In a context of strong development of the contemporary circus art sector at European and international level, the cultural structures have in common to experience major changes in terms of work organisation. Because of overall cuts in public funds for culture, we note a steady shift from the traditional hierarchical and pyramidal structuring of the salaried teams towards the development of project-teams organisation integrating several salaried members from different teams together with persons working on an independent basis. Project-team is becoming more popular from the local level to the international one.This phenomenon is challenging our teams to adapt by adopting new methods of work in common.The strategic partnership made up of 8 active structures in the contemporary circus sector (venues for creation, dissemination, accompanying, training centers) and of a technological innovation structure, identifies 3 emblematic fields for which this transition is fundamental :- the management of cooperation projects for distant or local project teams,- the management of venues and ressources for creation and dissemination venues,- the stimulation of creativity and artistic research for the artists and the professionals.Noting that the project methodology and the ICT innovation have poorly penetrated the professional practices of the artistic sector, the partnership has been established around the need to solve this organisational issue together with the hindrance to this transition. It is assumed that a more intense and appropriate mobilisation of the collaborative tools on line will be a powerful impetus to the improvement of the exposed situation.CIRCollaborative TOOLS has the following goals :- Promoting staff collaboration of several organisations acting in the contemporary circus sector in Europe together with their professional development thanks to the learning and practice of common working methods and to staff mobility- Pooling the acquisition of common skills and methods about the use of collaborative tools in order to carry out project methodology- Identifying, adapting, using collaborative tools adapted to project management and methodology in our fiels,- Designing tutorials for a collective use of these tools and for a common learning of these tools configuration,- Experiencing these tools as they are being designed according to three major themes : venues/ressources management, fostering creativity , and artistic research, management of cooperation projects- Promoting collaboration between several socioprofessional sectors, especially the cultural and artistic one with that of NICTsIn order to fulfil these objectives this project is aimed at the structures staff, free-lance collaborators, at artists and the professionnals accompanying them, 100 directly concerned. It offers a participatory and experimental process using action-learning and peer-learning methods that will be applied to the three stages of the project :Stage 1 : Action-learning of the participants and development of specifications together with an ideal tool for the three fields set out aboveStage 2 : Concerted and collaborative designing of a collaborative tools Open source agglomerate, making a platform and offering solutions adapted to the needs of each field, then configuration and useStage 3 : Full-scale experimentation of the Platform dealing with in situ experimental learning activities (Venues, Creativity and Cooperation), configurations adjustments and finalisation and dissemination.This project will produce the following results :- Professionnal development of the staff in terms of ICT methodologies- Development of skills and working methods in European intercultural project-teams- Structuration of a community around the developed skills- Systematic exchanges of good practices between the partner organisations and between the project’s beneficiaries - Dissemination to the whole sector, based on specifications , the Platform and an interactive deliverable as an evidence of the whole project. In the medium and long-term we are assuming :- A better capacity to integrate the collaborative tools and ICT innovations into work and creativity organisation processes.- Sharing an innovation culture in the working methods in a European network dynamics- Improving our positioning in the network of international and European structures, being identified as innovating structuresThe beneficiaries will have the opportunity to validate the acquisitions of their skills along their professional route thanks to a pedagogical partnership and the delivery of a Europass portofolio.

We create a collaboration with 3 European partners to respond to the very real needs of Circus Formations in our countries and to realize new products with a European importance. These products are in SERVICE OF EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, and SOCIAL sector.Although each partner is its own circus organisation, the relevance and the effects of the knowledge they encounter in the 5 HANDBOOKS/manuals and 3 COURSES, they jointly work to produce, goes far beyond our circle of circus professionals. Circus today is a part of both formal and informal education in Europe, it has emerged as a tool for social integration, and a way of therapy in the clinical settings. It creates new markets of millions of stakeholders, who will be the beneficiaries of this project: primarily the school teachers, circus teachers, instructors, social workers and therapists who use circus as a tool for cognitive and motor skill development, since these activities directly generate brain development through higher level connectivity. These teachers and professionals are our PRIMARY TARGET GROUPS. The SECONDARY TARGET GROUPS are the students themselves with a high-functioning profile or with special needs backgrounds. The objective of the partnership is to provide resources and courses, which facilitate this KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER towards each target group. The English written resources will help this process at a EUROPEAN LEVEL. The national language resources will fill the EMERGING NEEDs of our target groups to have specific resources reflecting their unique objectives and in their own languages. In order to fulfill this objective we will deliver a CORE GUIDE of circus pedagogy, a collection of results and scientific evidences as it relates to use of circus, the Book of functional and adaptive juggling, an adapted delivery into Czech and Hungarian, and also consolidation of the 3 COURSES for teachers with the aim of increasing transferable knowledge. Another important issue is the RECOGNITION of circus pedagogy, as a relevant educational tool. In order to obtain this recognition we carry out the accreditation of our courses.Experts of each partner group will work at different phases development, such as in brainstorming and structuring of knowledge. These collaborations create the foundation for experts to return to their regions and further develop each product. The team will continue to gather throughout the project for testing, supervising and giving feedback. A solid evaluation and monitoring system will support their work-progress. IT collaborative tools will be involved as an administrative support (Trello, Google Drive, appear.in, shared documents). We emphasize proper dissemination of our results and its European cooperation, in sharing the knowledge we develop. Our continuous COMMUNICATION process will spread this informations in forms of direct mail, live streaming, small videos, and/or news publications on social media. A series of 2 day long events called CIRCONFERENCE will be organised, in each country. During Circonference, there will be interactive opportunities for audiences to engage actively with the knowledge. All products created are intended to be OPEN SOURCE, and will be presented, for free, on online. This aims to maximize the reach of our products to the widest possible audience, including those both within and outside existing target groups. All of the intellectual outputs in this project will have HUGE IMPACTS on the primary target groups. By the multiplying effect the use of these methods will grow exponentially, over time. And, the creation of scientific evidenced based materials to better establish foundations of circus pedagogy, we will strengthen our emerging market and expand upon collaborative work opportunities within the sector.

7 partners organised a large selection of trainings for circus teachers in the frame of a wide European cooperation. Today circus is part of informal education, a tool for social inclusion and for therapy in the health and social sectors, a leisure and sport activity and creative hobby. Circus has become more than an art form. It now has an INFLUENCE on 3 SECTORS: education, social and health care, besides simply art. It is a MARKET for hundreds of circus schools and dozens of social institutions providing service to a large amount of clients every week. Thus it is still a developing market with RARE TRAINING opportunities. Since there are only a few trainings available for these teachers, their development is rather experimental and empirical. This fact showed the importance of our project, to fill in this gap and gave us the motivation to organise official training programmes. We offered 7 INTENSIVE TRAININGS and 14 JOINT STAFF MOBILITIES for trainings IN SMALL GROUPS. While the intensive trainings were led by master teachers and were focused on specific areas of circus education for groups of approximately 15-20 participants, the joint staff trainings happened in much smaller groups and were integrated into the daily work of the host organisation, complimentary to its activities. 5 partner meetings were carried out to stay on top of project organization, and also with the aim to deepen the knowledge of administrative and financial issues and IT tools. Beside the project partners, the programme offered its services to the WIDER EUROPEAN COMMUNITY, to circus organisations from Poland, Slovakia and Ireland. These organistaions were able to delegate participants to our courses as well, at their own expense. These connections helped to broaden the reach of our project. To share the results and the knowledge partners organised national DISSEMINATION workshops, ’Meet and Greet’ events, professional days, will speak at conferences, and spread the information through social, electronic and printed media. Participants of the workshops were given a CERTIFICATE of attendance from the hosting organisations and the workshop leaders. They can use these certificates in their future professional life, and add it to their curriculum vitae. The project was INNOVATIVE since we specialized our trainings on new topics, involved new partners and realized a complex training programme having both technical and pedagogical content. It was also COMPLIMENTARY to European work. Although the administration of the project was centralized towards the National Agency, the partners emphasized having a decentralized, DEMOCRATIC partnership amongst them based on consent and common agreement. Partners shared tasks and took a common RESPONSIBILITY for the QUALITY of the project. Through EVALUATION activities, the quality of the workshops could be maintained, the project could be further developed and also feedback could be collected from participants for future purposes. Partners kept continuous contact during the two years, communicating through skype meetings, group emailing, document sharing and at network meetings so as to monitor and control the projects development.

Social Circus Advocacy was a two-years-long project for social circus project managers. It started out of a need for skilled project managers in the social circus community in Europe to ensure the smooth running of social circus projects and creation of new ones. There have been many European projects supporting the development of social circus teaching but none that would focus on the project management of social circus projects themselves. By training project managers we raised a number of successful social circus projects happening all around Europe. The project offered trainings in the following topics: digital communication, cooperation with institutions, fundraising, PR, marketing and evaluation. Those were the skills identified as most important and lacked in the organisational teams of participating organisations. These topics were covered during four joint staff trainings of five days attended by 36 travelling participants + 8 extra participants from the hosting countries. Each training was lead by an experienced expert in the specific area together with circus professionals to make sure it would contain all the specific issues brought in social circus work. Every training consisted of a theoretical part and a practical tasks where the participants worked on their own projects under the supervision of the workshop leader. Participating project managers were chosen by their motivation and the expected impact on their future work, we were making public calls open to circus professionals in all four countries and we always tried to pick those that would benefit from the trainings the most. The training schedule was then adapted to the group of chosen participants to ensure they would get the most of it. The direct project results are improved project management skills of participants which do and will lead to a higher level of project management of the partner organisations and in a bigger picture into more social circus projects delivered in high quality. This will impact thousands of clients of social circus projects as well as circus and social work professionals. Social circus is recognised in Europe as a tool of social, community and youth work that improves the physical and mental well being of its clients. Long term projects have bigger impact than random social circus activities. This project was teaching the participants how to keep the projects running and make them sustainable for as long as possible. Continuation of our social circus projects and new projects to come will be an ongoing process of passing the know-how of Social Circus Advocacy project in future.