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Bringing together terms like circus and children’s rights may seem at first site uncombined. But what happens if circus get another meaning like…social circus? Circus as a tradition and a way of life is a living universal organism, a worldwide spoken language that is developing and following its own evolution paths. From traditional circus, to contemporary circus and from circus schools for professionals to social circuses, the circus world has a long history in Europe and in the whole world. In the circus communities of today words like “social integration, self--confidence, hope, creativity, taking responsibility, group--work, fun”, and many more, are more than familiar. These are the social circus communities that co--exist with other communities of traditional, modern, contemporary circus, bringing a whole new way of perceiving circus arts. The world of social circus opened for me while I was looking for my internship. Within my studies at Freie University in Berlin under the title “Master in Childhood studies and Children’s Rights” the professors were quite open in the fields we could look for our internship. It was up to the students to write on a children’s rights matter within the place they chose to do their internship, which of course had to do directly or indirectly with children. Having worked for years as a clown--entertainer in children’s parties, a stillt walker and juggler in numerous performances and voluntarily in Ngo’s working with street kids giving theatrical and juggling workshops, the idea of doing my practicum in a circus school for children was more than tempting since nothing like that exists in my country of origin, Greece. During the one month I spent in Cabuwazi children circus in Berlin, I had my first taste on what is a social circus. Having written an article at the end of my internship on how Cabuwazi is a place that promotes and respects children’s rights, the idea of doing a dissertation on social circuses and their work with children and their rights was pretty much established in my mind. Using different tools and facts I will try to support my hypothesis that Social circus projects (SCP) are institutions and organizations that are supporting and promoting children’s rights. With bibliographic knowledge, internet articles and research, series of interviews and personal experience from the author, we will guide ourselves within the history of circus, the placement of circus arts in today’s societies, an analysis on social circuses, leading us closer to see in which ways SCP are promoting and respecting children’s right and which are these rights specifically.[author summary]

This article is a review of two case studies of males with psychosomatic diversities and the valorized international fame because of their artistic expressions. They both were born in 19th century in Europe. The paper is not a clinical study but is an andragogic analysis of the lives of two famous artists: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter and Polish circus artist Stephan Bibrowski (Lionel). They both were characterized by a binary meant uniqueness. Each artist had a rare health condition and syndrome resulting in a psychosomatic diversity and also each of them has revealed spectacular artistic talent and international fame. The main goal of the article is answering the question: how both artists tamed their own psychosomatic diversities? The text includes the andragogic life-cycles analysis of life patterns of both males in the context of cultural spaces; the spaces in which they were successful. Paper also contains two clinical descriptions of pycnodysostosis and congenital hypertrichosis, however clinical view is complementary to analyzed cases. [author summary]

The article is a qualitative case study of the integrative arts educational learning process of 11 teacher students during one study project in which they created an integrative and interactive educational project for 1- to 7-year-old day care centre children. The theme of the project was Circus. The qualitative research methods used include analyses, descriptions of observations, discussions with the students, and content analyses of students’ reflective and eval uative writings about the creative learning process. The results show that the cooperative learning method fits very well into integrative and expressive education studies. [editor summary]

This report presents the results of a national online survey of people involved in the community circus sector in Aotearoa New Zealand in the context of international approaches, and to support its development. It responses on the use of circus skills to achieve physical, emotional, mental, therapeutic, spiritual and social benefits for individuals, families and communities. In other words, community circus was perceived to perform community and social work via the medium of circus skills.

The Streetwise Disability Circus Project at Knockavoe was generally considered to be very successful. Feedback from participants, audience members, staff and tutors all highlighted several worthy benefits of the workshops and final showcase, with particular reference to;
• Increased self-confidence and self-esteem
• A sense of fun
• Trying something new
• Improvements in social skills and communication
• Improvements in physical well-being
• Learning new skills