Wires Crossed - Balancing Act for Europe project came about from the desire to provide an inclusive, safe and engaging outlet for young people to take part in physical and creative activities which enhance their sense of well-being. The project partners were Galway Community Circus from Ireland, École de Cirque de Bruxelles from Belgium and CABUWAZI from Germany - all youth circus schools which use circus arts education as a tool for social, personal and community development and for promoting social inclusion and positive physical and mental wellbeing. The project reacted to the hidden crisis on youth mental health in Europe by preparing a training for youth circus trainers in funambulism (tightwire walking with a balancing pole) - an activity that combines physical activity, mental well-being techniques and circus arts. All three areas help young people by providing opportunities for self-expression, building self-confidence, social interaction and integration as well as improving their control over symptoms of anxiety and depression. They also increase positive risk taking both physically and emotionally, they promote physical health and body awareness, increase self-confidence and self-efficacy, improves social connectedness, teamwork, and leadership skills within the group and enables participants to acquire a broadened skill base relating to circus as well as more generic 'life skills'. This project was the first European project of a multi-annual programme, 'Wires Crossed', delivered by Galway Community Circus as one of the anchor projects of Galway European Capital of Culture 2020. Wires Crossed are leading to a large-scale Galway 2020 project culminating in big community gathering in Galway in June 2020 where 400 people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds from all around Europe cross the River Corrib on tightwires to celebrate diversity and highlight the importance of physical and mental well-being.There were two groups of participants in the project - 12 youth circus tutors learning how to teach funambulism to young people and 12 youth participants with fewer opportunities (including young refugees) taking a part in a youth exchange.The project activities comprised of:- Two transnational meetings of project coordinators in Galway and Brussels.- Three professional trainings in Galway and Brussels led by French funambulism experts Denis Josselin and Bruno Frenette for the group of 12 youth circus tutors that enabled them to teach funambulism in heights up to 2 meters and gave them basic rigging and health and safety training necessary for delivering funambulism activities. Two of the trainings also included the crossing of a waterway on the tightwire - over a canal in Brussels and the Claddagh Pool in Galway City. [To see a video of crossing in Galway please go to: http://bit.ly/2o8bzan]- A youth exchange in Berlin for young people from the three partner countries which brought together youth participants from disadvantaged backgrounds and young refugees. All of the initial project objectives were met: - To develop the skills & competences of youth circus trainers- To improve the health & wellbeing and social, personal & life skills of participants- To develop and share effective methods of reaching out to marginalized youth- To promote social inclusion, solidarity & intercultural dialogue- To help young people with fewer opportunities to become more engaged & involved in society- To help young refugees become more integrated in their local community & connected to youth in other parts of Europe- To help youth circus organisations increase their capacity- To make funambulism a widely used innovative educational method in the youth & social circus sector and beyondThis project has helped establish a methodology for teaching funambulism to young people in the participating schools and their local partner organisations (please see a best practice document attached). Thanks to the thorough training that the 12 youth circus tutors received there can be first funambulism workshops for young people bringing all the mentioned benefits to young people in Ireland, Belgium and Germany.This methodology will be disseminated to partner youth circus schools which are members of International Youth and Social Circus Network CARAVAN. funding for Level 2 training for the first twelve tutors to provide them with further training in funambulism and teaching in heights over four meters along with health and safety training and rigging. this was approved in April 2018 through the Irish national agency. And we are awaiting a funding decision to being 5 new partner countries into the project.

The aim of this project is to bring the Family Circus workshop-method of Culture Centre Piipoo to Galway Community Circus, Ireland. The training is led by PiiPoo's Family Circus group and Social Circus Instructors. Galway Community Circus' Trainers and the participants of their Family Circus pilot project take part in the training. Galway Community Circus' Family Circus pilot group has young people with special needs and their families in it.The project begins with a planning meeting between PiiPoo's Social Circus Instructors, PiiPoo's Executive Director and Galway Community Circus' Circus Director. The planning meeting takes place in Ireland and during it the exact goals and content of the project, project participants (taking into account any special needs), accessability of all the venues and the training materials used will be throughly discussed and decided upon. Training material will include Effective Circus- project guidebooks which have been translated into English.After the planning meeting PiiPoo's Social Circus Instructors and PiiPoo's Family Circus group travel to Ireland for six days. Over the six days they will run an intensive social circus training course at Galway Community Circus. The training course includes theory lessons for Galway Community Circus Trainers and social circus workshops with PiiPoo's Family Circus group and the Irish pilot group of Family Circus. There will be in total 15 hours of theory classes and 20 hours of Family Circus workshops. On the fifth day of the intensive training course there will be a Family Circus Show and Family Circus workshops open to the members of the public at Galway Community Circus (4 hours in total).After the training course we will evaluate the project by getting feedback from all the participants of the Finnish and Irish Family Circus groups (if and what kind of effect the project had on them etc.) and from the Finnish and Irish Circus Trainers (quality of the training etc). Finally, the Directors or PiiPoo and Galway Community Circus will evaluate the success of the project for both organisations and consider potential future collaborations.The goal of the project is that the Irish Circus Trainers of Galway Community Circus will learn and adopt PiiPoo's Family Circus workshop-method and will run Family Circus programmes at the Circus School independently after the project.

Youth and social circus organisations do not regard circus solely as an art form, but also as a medium for the education of people and the social integration of people with fewer opportunities, with special needs or marginalised (prisoners, old people, immigrants, minority groups,...). It is a universal tool presenting many pedagogical assets. The development of this rapidly growing sector as led to a new profession: youth and social circus instructor. Several short-term non formal vocational trainings are already offered in this fields and the time has come for a professionalization of the sector.Consequently, this Strategic Partnership project gathered employers and pedagogical experts of youth and social circus organisations along with universities and higher school academic experts in order to:- Analyse the educational offer in youth and social circus pedagogy in each partner country and address the needs of this sector- Create European frameworks of competences laying the foundations for a European long-term training programme that is better aligned to the needs and opportunities offered by the labour market- Develop the basis of short-term post secondary school qualifications in accordance with European Qualifications Framework in order to recognise and validate the knowledge, skills and competences acquired through formal, non-formal and informal learning- Create pathways between non-formal and formal education through a cross sectoral partnership linking circus organisations, higher schools and universities- Encourage European active citizenship and intercultural exchanges- Improve the pedagogical quality of youth and social circus work for the benefit of the end-users, i.e. young people with fewer opportunities, people with special needs, old people, immigrants,...This process will enable the sector to create more job opportunities and to validate the qualifications of professionals active in the field, and hence work towards an official recognition of their qualifications.

Junior Leader Scheme for Youth Circus is a project of three youth circus organisations: Galway Community Circus, CIRQUEON and Cirkus LeGrando for young people aged 15 - 18 years to gain experience, knowledge and confidence in the area of circus teaching and youth work that they can put into use by becoming junior leaders in their organisations. The idea came from a need for motivated junior leaders in all three partner organisations. We called the project ABCirk within our schools and also in the communication to the outside world.There were five young people and two circus tutors from each organisation participating in the project for the whole duration of two years between autumn 2016 and summer 2018.The objectives of the project were to bring young motivated youth circus members together and teach them skills to become junior leaders in youth circus classes in their circus schools.We wanted to give them the experience of international cooperation and through this finding the differences and similarities to circus teaching in different circus organisations. They were working together as a group of peers learning from each other as well as from the participating tutors.The group of 15 young people stayed the same for the whole duration of the project. They took part in three training modules during the two years. In Galway in May 2017 they learned about video making, group dynamics and safety in teaching. In Prague in November 2017 they got deeper in theory of (circus) pedagogy and learned about using games as a tool for teaching and learning in (circus) education. In Brno in June 2018 they helped with setting up and taking down of a youth circus festival, assisted with the organisation and also taught workshops to younger youth circus members from three European countries.The learning process, methods and games were documented in videos taken by the young participants and shared online: https://bit.ly/2Nv1dAZ The young participants stated in their evaluations that the project gave them an insight in circus teaching, raised their confidence in teaching and awareness of the need to adapt the lessons to each concrete group. They could see the progress made during the two years and also in between the three training sessions. Majority of the Czech participants felt much more confident in English and all 15 participants felt more comfortable in international cooperation by the end of the project. Most of them were also offered work in assisting in circus workshops at festivals and other events by their schools which makes it likely for them to get more paid work in the field in the future.There have been a great interest from other youth members of the partner schools to take part in this project. The three schools and another Belgian youth circus school submitted a new application for a KA2 project through the Czech National Agency that would use the learning of this project and move it further in a direction of peer to peer learning.