What to look forward to this Spring Term
Due to new additional Covid-19 guidelines for the youth work sector we are not be able to run any physical activities under the current restrictions. We have made the difficult decision to postpone our Spring term by four weeks to 22nd February - 4th of July 2021. Despite this the Circus continues to innovate to enable the ongoing, gradual evolution that is occurring in our activities, operations, and creations. Read more...
Though disappointing, we feel that this is the right decision for our membership. We are taking this time to plan and prepare for the term ahead and wanted to let you know what to look forward to.
The main performance project for our Youth Circus members this Spring is our annual Mayhem Festival taking place on 22nd – 30th of May. This year Mayhem will focus on outdoor and digital performance. As always, all our members will have a chance to perform or be part of the production team, depending on your interest and availability. We can’t wait to tell you more about what we have planned for Mayhem but we can already say that on 29th & 30th of May circus will take over Galway City Centre supported by Galway City Council’s Tourism Recovery Fund.
This March we will be saying farewell to Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture which means that our work with them on Wires Crossed is at its final stages. This 5-year long capacity building programme still has much to offer with outdoor funambulism workshops throughout this Spring, a film project, professional development for circus artists and teachers and a highlight event this July. Wires Crossed will also continue through a number of other projects including Wires Crossed: Head, Heart, Balance (funded by Creative Europe), Wires Crossed Balance 2020 Youth Exchange and Mind Your Balance Strategic Partnership (funded by Erasmus+) and Wires Crossed: The Science Behind The Circus (funded by the Science Foundation of Ireland). We are working with two of our high-wire artists on their professional development as part of the Arts Council’s Bursary and Professional Development award schemes - Naomhan McKeon Joyce is our artist in residence this April and we are also supporting Tony Mahon with both technical and performance development. This year is of course not the end of funambulism in Galway but only the beginning.
Our Social Circus programmes re-start next week with our Arts Alive group re-starting online. We look forward to many Social Circus programmes this year with our partners including the BRIDGE Project, GMIT, Foroige, and Galway County Council to name a few. We are also taking part in another Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture project with Baboró, Galway Dance Project and Arch8. ‘The Streets Are Ours’ is a street dance, circus and parkour project for 8-12 year olds which, fingers crossed, will culminate with a promenade performance in Galway City this March.
Our European partnerships continue with our friends from the International Youth and Social Circus Network Caravan with our Creative Director Ulla recently being appointed as the Caravan President. Our team continues to work on the Circus++ project to build a BA degree course for youth and social circus teachers and our European Solidarity Corps volunteers are all really looking forward to seeing our members again. Other Erasmus+ funded programmes, Circus Transformation, ABCirk Junior Leadership Scheme, and our EU funded Wires Crossed projects are currently being rescheduled and we hope they restart in May.