Youth Circus member Fred shares his experience at ABCirk in Belgium
At Galway Community Circus, our aim is to actively encourage opportunities for a new generation of home-grown circus artists/educators to emerge in Ireland. In 2016 we began a Youth Leadership Scheme called ABCirk for members aged 16-20 to develop leadership skills and competencies in circus pedagogy. At the end of October, a few of our members visited Belgium to participate in an exchange. Read on to learn about Galway Community Circus member Fred Rush’s experience at ABCirk this autumn.
A year and a half delayed, but we finally made it to our first ABCirk exchange in Leuven Belgium! The five of us (myself, Keela, Aisling, Naoise and tutor Isabella) could barely believe that we were actually going; even when we were on the plane there was still part of us expecting it to be cancelled. But we were so happy it wasn’t, and we were indeed attending the first of four eye-opening exchanges.
The ABCirk Youth Leadership Scheme is an Erasmus+ funded youth circus exchange aimed at youth members aged 16-20 across four circus schools around Europe. The four circuses include Galway Community Circus (IE), CIRQUEON (CZ), Cirkus LeGrando (CZ), Cirkus in Beweging (BL). The aim of ABCirk is to train four youth members from each circus in the art of Social Circus teaching. Originally our first exchange was intended to take place in Galway at our Circus Hall in March 2020, but sadly the pandemic hit only days before. Despite the setback, we kept ourselves busy with online game nights, making videos to introduce ourselves to each other. With so much time on our hands we got quite creative. When the word got out that we would all finally get to meet each other, we could barely contain our excitement.
The week threw many challenges our way. Getting to know a whole crowd of people, learning teaching techniques, being assigned video production assignments and then to end the week, teaching a class of 40 young hyperactive children. But we revelled in every minute of it. Constantly teaching each other games to play in classes kept the energy levels high. Our games box came in handy throughout the week, which was just a simple cardboard box in the corner of the hall where we would write out the rules to games and drop them in any time.
Playing games and making videos all day is definitely an interesting way to live! Sleep was never high on our priority list as every evening it was back to the accommodation to play cards and drink tea, which we had brought ourselves of course. (Aisling brought her stash of Lyons which I immediately rejected as a Barry’s lover myself). Explaining the tea controversy to the guys from Belgium and Czech Republic was a challenge in itself.
Every day we were introduced to a new part of Belgian culture, be that visiting the Sunday market, trying Belgian food (the sweet snacks in particular were a big hit) or learning some Flemish. Teaching each other some phrases in our native languages was a lot of fun. Most of the phrases we taught each other were extremely useless such as, “This is a traffic light” or “I am as thirsty as a camel” and “I am as hungry as a wolf”. And of course, we reciprocated with a few Irish phrases like “An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?”.
Now only a couple weeks after our first exchange, we’re still talking to everyone and planning what will happen in the next exchange which is to take place in Galway in February. High on the priority list so far is the Blackrock Diving Tower and Irish dancing. These exchanges are giving us all an opportunity to experience new cultures, seize new opportunities and realise our potential, all through the medium of fun.
