.Even if the number of riggers employed by circus institutions have more than doubled since 2014, showing their importance for the sector, they lack the support to gain new skills and increase their professionalism, and remain very isolated in their institution.<< Objectives >>The React, Invent, Get together for a Goal: Expertise in Rigging Services (RIGGERS) project has been developed to answer the needs of riggers, the specialists dealing with all aspects related to the safety in circus institutions. It aims at enhancing the quality of safety measures in professional circus institutions, creating a new international community to exchange skills, advices and expertise, and to ensure the transmission to future generations.In order to do so, the specific objectives of the project are: - To identify the needs of the riggers by: o Mapping the sector: collecting relevant data about riggers and their work, thanks to a survey and a set of interviews with riggers- To build an international community of riggers by: o Creating a sustainable framework to share good practices o Offer tailored-made solutions to common issues by collecting good practices and creating a state of the art on Safety & Rigging in circus institutions o Creating a dedicated virtual space to share and exchange online and between institutions- To offer a training scheme enabling the flow of exchange between peers where: o Current techniques, rules and documents are examined, exchanged, questioned and improved to reach a state of the art that can be used in the circus institutions o Video-based documentation can be created to transmit knowledge and train new riggers and students.<< Implementation >>The RIGGERS foresees: - 2 RIGGERS Seminars (5 days / 2 pax per partner) aiming at sharing institution good practices and work towards a state of the art for Safety & Rigging in circus institutions, set the RIGGERS Topics, identify the pairs who will participate in the Riggers Swapping Experience and share the results of the exchanges.- 8 Riggers Swapping Experience (RSE): each partner will host and send 2 riggers from and to different institutions. Each rigger will have the chance to explore a peer safety and rigging approach and practices. - Distance cooperation: after each round of RSE, each institution will work at local level on the chosen topic (previously identified and considered of common interest) keeping contact with its paired institution thanks to the dedicated RIGGERS Virtual Platform. - Survey: project partners will collect relevant data about riggers and their work, through a survey and a set of interviews. This detailed picture on how safety and rigging is managed in circus institutions will valorise the work of this profession, will help develop future initiatives in the field and will contribute to the creation of an international community of riggers.- FED-Talks: project partners will develop 8 video-tutorials to share institutions’ good practices. This state of the art will become a reference for the whole sector. - RIGGERS Virtual Platform: project partners will create an online, dedicated and safe space for cooperation, sharing and follow-up. It will allow partners to share documents, videos and images and it will become a depository of the work done throughout the project, reinforcing a feeling of belonging to the project and the sector. The platform will also host the FED-Talks. The RIGGERS Virtual Platform will be created in this context, thanks to this application, but will stay permanently available to Riggers after the end of the project.- TPM: Steering Committee meetings, in presence or online, and meetings of all partners during large-scale events, such as circus festivals, or the annual FEDEC conference; a total of 12 meetings online and in different countries.Expected results: successful coordination of project activities, sharing of reflections on project topics and adaptation to new transmission methodologies (creation of new synergies between Institutions, acquisition of digital skills, evolution of the sector, professional development).- Sharing of results: a Communication and Dissemination strategy foresees a set of coordinated actions to communicate about the project and to impact an audience larger than the one of the project partners. 6 Multiplier Events are foreseen during international events such as festivals. Many TPM meetings will also take place during international events.<< Results >>RIGGERS foresees a set of tangible and intangible results: Tangible results:• A survey on the profession of rigger in circus institutions, with a report that will suggest possible areas of cooperation and further sustainable actions in view of a stronger professionalisation of the actors operating in this field.• The RIGGERS Virtual Platform that will be developed in order to allow online cooperation and exchange among peers. The platform will later become an open virtual forum dedicated to the sector of safety and rigging in the field of circus. • The FED-Talks: a series of video tutorials aimed at sharing institutions good practices in safety and rigging with the whole community of circus school riggers in Europe and beyond. The videos, as well as the training materials developed for the tutorials, will remain available after the end of the project. Intangible results: • The creation of an international professional community of riggers that will make use of the Virtual Platform to keep on sharing and exchanging on relevant issues.• The creation of an international community of institutions committed to raise awareness about the importance of Rigging & Safety in the circus sector.• Each partner institution will have the chance to discover new practices, share and consolidate their own, and find new ways to cooperate in order to improve safety conditions in circus institutions.• Project partners will develop a state of art on rigging and safety, therefore offering tailored solutions to common issues for circus institutions.• RIGGERS will lead to the development of an online safe space for riggers to share and exchange.• Staff and students taking part in the project activities will be trained on up-to-dated rigging and safety methods.• Thanks to the survey, detailed and clear data about the profession of circus institution rigger in Europe and Canada will be collected, and will serve as a basis for further initiatives and follow-ups.• RIGGERS will also provide relevant information on the pathways from training to work for newcomers in the profession. It will therefore improve circus institutions’ guidance and support services for newcomers.

The COSMIC project – CO-creating and Sharing digital MethodologIes In Circus education - jointly led by the French federation of circus schools (FFEC) and the European Federation of professional Circus Schools (FEDEC), will take place from September 2020 to December 2022. The project promoters are 11 European professional circus schools and federations based in 7 countries: ESAC, FEDEC (BE), Carampa (ES), CRAC, ENACR, FFEC (FR), FLIC (IT), Codarts (NL), INAC (PT), Circomedia, NCCA (UK)). The project will allow professional circus schools to get trained in digital pedagogy, through a software (MemoRekall) designed by the Université Polytechnique des Hauts de France (UPHF), associated partner of the project. The COSMIC project aims to:1) Train circus schools’ staff and students in digital pedagogy through a dedicated software2) Develop new pedagogical methodologies for the sector3) Create new synergies within participating schools4) Shape a European community that will impact the sector in terms of education, innovation and digital skills5) Adapt a software specially dedicated to education in the circus sectorDuring the 28 months of the project, the partners will collaborate face-to-face and remotely for the development of new teaching methodologies based on content already existing within the schools. This content will be the students “artistic notebook”.Each partner will experiment new ways of creating a digital artistic notebook using MemoRekall, a software that allows to integrate different types of content (text, images, music, sketches, etc.) in a video. Partners will share their experimentations during 2 Labs, as well as remotely through an online platform.Through COSMIC, the project partners will also identify new functionalities of the software to be specially developed for circus education, which will help to adapt MemoRekall to the needs of the sector.The project is intended for the entire school community: teachers, students, general, pedagogical and artistic directors, technical staff. The aim is to create new synergies and improve the transmission of learning outcomes within schools.3 trainings will take place during the project:- Initial training: CRAC (Lomme - FR) / December 2020- COSMIC Lab 1: FLIC (Turin - IT) / March 2021- COSMIC Lab 2: INAC (Vila Nova - PT) / February 2022In between each training, each school will conduct an experimental phase at local level, in order to take ownership of the project by involving a bigger part of the educational teams and students in the project. The initial training will allow participants to be trained on MemoRekall and therefore able to set up the experimentations within their schools.The 2 peer exchange labs will be an opportunity for partners to:- Discover each other's experimentations (needs, issues, objectives)- Discuss the new practices implemented within each school- Inspire each other, find new solutions and methodologies between peers- Create and strengthen a sustainable community.The 3 planned learning activities are thus directly linked to the objectives of the project and bring a real added value because:- they contribute to the creation of a hybrid and complementary community, making it possible to combine both virtual and physical mobility, and mobility of students and teaching staff.- they allow the exchange between peers of the experimentations run in each school- they bring complementarity to the work at the local level by offering personalized and face-to-face coaching.During the project, participants will receive technical monitoring from the UPHF remotely through a dedicated online platform. The platform will also serve as a support for participants to exchange and share about the issues faced during the experimentation phases at local level.The project will bring several tangible results:- The COSMIC-MemoRekall publication, developed by the UPHF. It will track the experimentations of each school, as well as the new pedagogical methodologies developed. It will also provide an evaluation of the project, based on qualitative and quantitative criteria.- New features for MemoRekall developed thanks to feedback from participants and project partners, in order to better adapt the software to the needs of circus schools.- Multimedia video files, called “capsules”, produced with MemoRekall. A first step towards the digitalization of the circus heritage of schools.The synergies created by the project aim at being sustainable and at generating new collaborations, even after the end of the project. COSMIC will bring an in-depth change of practices within and between circus schools, it will contribute to the digitization of the sector and it will help schools to better prepare their students for the professional world.