Streetwise Community Circus (SCC) is a ‘social circus’ organisation based in Belfast, which uses circus workshops to improve lives of marginalised people in society including young, old, people living with dementia and disability groups.
This blog was first published as a case study written for our Creative Ageing in Northern Ireland report and was written by Jim Webster, founder and CEO of Streetwise.
We deliver a range of circus programmes across Northern Ireland including weekly sessions in Belfast, Millisle, Enniskillen, Whitehead and Lislea in partnership with local community development organisations, who are all represented on our committee. We also run ongoing outreach programmes around these centres in sheltered accommodation and dementia units with the aim of enabling these participants to join the sessions in the community. All sessions are dementia friendly.
The participants attending our programmes range in age from 55 to 95 and include all genders. Many of our regular core groups are based in rural areas and all are attended by a range of abilities from very active older people to people living with health restrictions. We work with residents in sheltered accommodation, including a wide range of physical abilities and people aged between 60 to 95 and as well as care homes and dementia units. We have developed specific techniques including “sit-down circus”, which ensures that all abilities can enjoy the mental, physical and social benefits of being part of our programmes.
SCC tutors include some of Ireland’s leading circus street entertainers with international reputations. By getting these artists teaching in the community, we ensure that participants work with the most experienced tutors, capable of adapting workshops to their needs, making activities fun and engaging, and gaining the full range of benefits. Learning circus skills provides opportunities for physical benefits, including improving coordination, balance and regular exercise. There is evidence that activities like juggling have specific impacts, such as improving cognitive functioning. Mental health benefits include improved confidence, self-belief and raising self-esteem. By running regular programmes, we offer a real opportunity for reducing isolation by bringing people together from different back grounds in a fun activity, creating common bonds and respect as participants develop a range of differing skills. Publicising our activities and participating in public events also challenges stereotypes towards older people.
Learning circus skills provides opportunities for physical benefits, including improving coordination, balance and regular exercise.
As an organisation, we continually adapt our work to reach new groups. During Covid, we trained staff to work via Zoom, enabling us to reach some of those most isolated by the pandemic. In addition, staff were trained to work as solo tutors allowing us to work cost effectively with smaller groups and work in sheltered accommodation and nursing homes. We created “sit-down” circus techniques, which broadens the participation in these settings, and through this experience we have established how we can integrate people living with dementia into mainstream workshops.
Since 2020, we have identified how our network of core programmes can be used to reach people living in sheltered accommodation at a time in their lives where there is a real risk of isolation. When people first move into housing schemes, they may have lost a partner, moved from their own home leaving neighbours and community links behind. By offering people a chance to join a circus workshop and social group outside of their accommodation, people can establish new long-term friendships which can last for years and be sustained even in declining health.
We recently carried out an evaluation to establish the barriers which may prevent people in housing schemes attending workshops in the community. This highlighted the cost of transport as a significant factor. As a result, we now budget for taxis to remove this barrier and offer the opportunity for those who are most at risk of isolation to benefit.
One of our regular participants is Drew who started attending our Friday Age-ility sessions in September 2014 because “it looked interesting” and has continued ever since. As a 59-year-old IT consultant, he was one of our younger members and now with 10 years’ experience of practising circus skills, Drew has developed some genuinely high-level skills. His particular area of interest centres around the balancing skill of rola bola, where he has developed his own set of combination tricks. When asked why he enjoys circus, he stated:
The social aspect is important but I find that if I’ve had a bad week the need for total physical and mental concentration required to practice, means that 10 minutes of plate spinning on my rola bola resets and clears my mind.
Drew retired a week before the first Covid lockdown and, due to a chronic heart condition, was in the high-risk category and forced to self-isolate for 18 months, unable to leave the confines of his house or garden. Over this time, Drew attended three weekly Streetwise Zoom classes which included physical warm up sessions, flower stick and juggling.
“These classes were absolutely fantastic as they provided my only social contact throughout my lockdown.”
In December 2020 Drew suffered an accident in the house on a slippery floor snapping all the quad tendons in his left leg. When asked how active he was before his accident, he showed his surgeon a video he had posted of himself balancing on a rola bola, raising a glass of wine to his friends on his birthday.
“I feel that video made them take me seriously about my aspiration to recover and I was worth putting the effort into, rather than treat me as an ‘older patient’.
Over the following months Streetwise staff were unbelievably helpful in my rehabilitation, still via zoom which assisted in my full rehabilitation. This process has led to me gaining confidence in other areas of my life as I have now returned to cycling and have got back on to my motorbike, activities I have enjoyed all my life”.
The Creative Ageing in Northern Ireland report is a celebration of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Arts and Older People programme, the UK’s longest running creative ageing programme. The report includes case studies of 11 organisations who received grants under this programme, including Streetwise Community Circus, and the perspectives of five artists who work in Northern Ireland’s creative ageing sector.
