The Artspace Lifespace Project
The Circus helped to establish the Artspace Lifespace project in Bristol in 2005, taking on much of the core responsibilities to regenerate huge semi derelict buildings and then manage them as active creation spaces.
We have always believed in putting something back into the community we are part of, we encourage and facilitate the coming together of the creative community as a means of impacting a positive change on blighted and deteriorating areas and buildings.
The most dynamic element of the Invisible Circus lies within it’s ability to take any space and transform it into a living, breathing interactive experience.
The Circus was based at The Island creation station in Bristol City Centre from 2008 – 2011 and the project still houses artists and train ing spaces on the site.
Relief Support
The Circus have undertaken a number of relief projects and believe in the power of the individual to take action and effect the world around them. We have supported www.hiphiphi.com Tsunami relief in Thailand with fundraising shows in London and working on the ground in Phi Phi Island.
We also detoured after Burning Man 2005 to Houston Texas to do fundraising shows and workshops for refugees from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
We continue to support ongoing causes from saving Tasmania’s rainforests to Circus to Gaza and actively encourage the support of direct response projects working in challenging places and conditions.
Grundtvig Partnership
The Invisible Circus are proud to announce that we have recently received some funding from ECORYS Lifelong Learning Programme, called a Grundtvig Partnership. This is a European partnership aimed at adult learning, and takes place over two years. The project is due for completion in July of 2012.
Our project, Educircation, is an international project for teachers of circus techniques. The aim of this project is to improve the quality of Circus Teaching around Europe. During this project we will hold five different workshops between professional circus people (teachers, artists, schools, directors, administration, management, etc) to get a clearer idea of the Circus situation in Europe and to improve the methods of teaching.
We are working with four other European circus communities, namely The Valencian Circus Association in Valencia, Spain; Cirqeon- The Centre for New Circus in Prague, Czech Republic; Jonglier Katakomben- The Juggling Centre in Berlin, Germany; and Magyar Zsonglor Egyesulet- The Hungarian Juggling Association in Budapest, Hungary.
Each partner will conduct a one-week master workshop in their town, which will be attended by a few people from each country. The people who attend these workshops will then come back to their own community and teach a workshop on what they have learned to further disseminate the information learnt.
The first workshop was held in Budapest, Hungary, in April 2011, and looked at teaching Theatre in Circus. Then followed an Acrobatics and How to Start up a Circus School workshop in Valencia, Spain in May, 2011. After that was a Social Circus workshop in Prague, Czech Republic, which involved creating a show over a week with patients from a psychiatric hospital in November of 2011. There was a Juggling workshop held in Berlin, Germany in February 2012, and finally we have just hosted an Aerial and Rigging Safety workshop in March 2012, taught by Samuel Jornot the artistic director of ACAPA- Fontys Circus school in Tilburg, Holland and Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC), a circus school in Chalon, France.
Our workshop was amazing, bringing 10 aerial teachers over from the other 4 countries to train with 4 of our own aerial artists in our new training spaces at Paintworks- The Jackdaw Studio and The Book Barn. We practiced wall-running, counter-weight, aerial silks/ tissu, corde lisse, trapeze, aerial hoop, and had a variety of other fun equipment to play around on.