We Value
Community
Our circus family connects and provides opportunities for everyone.
Persistence
Our circus ethos is that we all try, allow ourselves to fail and understand that this is how we grow, individually and together.
Playfulness
It’s how we work and the atmosphere we build to bring a sense of fun and creativity to everything we do.
Collaboration
We connect to create and develop brilliant relationships and success is always shared.
Curiosity
We approach everything with an open mind, courage and resourcefulness.
Shared leadership
We develop it, nurture it and share it between ourselves and those we work with.
Our Impact
In 2020, an independent evaluation found that taking part in circus helped our children and young people forge the skills, competencies, and characteristics needed to thrive in the 21st century. This helped us to define and capture the impact of our work with young people, whether in classes in our purpose-built home in Gordon Street or through our outreach programmes.
The evaluation identified the impact of our work falling into three main areas:
Try, Fail, Grow
Safety and Trust
Mind, Body and Soul
Academic researchers have also identified the positive impact of learning circus. Weikart (2017) said social circus can have “as good or better impact on social and emotional learning among …participants than other youth programs” including sport. Knauss, Pitman & Johnson (2016) wrote that “confidence is built over time, with repeated opportunities and to try and sometimes fail, and to grow as a result” (Ready by Design: The Science and Art of Youth Readiness).
The physical benefits of circus are also clearly evidenced, including cross-body and hand-eye coordination, core strength, balancing, strength and motor control.
And it doesn’t end there, Davies, Knuiman and Rosenberg (2016) claim that “two or more hours of arts engagement per week (or 100 or more hours per year) resulted in better mental wellbeing compared with those with no or lower levels of arts engagement”. Ennis & Tonkin (2017), rather more poetically, call circus, “Exercise for your soul”, a description that resonated with our Circusful team, parents and participants.