Circus Overseas - Building capacities of youth and social circus organisations

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.