UP(date) Youth Circus & Education
Oak Circus Centre | Photo: Laney Tamplin
The second Youth Circus and Education Working Group meeting was very productive.
It helped that we were going in with a much clearer idea of what we needed to achieve and what the aims were. We had asked other members of the group to attend the other working groups (some were already part of them) as youth circus representatives and report back, so we did this first. There were some groups and people missing, but we managed to report back on the majority of the groups. This helped to give more of an overview of where everyone was at and what kinds of things were being discussed, to help give a picture of how the youth circus and education group could feed into this more effectively.
Lynn had summarised the ideas and results from the last meeting and from the Circusworks Unconference change up topic meetings to make three action topics to try to come up with concrete ideas. These were:
Springboard: pathways to professional careers.
Showtime: what happens when the circus comes to town. Related to how touring companies can link to engagement through schools, youth circuses, venues etc.
The Land of Circus: National projects and sector wide thinking.
In the end there were only two discussions. Showtime got absorbed into the Land of Circus, as much of the discussion was interrelated.
There were two main discussion points that intersected between the two groups:
Tool kits/packs - for The Land of Circus this was toolkits/packs for schools about the values of circus, how it links to the curriculum, ideas of how it can be used, linking it to video materials, linking it to touring companies, and that can be used by companies, tutors, artists and venues when approaching schools. Also about upping the value of circus to an artform on par with dance and theatre that can be spread across the curriculum. For Springboard group this discussion was around packs for companies, particularly emerging companies or artists about how to start thinking about engagement in relationship to their touring work. Possibly a 1-day training session.
Advocacy and Data - There was an agreement that across the sector better advocacy is needed and this needs to be a driving force. Also that more data is needed, and that existing data needs to be drawn together. Funding and a co-ordinator is needed to do this.
Other topics of discussion were:
Teacher training: for school teachers and also for circus trainers.
National curriculum: For teaching circus - though this may be more of a Circusworks project.
Sharing training: Creating a resource for sharing training opportunities. This already exists partly through Circusworks, but not for professional sector.
The discussions were very productive and naturally came to a lot of the same conclusions about what was needed. There was also a point that this needs to link together with the other working groups as otherwise it will be just lots of different projects without a cohesive vision.
Author: Annabel Carberry