"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"

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.

The strategic partnership project “On the Wire - Balancing our fear”, has been organised within the partnership of Circus CABUWAZI, Ecole de Cirque de Bruxelles in Belgium, Cirkus Cirkor from Sweden and Zahrada, o.p.s. CIRQUEON from Czech Republic. It aim was to create innovative pedagogical methods in the field of trauma release, using the the circus pedagogical tool of high-wire walking. . Our project was aiming to train youth workers combining circus pedagogy and modern therapy methods towards trauma release. We are now convinced that circus pedagogy has huge potential to support the trauma release process with children and youngsters based on their physical activities, which we had explored with the support of professionals. “Funambulisme”, the high wire walking with a balancing pole, had been the main tool in our project to develop the competences of the youth workers. It has been a very effective way to work with different target groups, as it is surprisingly easy to learn for beginners, yet pedagogically intense, as the wire can be set up on different heights ranging from 20 cm to several meters (with a safety leash). As Outputs of the project we have created the curriculum and pedagogical framework for the youth workers to develop their competences, and in the research report we reflected and described the potential in working with traumatised kids and youngsters utilizing “Funambulisme” as a medium. The main objectives of our project was to bring together knowledge from psychosocial empowerment and circus pedagogy to develop a new approach on use Funabulism as a tool for youth work, with the specific focus on trauma release. To show its potential for integration and empowerment of young people with the special needs, in particular young refugees. By combining these two fields, our goal was to develop a accebile and clear pedagogical method, which can be applied in the work with young people with refugee backgroud by training youth workers. We have discovered that the application of these method had improve the well-being of the young refugee community and contribute towards their integration within our society. The circus space is a social place which allows people to overcome their blockades and fears indirectly through building trust and a feeling of belonging with the circus. We had contribute to the empwoerment of young people involved in our local circus activities those issues, allowing them to fully take part in our local community. The project has proven that Circus pedagogy is a very effective field of social work which is creating strong experiences for children and youth where they can overcome blockades and inner tensions through positive, empowering experiences of success and social acceptance. We want to continueto work on the development of the necessary competences for the pedagogues working in the circus field to work especielly with excluded youth groups, like traumatised refugee children and present this outcomes to the wider field circus community field as an effective method to deal with integration and empowerment.

Contemporary circus is a blossoming sector despite diverse levels of recognition in Europe and an unequal distribution of higher education opportunities. Its cultural players are faced with many challenges: - emerging circus creators have to integrate a very tight labor market, in a difficult economic environment. As artistic creators, they are also “multi-hats” project leaders; - cultural operators must support these emerging creators in all dimensions of their endeavors (artistic creation, production, structuration, communication,…). Two observations are the starting point of the CircusNext+ project: - emerging circus creators have sometimes difficulties in bridging the gap between the notion of “authors” and that of entrepreneurship, - cultural operators must develop their skills to support and raise the awareness of these emerging creators. Six Partners have gathered to carry out CircusNext+ over 3 years: Jeunes Talents Cirque Europe (FR), La Grainerie (FR), La Central del Circ (ES), Cirqueon (CZ), Subtopia (SE), and Latitude 50 (BE). The Partners share the same values in terms of artists’ accompaniment, i.e. support: - we believe in a human and benevolent relationship to the artists that is quite different from a business relation, - we offer an accompaniment that is often detached from the pure diffusion of their shows and have a strong commitment to build a partnership with the artists and to follow them up on a mid-/long-term scale, - we act as “outside eyes”, sometimes as guides but never as substitute of the project leader, - we position ourselves beyond business relations to our peers: we keep our freedom of speech and critical analysis despite our links to the artists we accompany. We don’t position ourselves as their “artistic agents” or as their “marketers”. Our objectives are as follows: - development of an entrepreneurial spirit and related skills by contemporary circus creators, - competences development of cultural operators who accompany circus creators in Europe, - experimentation of an innovative way to raise the profiles of artists and operators through a genuinely European cooperation and concerted support for the artists. In order to achieve these goals, we will select 5 emerging circus companies and set up the following actions: - joint staff trainings for the Partners’ teams: they will allow for exchanges and knowledge transfer regarding skills in artists’ accompaniment (artistic creation, production, business models, communication, developing work opportunities,…), - collective and team labs for the selected circus companies that will offer them training and accompaniment on the diverse aspects of their projects, by outside eyes and by the Partners themselves. - an evaluation of the process and of the results of the project; a first definition of a competences framework for cultural operators and artists; video and digital documentation throughout the project. All the Partners will be equally involved in the project, participating in all the actions, hosting workshops, and cooperating in an open and benevolent environment. The circus companies will be accompanied by all 6 Partners over the whole period of CircusNext+. Through this project, we wish - to enhance the European dimension of our practices, - give a better visibility to our accompanying missions that are often the “immerged part of the iceberg”, - develop an innovative approach to accompanying circus creators thanks to a multicultural and diverse group of partners, - develop our skills at accompanying circus creators in today’s context, - raise the awareness of emerging circus creators on their position as project leader and empower them as entrepreneurs. We will realize an evaluation and a documentation that can be shared and used by performing arts professionals, cultural operators, institutions, policy-makers, artists, art schools… We hope for a mind shifting and an awareness of the new competences emerging circus creators need to acquire. The skills developed within the project by the Partners’ staff and the participating artistic teams will have long-term benefits, both for the selected creators and for future generations of contemporary circus authors.