We believe that it is possible to have an impact on key skills of lifelong learning through new innovative and creative pedagogical methods. We want to focus especially on supporting social inclusion and abilities to participate in the society, work toward equality and enhance abilities in the working life for learners with special needs or disabilities and individuals who are otherwise in a vulnerable position in life. The main goal is to increase capacity to use creative pedagogical methods for professionals who are working with the target group. Indirect beneficiaries are learners with disabilities and special needs or other marginalized groups. The project group consist of organisations working in the field of vocational education, special education, research, circus arts and organisations working with young people and various vulnerable groups. The partner organisations will join forces to disseminate best practices and develop practical tools for using creative pedagogical methods with the target group. The project is coordinated by Invalidisäätiö´s vocational special education center Vocational College Live based in Helsinki, Finland. Sirkus Magenta, a non-profit association working in the field of social circus, also based in Helsinki, will offer their expertise on social circus. Vocational College Live and Sirkus Magenta have worked together in a previous social circus project, where the benefits of creative pedagogical methods were noticed and the idea for a transnational project was born. Haapsalu Vocational Education and Training Center from Estonia will share their knowledge on creative use of digital environments and Move and Develop Foundation based in Wrocław, Poland, will offer viewpoints to gamification. Institute of Technology Tralee from Ireland and especially their UNESCO Chair Research Centre will conduct a scientific literature review and offer their expertise in outdoor activities. Friesland College from the Netherlands is a specialist in the field of dance and theatre. Six transnational meetings will be organized to ensure the smooth proceeding of the project. Three intellectual outputs will be produced during the project. IO1 will be a scientific literature review which aims to develop a comprehensive review of existing policy and best practice of social circus methodologies, outdoor learning, dance and theatre, creative use of digital methods, gamification and the links with social inclusion. The IO2 will be a guidebook on these methodologies and it is meant as a practical manual for professionals working with the target group, such as teachers, counsellors, other educators and study and job coaches. The IO3 will be a toolkit for practical use in a form of a cardpack of the creative pedagogical methods with pictures and qr-codes for video instructions. The project activities include five short-term joint staff training events - one in each country. These learning, teaching and training activities cover all the creative pedagogical methods represented in the project. New creative pedagogical methods are disseminated through the training events for the members of the project group and the staff of the participating organisations. Activities consist of workshops and reflection on how to adapt the methods to each organisation´s field of work and clientele. An acitivity based multiplier event will be hosted in each country, where the outcomes of the intellectual outputs and project activities will be disseminated to associated organisations outside the project group. The outcomes will also be disseminated via various networks and channels including social media and the project blog. As a result of the project, the knowledge, tools and usage of creative pedagogical methods will increase. The participants will gain a wide knowledge of creative pedagogical methods. They will disseminate the knowledge and practical tools they gain in their own organisations and in their networks. Activities will also increase the key competences of lifelong learning, especially the personal, social and learning to learn skills of the target group. The increasing of basic skills will result in improvement in their social inclusion. This will also be a long-term result when the methods gained in the project will transform into continual practices.

Circus Overseas is an application by Caravan Youth and Social Circus Network members for 18 months of capacity building for 8 social circus schools. Working together on relevant topics and recognized needs (global and individual ones); Circus Overseas shall offer us opportunities to share experiences and abilities, learn from our differences, acquire relevant competences in an intercultural environment that shall only intensify learning processes. Through a joint approach, where arts and NFE complement each other; we will be able to provide concrete answers to real existing challenges. « CARAVAN » was officially founded in October 2008 with 6 European youth and social circus organisations. In 2018, Caravan gathers 30 members from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Together, they share the common objective to promote circus practices in youth education and to encourage its development, through concrete actions such as youth exchanges and training for trainers programme. We will conduct research in to the real needs of our target groups, and create activities that will directly respond to those needs. We aim to actively improve these relevant skills and competencies, so that they are relevant for the participants’ ever-changing reality. We will directly work with/for: - youth workers/educators from consortium entities; majority of whom are circus trainers, performers and managers - young students/participants (18-30 y/o); future professional artists, educators- project coordinators Transversally, we will include relevant stakeholders, active in socio-cultural aspects of our contexts (youth-cultural NGOs, private and public bodies, policy makers etc.) We are eager to carry out the Circus Overseas project, and bring positive and long-term impact on the participating organisations, our youngsters, community and in//direct users of activities.By implementing 4 training activities for our youth workers we will tackle and discuss: PEDAGOGY - ACT OF TEACHING : Pedagogy and the delivery of quality training to youth is essential to the development and improvement of youth and social circus organisations. Hence, this training will give tools to young circus trainers to set adapted learning objectives, to design a social circus course, to plan pedagogical activities;DIRECTING AND STAGING CIRCUS : support young emerging artistic directors to learn about their local cultural specificities while presenting it and confronting it with other aesthetics.CIRCUS ARTS TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT : In order to develop youth circus capacities, youth workers require high technical capacities. High artistic and technical competence will provide the capacity for organisations to have their own performing group.
MANAGING AND LEADING YOUTH CIRCUS ORGANISATIONS provide organisations with strategic planning skills, ideas and tools to enhance youth participation in decision-making processes as well as exchanges of good practices on team leadership.

Social circus represents an innovative field of youth work, whereby social circus trainers operate as youth workers through the tool of circus arts. The positive impact of social circus on participants’ development and well-being, as well as for community empowerment and social transformation has been highlighted by extensive research. On the other hand, critical analyses and reports of international meetings highlight a gap in intercultural, reflective skills and awareness about power sharing dynamics that shape the relationship among circus trainers, managing staff of circus organisations, and the communities and participants with whom they engage. This is of central importance in European contexts, where youth, culture and arts sectors increasingly play central roles in efforts to achieve socio-economic transformation and social inclusion, and where innovative, participatory approaches to deal effectively with intercultural encounters in everyday life are evermore crucial. Social circus trainers increasingly face the challenges of working with diverse groups and managing intercultural encounters. There is thus a need in the social circus sector to investigate intercultural dynamics and relationship building as they play out in youth and social circus settings to improve youth workers’ understanding of and ability to operate within intercultural society. The proposed project takes circus programs involving newly arrived migrant and refugee youth as a starting point - for analysis that will inform the development of a training programme that will build the intercultural skills of circus trainers and organisations, advancing their effectiveness to foster inclusion and participation of this vulnerable and marginalised social group, and contribute to wider efforts to tackle racism and discrimination. The main activities of the project are: research, design of a new training programme for trainers and publication and dissemination of a Training Guidebook on the social circus methodology for youth workers operating in intercultural settings. The research will allow us to identify the main challenges and needs that social circus trainers face when working in intercultural settings. The research evaluates meanings of diversity, interculturality and power relations in the interaction between social circus trainers and students, and good practices in the engagement of diversity. The consortium consisting in 6 circus schools, the international network for youth and social circus, Caravan; and the University College Dublin, will collectively be involved in the design and conduction of the research, contributing with their knowledge and experiences working with circus in intercultural contextsThe research will allow us to employ methods of reflection across organisational, practitioner and societal contexts in order to critically and constructively explore the dynamics of power, relationship building and critical self-reflection involved in intercultural circus practice.The identification of power relations and good practices through the research process will inform the design of the new training programme for social circus trainers working with refugee and newly arrived migrant youth. The programme will propose innovative methods to address the needs and challenges observed in the delivery of social circus programmes, and a set of innovative skills and competencies of teaching and pedagogy, creativity and management/leadership. It will highlight and construct from the best practices observed in the partners organisations to engage refugees, newly arrived migrants and other groups taking part in social circus programmes.The Training Guidebook will gather and document the whole experiences providing a detailed guidance that will include different approaches to diversity, interculturalism and power relations observed in the research projects. The publication and dissemination of the Training Guidebook aims to extend the experience and knowledge to other social circus organisations worldwide and social art projects. All together will allow to introduce the skills of critical reflection and intercultural dialogue in relation to diversity. Following this project, the following impact will be observed : - Partner organisations will have more awareness over the issue of interculturalism and more skills in addressing it- Partner organisations will become more diverse- Research tool set is developed for analysing intercultural issues- Training module is developed for addressing and improving interculturality- A Training Guidebook of good practices is developed- National and international youth and social circus (umbrella) organisations will spread the good practices of the project in the partner countries and beyond - Partner organisations form close contacts and a support network for each other