circusnext+ is an Erasmus+ Strategic partnership project

Contemporary circus is a blossoming sector despite diverse levels of recognition in Europe and an unequal distribution of higher education opportunities. Its cultural players are faced with many challenges:

– emerging circus creators have to integrate a very tight labor market, in a difficult economic environment. As artistic creators, they are also “multi-hats” project leaders;

– cultural operators must support these emerging creators in all dimensions of their endeavors (artistic creation, production, structuration, communication, …).

Two observations are the starting point of the circusnext+ project:

– emerging circus creators have sometimes difficulties in bridging the gap between the notion of “authorship” and that of entrepreneurship,

– cultural operators must develop their skills to support and raise the awareness of these emerging creators.

Our objectives are as follows:

– development of an entrepreneurial spirit and related skills by contemporary circus creators,

– competences development of cultural operators who accompany circus creators in Europe,

– experimentation of an innovative way to raise the profiles of artists and operators through a genuinely European cooperation and concerted support for the artists.

Our actions:

– joint staff workshops for the partners’ support staff: practices exchanges, development of a common knowledge, transmission by external experts;

– collective labs for the selected creators: collective explorations of artistic writings, mentoring and support;

– artistic team workshops: artistic research and project development as project leaders;

– evaluation and documentation of the project to share our journeys and the development of our practices.

Six Partners have gathered to carry out circusnext+ over 3 years:

The Partners share the same values in terms of artists’ accompaniment, i.e. support:

– we believe in a human and benevolent relationship to the artists that is quite different from a business relation,

– we offer an accompaniment that is often detached from the pure diffusion of their shows and have a strong commitment to build a partnership with the artists and to follow them up on a mid-/long-term scale,

– we act as “outside eyes”, sometimes as guides but never as substitute for the project leader,

– we position ourselves beyond business relations to our peers: we keep our freedom of speech and critical analysis despite our links to the artists we accompany. We don’t position ourselves as their “artistic agents” or as their “marketers”.