"Nowadays youth in Europe live in a challenging and rapidly changing world. The competitive and complex world we live in makes it more challenging for them to make choices and develop into confident persons. They face pressure to be engaged and excel in all fields. The overload of incentives complicates concentration. Many youngsters become anxious and are afraid tofail. This project connects the world of mental vulnerability among youth and the world of creative circus arts. The partners decided to engage with the world of psychologists, psychiatrists and psychomotor therapists to deepen the knowledge and skills in dealing with a set of challenging behaviours among more mentally vulnerable youth. The 3 partners are non-profit organisations that use circus arts, theatre, music and movement as a tool for personal development. In their daily work they notice how circus is a language that improves self-confidence and many social skills. Being faced with youngsters with challenging behaviour due to psychological vulnerability or mental disorders, a clear need was identified to learn more about the worldof psychological and emotional development of children and youth.The objectives of the project are:a/ to improve the preventive work with youth participating at circus classes and in other youth care and youth work settings b/ to increase the knowledge and skills of circus teachers related to different mental challenges among youth c/ to offer alternative treatments based on circus arts and physical literacy for youth with more specific mental disorders in psychiatry or in setting of youth care and youth work.d/ to increase awareness about the benefits of circus as a tool for mental well-being.A first group of participants are 32 circus teachers from the 3 countries, educators and psychologists working with youth who want to increase the use of movement and circustechniques to reach a higher level of mental well being among them. A second group of participants are a total of 100 circus teachers, in the 3 countries, who will be trained at different local dissemination workshops following the international learning sessions. A third group of participants are 150 people, circus teachers, artists, educators, psychologists and other professionals in youth work and youth care settings who will participate at the 3 multiplier events which will be organised in each country. The main activities consist of:- 3 coordination meetings- 5 research and learning sessions - different dissemination workshops in each country - the development of 1 intellectual output: the manual: ""Circus Clinic: the art of well being"". - the organisation of 3 multiplier events The expected results of the project: 1. New insights, methods and tools to advance the mental well being among youth through circus techniques and physical literacy2. A total of 250 circus teachers and youth workers, in 3 different countries, introduced in new insights, approaches and tools related to well being through circus; resulting in a more effective and flourishing work with the youth themselves. 3. A practical attractive manual in four languages (English, Italian, Czech and Italian), containing all the obtained insights, information, illustrative cases and alternative treatment methods and tools based on circus techniques for educators and psychotherapists to work with children with mental disorders or challenging behaviour.4. 3 multiplier events organised to introduce and distribute the manual 5. A strengthened and sustainable partnership for further development and implementation of activities in relation to the outcomes of the project"

<< Objectives >>MORE THAN JUST CIRCUS:This project is a cooperation amongst three European Circus organization with specific interest in the field of circus pedagogy. We want to structurize an all inclusive teaching process with clear pedagogic planning in the area of youth and social circus. We aim to further develop innovative and creative teaching methods, eveolve our practises on circus pedagogy and empower our profile in the social circus field. Our target is to widely share the procedure of our trainings<< Implementation >>We provide specialized trainings to key personnel from our organisations during three multilevel and multicultural workshops happening in the three partner countries:-1 intensive training of 10 days-2 joint staff trainings to implement knowledge from intensive training to local realitesMultiplier actions:-3 dissemination peer learning workshops organised in local context and two European professional webinars are realized, to share the knowledge gained by the european project as a whole<< Results >>-Better trained, more competent trainers.-Higher level of pedagogical and social skills, resulting in more effective and flourishing work with our beneficiaries.-Meet the demands of our local social circus market.-Share the knowledge gained.-Raise awareness on the benefits of social circus as an all inclusive method of social work.-Have a higher level of cooperation between partners.Overall increase our knowledge in the field of circus pedagogy and improve our professional capacities

ABCirk is a project of CIRQUEON, Galway Community Circus, Cirkus LeGrando and Cirkus in Beweging for young people aged 15 - 19 years to gain experience, knowledge and confidence to become assistants of circus tutors.There are four young people and two circus tutors from each organisation accompanied by three ABCirk alumni from the first round of ABCirk (2016-2018) participating on the project for the whole duration of two and half years between autumn 2019 and early 2022.The main objective of this project is to bring young people together and let them learn how to become a good junior leader in a youth circus organisation while working with their peers from other organisations and being supervised by their experienced circus tutors and older friends.They will attend four training activities - one in each organisation - to learn about class organisation, group dynamics, working with specific groups, safety, first aid, teaching methods of various circus disciplines, giving feedback and evaluation activities. There will be a practical session in the third training consisting of giving workshops to children and families during a youth circus festival in Brno in June 2021.We aim to have the learning process happening mostly through peer-to-peer learning.The whole process will be documented on video by participating young people and shared online on a video channel managed by participating young people themselves. These videos will be made for other youth circus members around the world to encourage them to learn more about circus teaching in an informal way. As they will be made by their peers they will be more accessible than written publications produced by professional circus school and universities.The online video channel will be accessible to anyone even after the project is finished. We believe that our participants will continue updating it for several more years and will engage more young circus members to contribute to it as well.Participation on this programme will bring more future cooperation among the participants themselves, the partner organisations and also other organisations from the Czech Republic, Belgium and Ireland as well as other European youth circuses connected in Caravan Youth and Social Circus Network and Educircation Network. Having an international experience in teenage years will make it much easier for our participants to cooperate on a European level in future on a professional and personal level.

Reinventing Circus Organisations is a project of four European social circus organizations - CIRQUEON from the Czech Republic, Coraggio from Germany, Cirkus Cirkor from Sweden and Cirkus in Beweging from Belgium.The project contains nine international activities aiming to improve the skills of the staff members of the organizations in the field of leadership, management, and communication. The partner organizations joined together in this partnership with their need to change the actual structures of their organization to be able to provide good working space for their staff, the efficient reaching of their goals and treating their clients, students and partners as well as possible.The partners feel that the common hierarchical management of organizations is not suitable for the 21st century anymore, especially while working in the social and youth work and want to adapt themselves to the challenges of this time and challenges yet to come.As a guide to this change, they chose the book Reinventing Organisations by Belgian author Frederic Laloux.In total there are 60 mobilities planned in the project that will be spread between the four organizations equally and will be divided between managers, coordinators, tutors and admin workers. The participants will get a chance to meet their peers from the European social circus community and learn how to improve their skills and through them to change the structure of their organization.The project activities count 4 meetings of management staff, 4 study visits of tutors and admin workers and 1 evaluation meeting combining both groups of participants. The activities will consist of discussions, lectures, sharing of best practices, observing and job shadowing, individual and group work, research and studying of literature. The participants will be encouraged to continue in their progress after the end of the activities as well.The expected result of the project is the change of the organizational structure and leadership and management practices of the four partner organizations resulting in being more successful in reaching their goal of bringing the benefits of social circus practices to as many people as possible. The project will impact not only the four of our organizations and their staff members but also their stakeholders such as students or clients, collaborators, local, regional and national communities. We will share our experience and newly learned know-how with other professionals and organizations in the European social circus community.

"<< Background >>Being a circus teacher as a profession and career is still not well known and recognised in most european countries. There are no fixed state regulations on how to become a circus trainer and most of the trainers have backgrounds as circus artists, pedagogues or have been in involved in a youth circus for several year. Even though these circus trainers have a lot of experience in teaching and technique most of them had no formal education in the specific field of teching circus. Within Europe solely the circus school in Brussels offers a full-time (1700 hours) training to become a circus trainer. Also Grenzkultur offers a small scale training (380 hours) to become an assistant circus trainer. During the pandemic year a lot of different videos flowered on social media and video hosting platforms to learn different circus tricks. Also one European Project (the flying circus academy) developed well recorded and cutted videos on how to learn basic and advanced circus tricks. Our partnership and project sees circus training also from a pedagogical and didactic perspective and wants to focus on the lack of formal circus training for future circus trainers. We want to support new circus trainers to learn how to plan and manage a circus class, to create useful and effective classes as well as make them aware of their values.<< Objectives >>Cirqademy wants to be a platform where every circus trainer in Europe can learn basic skills for free but moreover also learn 1) How to structure lessons2) Why and which values matter in circus teaching activities and 3) How to steer in a circus organisation and cooperate with other circus trainers<< Implementation >>We are going to implement five different transnational meetings that eill support the creation of the learning platform. Furthermore we will create five different learning and training activities, one at the location (city) of each partner organisations. In the learning and training activities senior circus teachers will exchange their knowledge about a circus discipline and an additional dimension. An extra dimension means to additionaly focus the training on a topic besides the center of skill acquisition. Topics can be social issues, e.g climate change, science fields, e.g. natural science, or a special target group, e.g. people with disabilities. This fruitful exchange will be the basis to create learning courses on the platform that will help future circus trainers to get acquainted with circus training and help them to be aware of their values.At the end of the project we will have five different circus conferences at each partner organisation, covering south and middle Europe. The conferences will have different formats, introducing the learning platform and motivate circus trainers to use the it. Additionally it will help new circus trainers and future circus trainers to get to know the working field.<< Results >>The project result will be the learning platform for circus trainers: ""cirqademy"". The platform will use Open edX as technical tool and will be equipped with 15 different learning courses covering five different circus disciplines and five different extra dimensions at the end of the project. Furthermore an introductory video on how to use the learning platform will be ready. We will have five conferences sharing and introducing the learning platform, one in each participating country ."