Homegrown Circus Artists at Galway Community Circus

Freddy Burrows, circus artist and tutor at Galway Community Circus, grew up playing football, rugby and boxing but as he got older he found that he didn’t enjoy the competitive element. When he first began training with GCC as a teenager, he found that it had all the benefits of the sports he’d always enjoyed, but with more of an emphasis on personal growth, community and positivity.

“The aim of the circus wasn’t like any other sport I’d tried before, the aim is fitness but it’s also on making people feel happy,” he said. Likewise, Freddy’s friend Liam Carmody was drawn to circus because it was a way to push himself physically without being overly competitive.

“Galway Community Circus has influenced me in a very positive way,” Liam said. “I was lucky to travel a lot with the GCC in different exchanges, I really value that. I learned a lot from the different tutors who taught me, and from Fidget Feet who created our shows with us.”

Liam learned about higher education in the circus arts during an exchange to Stockholm with Galway Community Circus and the Caravan International Youth and Social Circus Network. “That gave me a clear path to follow once I had finished school,” he said. “I found that circus can be for everyone and that competition isn’t for me. With GCC, I found the way to train and learn that best suits me, with inclusion and all working together as a group.”

A coach at Galway Community Circus helped Liam and Freddy prepare for auditions, and Freddy went on to attend Codarts University of the Arts in Rotterdam. Liam, meanwhile, moved to Barcelona to attend the Centre de les Arts del Circ Rogelio Rivel and later he continued his studies in France at the Centre Regional des Arts du Cirque where students train their technique every day as well as studying theatre, dance, acrobatics, handstand classes. Just a few weeks ago, Liam completed his training as an acrobatic base and he will be performing this summer in France.

Freddy, meanwhile, studied in Rotterdam for four years and stayed on for another year before moving home to Galway, where he became a Galway Community Circus tutor himself.

“[GCC] feels like a second home,” he said. “The focus of Galway Community Circus is teambuilding. It’s non-competitive, which was lost in circus when you get to the school or professional side of things. When I got back [GCC] I remembered that ‘this is what I love about this’.”

Even in university, Freddy says he still ‘hated being onstage’. “It was the friendly atmosphere in college which reminded me of GCC and helped [me] get over nerves,” he said.

While he taught occasionally in Rotterdam, he’s delighted to be teaching as much as he is now. “Here the focus of the teaching is making everyone feel good and that their voices are heard. Students don’t have to be there, but they want to be there.”

“At beginning of the term, kids are really self-conscious, by end of term they’re all friends, wouldn’t even think of being self-conscious,” he said.

Freddy and Liam agree that training with Galway Community Circus changed the course of their careers and their lives. Freddy’s advice for young circus enthusiasts who want to pursue their careers at a university level is to focus on their training and their ‘hunger for up-skilling’. “That’s what got me into the school,” he said. “Try your best and don’t compare yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself.”

Liam says his advice would be to seek out varied sources of inspiration and influence, such as music, dance or martial arts. “Surround yourself with people who motivate you and that you can learn from,” he said. “Train and share with lots of different people. Travel and get inspired.”

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To find out more about our youth circus programme, click here.