Circus Education and Training
The great thing about circus as a vehicle for education is the ever-increasing cycle of challenge and reward. It’s a naturally difficult pursuit (particularly for the uncoordinated teenager like I was), but through play & persistence comes improvement and reward. Success is won not through external competition, but through dozens of internal failures! That’s where the true achievement of circus lies – not in non learning the three-ball cascade juggle, but by learning how to succeed, and building confidence – By overcoming one failure at a time!
I have taught circus to over 10 000 school kids, adults, University entrepreneur students, corporate CEOs and TV celebs. There’s easier ways of making a living, but I quite like it, and teachers compliment that I’ve got an effective way of engaging.
Here’s the kind of outreach activity that we take to schools and youth groups
Schools and Youth Groups
Ongoing Facilitation
In this 6 minute film, the BBC explored our youth circus
Circus Central is the charity that was founded in 2010 and managed by Helen and myself until 2017 when we passed it on to the community that we’d nurtured. It is still running successfully as a Community Circus School and BTEC qualification centre in Newcastle upon Tyne
Large Public Participation events
One the larger-scale end of circus education I’ve been involved in lots of big projects. Here’s the promo of our 2018 ‘Circus. In a Field!’ Festival that I produced and directed.
Social Circus
Oh yeah, and I should mention the three courses of training that I did with Cirque du Soleil Social Circus training program. Those courses helped me understand a lot about all the places I’ve taught – from hospital wards to prisons, boardrooms to back-street lanes. What I’ve experienced teaching in Nairobi’s slums or Thailand’s Mae Sot refugee camp has helped me understand the importance of providing access, inclusion and opportunity in every day locations in the UK.
Adult Education and Corporate Team Building
For adult provision I use my experience to help adult groups become teams, think creatively, develop cooperation and experience dynamic unifying activities. I regularly facilitate undergraduate Entrepreneur students, hospitality teams and special needs adults.
I don’t have that really great video of me making an amazing impact on my team building events, so instead I’ll show me walking on whisky bottles with the hope that a friendly Scottish Distillery will sponsor me so that I can afford to make the video for the corporate team building events that I actually quite like doing!
I’d be really happy if it were an Island Distillery.
But I’m pretty flexible 😉