Social Circus as an Organised Cultural Encounter Embodied Knowledge, Trust and Creativity at Play

ABSTRACT

Thanks to its multidisciplinary, playful, risky and bodily character, social circus practice has great potential to overcome and transform boundaries and hierarchies, support identity building and undermine essentialist views. This paper stems from the author’s long-standing  engagement with circus and social circus practices, and is based on ethnographic investigation of contemporary circus practices in Italy. The case of social circus is analysed to look at the ways in which Organised Cultural Encounters (OCE) foster ‘meaningful encounters’ (Wilson 2016), delineating new lines of enquiry into the nexus between subjective and social effects of social circus. The article argues that the specificities of circus practice – embodied knowledge, trust and creativity – hold a significant potential within the cultural encounter frame. It describes the strategies employed by circus educators to manage bodies and emotions during the circus workshop, claiming for the need to include unpredictability in the design of social circus as an OCE.

KEYWORDS:

• Social circus
• art for social change
• cultural encounter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ilaria Bessone holds a PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research at the Graduate School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan. Her project explores the contemporary circus movement in Turin in relation to the current changing configurations of art, work and the body. She holds an MSc in International Migration and Social Cohesion (University of Amsterdam, Deusto and University College Dublin), and a Master’s in Development Studies (University of Turin). She is also a circus teacher and performer and collaborates with different organisations and networks in Italy and abroad.

Notes

1 The academic literature on social circus consists mainly of dissertations and conference proceedings, while articles in peer-reviewed journals are still rare. Moreover, the development and acknowledgement of social circus also relies on the copious production of manuals, guidelines and reports by organisations and networks in the civic sector – which I have therefore included among the references for this article.

2 AltroCirco advocates for the formal acknowledgement of social circus as a tool for social change through trainings, support to social circus projects, national and international networking, production and diffusion of knowledge, organisation of conferences (AltroCirco 2014).

3 This goal has been acquiring increased importance in Italy and in Europe, due to a grown concern for the social and cultural conflicts brought by the recent migration waves and the ways these are depicted in the media. Both AltroCirco, Cirque du Monde, and Caravan Circus Network are starting to map and connect the projects dealing with migrants and refugees in Europe, in order to develop new discourses and good practices.