Galway Community Circus delivering first full module at University of Galway

The module is called ‘Fail Better: Taking Risks and Developing Resilience through Circus’ and offers students the opportunity to build personal resilience, investigate the benefits of risk-taking and the importance of failure in a learning process by practicing circus skills. In weekly workshops students are introduced to juggling, tightwire and acrobatics while also attending lectures on risk, resilience and failure from a range of different disciplinary perspectives.

The course is led by Dr Ian Walsh, lecturer at University of Galway and Chairperson of Galway Community Circus, and Davi Hora, tutor at Galway Community Circus. On successful completion of the module, students will be able to develop new methods of learning through failure, build resilience and explore risk-taking safely, learn a new circus skill, test theoretical ideas through practice, develop and complete a personal challenge plan, and evaluate research and practice through critical reflection.

“It has been a lovely experience so far,” said Davi Hora. “Students who have never tried circus before are now able to experience the benefits of the artform for self-growth and community development. They are already seeing the power and wellness in circus. They are learning it’s important to play even as adults, which helps ease the pressure they may be feeling in their daily lives. They’re also learning how to embrace failure as part of their learning process because they’re trying skills they’ve never done before. When all the things you are doing are highly intellectualised like they can be in college, it’s easy to lose the body as the centre. In circus, the body is the tool and the medium to access and co-create knowledge. It’s about finding yourself, learning about your body and its possibilities.”

Davi continued, “It’s important to bring an activity like circus that is practiced at a youth/community level to third-level education. It adds value to circus as a practice, but it can also help change the way circus is perceived. Circus can be seen as just playing around, but it allows participants to learn how to fail, to co-create, to regain body awareness, and to find parts of themselves they may have forgotten about that are important for living a happy and healthy life.”

Dr Ian Walsh said, “What a day on the Designing Futures course. After an amazing lecture on resilience from Dr Jane Conway some of our fourth year Drama students along with Physics and Science, students got to learn how to walk on a wire, barrels and a globe. In the discussion after they were making connections between how the circus exercises made them feel more resilient, how they enjoyed failing to learn, how they needed to trust in others for a healthy society, and the importance of holding each other not just in circus but generally in terms of care in the community.”

The course runs at the University through 24 November. More information on the Designing Futures programme can be found at www.universityofgalway.ie/designingfutures.