It’s always down to people. A group of people who drive it. It’s difficult when everyone is waiting for everyone else. Whatever you do, someone will be pissed off! You’ve got to take the initiative sometimes. Lynn Caroll

Lynn Caroll giving us a well-needed nudge to just get on with it and stop worrying so much about being everything for everyone from day one.

Lynn has a point. No matter how hard we try, we probably won’t have thought of absolutely everything and we won’t please everyone. But when we don’t give it a go, we won’t find out what an amazing thing we could potentially create and everyone loses out for sure. We have made a start and opened up a space for our collective ideas to grow and shape the action. Creating a resource centre for the circus community is going to be a process and the project will grow and improve in exchange with the community it serves. 

What we have created so far:

• FACEBOOK GROUP: The UK Circus Resource facebook group is going strong. We have 308 members since starting the group on 5th March and new ones joining every day. It’s a welcoming place for people to share resources, ask questions, discuss ideas, post opportunities, and request advice and is monitored by members of our working group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ukcircusresourcegroup/about

•  RESOURCE CENTRE WEBSITE CONTENT: Many of you already gave us feedback on the draft Milanote board. Thank you, your input is crucial to make this resource centre the best and most useful for everyone. If you haven’t had the chance, go visit http://bit.ly/CCUresource (password: resource).

 What’s next:

• FACEBOOK GROUP: We will continue to manage and nurture the facebook group. We are trialing a mentoring section for our group members where they can be paired up with mentors to get advice or offer mentoring. You can sign up as a mentor or mentee here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ukcircusresourcegroup/mentorship_application

•  RESOURCE CENTRE: We are plotting a trial of a scaled-down circus resource webpage. Sections we want to include in the pilot are:

  • Health & Wellbeing

  • Showcase

  • Inclusion & representation

  • Circus thinking/research

  • Funding

  • Youth Circus

For the potential of what the resource centre page could grow into check out the Milanote Board here: http://bit.ly/CCUresource (password: resource) - comments welcome!