Beyond reconciliation, towards regeneration: social circus in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article acknowledges for the first time in an academic context the significant role played by social circus in conflict transformation across Northern Ireland and, more specifically, urban regeneration in Belfast after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The focus is on the Belfast Community Circus School (BCCS) and the annual Festival of Fools, which emerged from the social mission and practical delivery of BCCS activities. BCCS was founded in the mid-1980s to offer children and young people in Belfast an alternative, creative outlet for their feelings and to establish “common ground” between communities amid conflict. This essay takes its lead initially from BCCS founders, reconsidering their motivations and the fundamental tenets of the School – as expressed by teachers and former pupils – alongside other studies of social circus in action around the world throughout a similar period. It also theorises the political intent and impact of BCCS through reference to the performance philosophy of Alan Read. Evidence in support of the argument is drawn from a range of available sources including policy and strategy documents, annual reports, performance evaluations, and interviews with key figures within the organisation. From this body of evidence, it becomes clear that, in the move towards what we might term (after Read) a Republic of Play, a change in BCCS, its own sense of identity and purpose within society was inevitable, as Northern Ireland continues the process of reconciliation and post-conflict transformation. Finally, then, the article attends to the recent transformation within BCCS itself, which in 2021 became Circusful: an organization with its own set of social and economic goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Social circus
• Belfast
• reconciliation
• urban regeneration
• performance studies

For almost 40 years, social circus has played a significant role in reconciliation and conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. Since Donal McKendry and Mike Moloney founded the Belfast Community Circus School in 1985, thousands of children and young people have participated in its outreach initiatives, and thousands more have engaged with its programme of public events. Helen Stoddart (2000), an early proponent of circus studies in UK academia, recognised the BCCS as a major player on the international social circus scene in 1999 (p. 61). But in the past 20 years and despite rapid growth in the field of circus studies, academics have neglected BCCS as a significant case study: there has been no sustained critical interest in the BCCS or its vital part in regenerating Belfast city centre over that same period. This article challenges that neglect, as it aims to demonstrate how the concept of “building common ground” within the context of arts for reconciliation might be understood in literal terms when it comes to BCCS activities. The School has occupied a site at the heart of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter since 1999, playing a continuing role in reclaiming this urban space as a so-called “a neutral zone” through hugely successful events such as the annual Festival of Fools (Jenna Hall and Georgia Simpson, personal communication, 19 February 2021). In reviewing BCCS’s 37-year history and drawing evidence from print and online news articles, policy and strategy documents, annual reports, performance evaluations, and interviews with key figures responsible for steering the creative vision and practical delivery of the organisation’s activities, it becomes clear that their identity is now less explicitly defined in relation to the geographically and temporally specific concerns of (post-)conflict reconciliation. Instead, BCCS – known since 2021 as Circusful – now self-consciously positions itself, first, as a pioneer in the international movement for social circus and, then, as a successful creative enterprise, thus following what Jennifer Beth Spiegel (2021) describes as “a natural pathway to the creation of local circus industries” (p. 223). Where once their focus rested on serving specific communities during an acute phase of the Troubles, the organisation’s vision has expanded to include broader schemes for social and economic regeneration, signalling possible future shifts in the practice of arts for reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

A social circus Utopia: the Belfast Community Circus and reconciliation

BCCS was founded in 1985 by McKendry, born in Belfast, and Moloney, an Australian, who had been working as drama teachers with at-risk youth in the city. They were joined in their enterprise by Moloney’s wife, Nora Greer and, together, the trio found that the circus skills and techniques they incorporated into their workshops were more popular than any other element (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021). McKendry and Moloney saw in the circus what the organisation today describes as the ability “to provide an equal platform for people regardless of where they come from”, a description that is in keeping with the mission of allied programmes in youth, social, and community circus (Belfast Community Circus, n.d).¹ At the same time, it is a distillation of the object of nonsectarian social movements in divided societies, as defined by John Nagle (2016), whose aims are

not necessarily to create forms of resistance and opposition to the typical diet of ethnic politics served up in divided society; instead, the movement momentarily crystallizes a broad spectrum of the public in pursuit of a particular objective that affects them in the present (p. 21).

McKendry and Moloney began to deliver circus-only workshops in areas such as Tiger’s Bay, the New Lodge and Travellers’ camps on the Glen Road: while these locations had particular associations with particular communities, all participants were engaged in a common activity and developing a shared language through their engagement with circus (Higgins, 2018). The School was subsequently established with the mission to “transform lives and communities through the power of circus arts and street theatre” (Belfast Community Circus, n.d.). Crucially, then, the ambition was not initially to train professional artists, but rather to “enhance self-esteem and trust in others, creativity, participation, and social cohesion”, in accordance with the fundamental principles of social circus identified by Ilaria Bessone (2017, p. 651). BCCS were temporary residents of venues including Ormeau Park Recreation Centre, the Belfast Citadel, the Crescent Arts Centre, and Fountain Church, before moving in 1999 to their permanent home on Gordon Street at the heart of the city’s Cathedral Quarter arts district.

BCCS have always been cognisant not only of the widespread socio-economic implications of their popularity, but also of the need for infrastructures supporting the arts to be similarly mindful of those implications and potential impact. In 2009, they gave oral evidence to the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Inquiry into the Funding of the Arts in Northern Ireland, stating:

There needs to be connectivity. What we are going to be contributing to Northern Ireland’s economy and society will meet the Department of Education’s objectives for youth work; the Department for Social Development’s objectives for community and capacity building; and tourism objectives. Therefore, responsibility should not fall to simply the Arts Council (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2009).

From the beginning, BCCS has been funded by a core group of organisations including Arts Council NI, Belfast City Council, and the Youth Council of Northern Ireland. Their income has been supplemented by a range of local, national and European funders, most notably the European Union’s Northern Ireland PEACE programme, in spite of their own concerns at the “complicated and complex” bidding process (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2009). Launched in 1995, managed and delivered via the Special EU Programmes Body, the PEACE programme went through four phases across a 25-year period. All funded activity had to reinforce the purpose of the programme: “to support peace and reconciliation and to promote economic and social progress in Northern Ireland and the Border Region of Ireland” (Kołodziejski, 2020). PEACE IV launched on 14 January 2016 and it was announced that, in this phase, an emphasis would be placed on investing the €270 million fund in initiatives targeted at children and young people, with the aims of improving community cohesion and economic and social stability in the long term (Kołodziejski, 2020). BCCS was, then, an obvious candidate for funding, and secured their award when PEACE IV became PEACE Plus eight months after the Brexit Referendum (Kołodziejski, 2020).

Durrer et al.’s (2020) analysis of what culture means to young people in Northern Ireland discusses the shortcomings of some survey techniques, with one question in the 2015 Strategy for Culture Arts and Leisure’s youth-friendly consultation document highlighted as particularly problematic. When survey respondents were invited to describe what arts and culture meant to them, a qualifying paragraph was included, presumably to provide helpful context, but with the knock-on effect of transforming this into a leading question and establishing a cultural hierarchy:

it means lots of different things to lots of different people but it can include things like … books, plays, television, music, museums, comedy, opera, orchestra, dance, circus, concerts, art galleries, music gigs, movies, festivals. (Durrer et al., 2020, p. 7)

Durrer et al. comment on the cosmopolitanism of these pursuits and how the list fails to acknowledge local expressions of cultural engagement, such as parades, murals and marching bands, as well as what might be considered more age-appropriate cultural activities such as video-gaming and engaging with social media. One might also feel that the inclusion of the circus in the list of potential cultural activities given by the authors of the Strategy for Culture Arts and Leisure consultation document seems touchingly, if naively, outmoded, given that it was written for young people in 2015: it has been decades since the circus, as commonly understood, enjoyed a vibrant presence in popular culture. However, in considering the history of BCCS, it is impossible not to be impressed by the reach of the organisation. In written evidence submitted to the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure in 2009, BCCS outlined how, in the previous 10 years:

we have witnessed and built on continuous growth in the demand for participatory circus learning experiences; for professional circus and street theatre performances; and in the role of Belfast Community Circus School and Festival of Fools as producers of street theatre programming. During this period, the turnover has increased by 1000%. This is in stark contrast to the experience of most of the traditional areas of focus for Arts Council spending. (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2009)

More recently, it has been estimated that 500 young people a week are involved in activities run out of the Cathedral Quarter HQ; 1400 were on the waiting list to join the School (Circusful, n.d.). Hundreds more have participated in outreach programmes and short-term bespoke workshop series commissioned for youth groups across the province. Longer term projects in Portadown, East Belfast and West Belfast have resulted in the creation of satellites such as Portadown Youth Circus. Community Circus Lisburn (CCL), now a standalone venture, was established in 2002 following discussions between the BCCS and Lisburn City Council: community leaders had seen the real benefits brought to members of six youth groups who had worked with the BCCS for 12 months to deliver a show at the Island Arts Centre. CCL has its own board of volunteers and runs two weekly classes: former BCCS Youth Circus Director Paul Quate estimates that around 40 young people attend and have been attending these sessions from the beginning (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021).

Quate offered a description of the BCCS’s essential activity in interview:

I’m going to boil it down to three words, and this is going to be the magic: we play games. We play: there’s two words. We play. Early on, when the Itty Bitty Circus kids come at two years old with their family, we play games. That’s what we do. And within those games […] we sneak in those little tips and tricks that will get that young person to be engaged, to try something new […] We give them the opportunity to be competitive if they want to, but nobody wins anything, you know? […] It’s about giving them an opportunity to play, and to learn, and to have fun, and to laugh. (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021)

In considering the reconciliatory role BCCS has played in Belfast and elsewhere, the performance philosophy of Alan Read is instructive. The singular aim in Read’s Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement: The Last Human Venue (2008) is “to politicise performance and in so doing restart the social” (p. 14). As in his work prior to and following this book, Read is concerned in Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement with what he describes, after sociologist Erving Goffman, as “theatre and everyday life” (1993) and “theatre in the expanded field” (2013). He deliberately alternates between uses of the term theatre and performance to reinforce their connection, thereby challenging those performance scholars who have sought to keep them separate. Read (2008) develops an argument for a new discipline, showciology, out of readings of such varied material as political events, terrorist acts, primary school literacy tests, and urban plans. A showciologist is anyone who wishes to “describe, examine and reaffirm theatre’s social credentials against theatre’s singularly anti-social tendencies” (Read, 2008, p. 23). Discussion of these more left-field topics is reinforced by examples drawn explicitly from the “real” worlds of theatre and performance, including circus. For instance, the research centre of showciology imagined by Read is: “something like the flapping canvas that shelters the entrance to “Billy Smart’s Circus” grafted on to the revolving door of Glaxo Smith Kline’s pharmaceutical headquarters near my home in West London” (Read, 2008, p. 23). Throughout Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement, Read is fascinated by the possibilities for social reflection that result from thinking specifically about what it means to be human. He opens the book by isolating three defining characteristics: “Humans experience an extended childhood. Humans are unique in their ability to sustain a controlled unbroken outward breath. Humans are able to do less than they can” (Read, 2008, p. 1). Read (2008) believes that these “self-evident facts” are not only definitively human; at the same time, they determine the nature of theatre; he goes on to redefine that third characteristic as “the freedom aesthetically to disappoint”, initiating his preoccupying interest with why we are compelled, and what is compelling about, failure (2008, p. 1). In this way, Read’s performance philosophy might be usefully compared with the work of Paul Bouissac, a semiotician more extensively and thoroughly engaged with the circus. Drawing on Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1986), Bouissac (2010) distinguishes between our frustrating negative experiences of failure in everyday life, and the exhilarating representation of failure at the circus. In everyday life, our response to negative experience “presupposes a cultural construct, a social structure and context, and, secondly, it implies a value system”, neither of which seem to apply in the circus (Bouissac, 2010, p. 122).

The matter of failure was raised time and again in my discussions with leaders of BCCS in February and March 2021. Then BCCS Chief Executive/now Circusful CEO Jenna Hall spoke of failure as “an essential ingredient to development” (Jenna Hall, personal communication, 19 February 2021), while Paul Quate, who first joined BCCS as a child and subsequently left an office job in Belfast’s shipyard complex to become a trainee circus practitioner, indicated how liberating the permission to fail might be in the socio-political context of Belfast since the mid-1980s:

There was a real sense of being part of something that was completely different than anything I’d ever been part of. I played football for many years as a young person – as a team. And [the circus] offered me something else. I could be part of a team, but there are no winners and losers. You could try something, you could fail at it, and that was OK. And that was something that was new to me. That was something that was very scary to me. And to this day, I think it’s the same for young people: this idea that they can get something wrong, and – actually – that’s OK […] [T]here is nothing else that I can think of back then that was offering me what circus was offering me. An opportunity to meet other people from other backgrounds: people from other parts of the city that I would probably never have met. And I don’t remember at any point during my time, in those early days in the Eighties and Nineties, that anyone ever said to me: “Are you a Protestant or a Catholic? Where are you from?” That never factored one bit. And that was a real dominant factor in the rest of my life, in those days. We were labelled very clearly. So for me, this was – I guess it was an escape. (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021)

Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement is a consolidation of thinking in process – of a way of seeing the world through performance that is not yet clear, necessarily. Read (2008) introduces a number of suggestive concepts that deserve further deliberation, such as the idea of the Republic of Play (p. 104): an imaginary place where, it would seem, almost all kinds of performance are welcome to be practised and to be theorised (with the mischievously pointed exception of juggling) and where “the imperative of alterity” is a governing principle (p. 125). That same lure – that same compulsion to become other through performance was intoxicating to Paul Quate at a time and in a place where the stakes were high:

I never knew a place like this existed. And that’s what got me. I can be – I can be myself, but I can be someone else at the same time, if you understand what I mean? And my life in Belfast at that time, you know, the area I grew up in would have been dominated by paramilitary activity. And so it [the circus] was an escape from that, as well as life. (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021)

Where Read names but barely describes his Republic of Play, Quate’s narration of his own experiences suggests what might be termed a Circus Utopia: a true no place, in which the social order might be reconstructed through performance.

From “circus lessons” to “life lessons”: social circus on the streets of Belfast

During the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, BCCS produced a series of films entitled Lost in Circus and released them on Facebook in December 2020. BCCS employees were interviewed about their own histories and experiences as circus performers, their role within the organisation, and what the imagined circus would look like after the pandemic. A standalone film was made with former BCCS Outreach Officer, Noeleen Fries Neumann. It follows Neumann around her home, doing ordinary and domestic things, while talking about the extraordinary benefits the circus might bring to those who participate, not only in the activities of the BCCS, but much further afield. She explains:

I think when I started doing this, we thought the impact was magic. There was no – we could see the impact, but there was no scientific evidence. But, around the world, the evidence is just blossoming in terms of its impact on physical literacy, its impact on outcomes for young people, and it’s a really exciting time to be involved in using circus as a tool for social change. (Fanning, 2020)

Neumann signals that Moloney and McKendry’s mission was still a guiding principle 35 years after the founding of BCCS. She speaks of the impact on “physical literacy”, clearly intending for the phrase to be understood as it was defined by the International Physical Literacy Association (2017): “Physical literacy can be described as the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life”. There is, at the same time, a special further resonance contained within the concept of “physical literacy” when it is used in relation to the specific context of social circus in Belfast: one which translates the meaningfulness of the phrase into the realm of social semiotics, where the city and its streets become legible or decipherable through a series of signs encoded non-verbally.² In interview, Paul Quate spoke vividly about why Moloney and McKendry managed so successfully to appeal to young people – especially young men – in the early days of BCCS:

Not all circus is a risky, physical activity. Sometimes we’re quite calming! But I think that’s the lure – certainly back in those days, that was the lure. I remember Mike and Donal talking to me about their early work and the fact that putting someone on stilts was as invigorating and thrilling for them as throwing stones at the cops back in those days. Having a young person walk on a tight wire was giving them that buzz that they were getting from being on the streets, essentially rioting with the cops, or with their neighbours who were on the other side of the divide, of the peace wall. That was replacing it for them. And I could certainly understand that as a young person in Belfast who would have experienced similar things growing up. (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021)

Bessone (2017) explains that “[r]ather than being about telling a story, circus is about new experiences of one’s body and of bodily interaction” (p. 657). As Quate describes that “buzz”, he indicates the potential of circus to become an embodied alternative to sectarianism, literally transforming violence into another form of physical release and expression. The work of BCCS here becomes a clear example of what Jennifer Beth Spiegel (2021) describes as the “kinaesthetic approach” of social circus, where the body “is a site of movement that becomes the locus of change”. In Spiegel’s analysis, circus skills become “a toolkit through which movement vocabularies can be expanded, thereby potentiating transformation in the embodied sense of the possible” (p. 222).

Social circus is primarily concerned with empowering individual with self-confidence and self-assurance so that they might develop into a resilient, productive, and independent members of society. The ultimate goal is to “orient the individual toward an alternative future, drawing on play, dreams, and collectivity” (Spiegel, 2016, p. 59). According to Spiegel (2016), organisations involved in delivering social circus act “as handmaiden, intermediary, and temporary support”: “eventually participants are expected to move on to create their own projects or pursue training elsewhere” (p. 52). After steadily working throughout the 1980s and 1990s to transform Northern Irish society one outreach programme at a time, BCCS went on to discover means of expanding their reach and increasing the impact of their work. High-profile public events driven by the School, such as the Festival of Fools, have become celebrated and anticipated mainstays of the civic calendar. In economic and cultural effect, they might be understood as a response to Spiegel’s (2016) question: “What would happen if “circus lessons” become “life lessons” not only for community creators but also for those within the broader community who ignore, support, or see youth perform?” (p. 65).

Founded in 2004 by the then-BCCS Director Will Chamberlain, the Festival of Fools has taken place annually on the first weekend in May, with a two-year hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic. Chamberlain’s ambitions were fuelled in part by his knowledge and experience of European street theatre. In their evidence to the NIA’s Committee on Culture, Arts and Leisure, the BCCS argued:

With respect to street theatre, again there are far higher levels of investment in street arts across Europe than in Northern Ireland. In France, the annual funding for one leading company alone is equivalent to 10 times the total spent on all street theatre in Northern Ireland. Street theatre in Europe is regarded as being an important civic celebration, which, in most cases, is supported due to its contribution to the wellbeing of local people and the “social glue” it brings rather than any thoughts that it acts as a driver for tourism. (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2009).

The dual benefits to both local audiences and tourists are clearly in evidence in the Festival’s annual reports. Over 15 years between 2004 and 2020, it grew into the largest circus and street theatre festival anywhere on the island of Ireland, with over 100 performers taking over the city centre and Cathedral Quarter. Speaking after the eighth annual Festival, Chamberlain commented: “It’s a feel-good factor for everyone who sees it. It provides access to really high quality [sic.] international performances. It creates an enhanced sense of place and community and a shared experience between audience members” (Belfast Community Circus, 2012, p. 5). As well as appealing to local audiences, the Festival of Fools has also become a significant tourist attraction with its reputation spreading across Europe and beyond. BCCS carried out an extensive evaluation of the Festival of Fools in 2012, a year in which 22 per cent of visitors had come from out of state: not only from England, Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland, but also France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, USA, Cuba, Canada, South Africa, and Australia (Belfast Community Circus, 2012, p. 9). The 2012 evaluation demonstrated effectively how the event brought attendant benefits to the local economy, especially in terms of increased footfall in bars and restaurants in the Cathedral Quarter and increased occupancy in hotels across the city. In 2012, the estimated direct economic benefit to Belfast City Centre was £957,060, including £105,875 spent on overnight stays, which represented a return of £8.40 for every £1 invested in the Festival (Belfast Community Circus, 2012, p. 22). Since then, BCCS has continued to pursue and cultivate opportunities for reciprocal support between the Festival and local businesses – free meals for performers and audience member discounts, for example (Belfast Community Circus, 2012, p. 6). In so doing, the weekend has won the backing of the city and its residents, and was fully integrated into corporate and civic calendars by 2019.

BCCS regularly surveyed its audiences as part of its evaluation process for the Festival of Fools, including quantitative and qualitative responses in their annual reports. Every year, individual spectators reflected positively on the fact that, in one respondent’s words, “There is no religion and its interesting and its free” (Belfast Community Circus, 2012, p. 30). It is worth noting that, in this remark, social and economic benefits are tied together: the event is accessible both because it is liberated from the kind of tribalism historically associated with Belfast and Northern Ireland more widely, and because it doesn’t cost anything to attend. While BCCS are gratified by the interest in the Festival from those who might be considered cosmopolitan international travellers with an interest in circus and street performance, they are equally proud of its widespread appeal at home. 43 per cent of survey respondents in 2012 were from Belfast, representing all of the main postcode districts apart from BT3: a largely post-industrial area, which now includes the Titanic Quarter and Belfast City Airport. The report authors explain further that: “[t]hrough postcode analysis it can be concluded that just over 16% of the audience members that came from Belfast were from the top 25% most deprived Super Output Areas of Belfast (2,995 people)” (Belfast Community Circus, 2012, p. 20). Tie-ins with public transport services such as Translink not only relieve pressure on the city centre’s roads during the Festival when many thoroughfares are pedestrianised. Advertising campaigns on trains and buses reach audiences across the metro area who might not ordinarily engage with arts and cultural activities, thereby proving Alisan Funk’s (2021) point: that the “[i]nstitutionalisation of circus arts seems to ensure that whatever benefits are derived from circus arts will not be limited to specific socioeconomic levels or proximity” (p. 207).

One of the most extraordinary consequences of the Festival of Fools remains, for many, the ease with which mixed audiences take to the city’s streets to not only pause and reflect on, but actively engage with performance. Freelance producer Georgia Simpson described the scene:

[I]n terms of the circus we show on the street in Belfast, I think it’s hugely appealing because it’s a heady mix of popular and accessible, whilst being awe-inspiringly difficult sometimes – you’re watching people do extraordinary things that you could never dream of doing yourself – and there’s a really strong […] energy of the shared experience of our audience, you know, who are all crammed in together, sitting on the pavement, watching something. And I think that’s a sort of triple-whammy of goodness! And that’s why people love it. And that’s why people come back. (Georgia Simpson, personal communication, 19 February 2021)

The image that Simpson creates of people sitting on the pavement to watch performance in the street irresistibly conflates two iconic expressions of culture associated with sectarian Belfast – the colour-coded curbstone and the Orange parade. As such, it might be compared to the early work of performance artists such as André Stitt and Alastair MacLennan who, as students and teachers at Belfast College of Art, played their own role in transforming the cultural life of the Cathedral Quarter. Stitt (2012) has noted “the influence of collective social, communal and cultural ritual in Northern Ireland” in their “akshuns” or “actuations”: rituals which “exerted a central role by means of their political and religious demonstrations and affirmations”, which the artists “ utilised, converted and often subverted as a strategy in creating relationships between art and life” (pp. 23–32). The virtue of the Festival of Fools here is that it is performance without allegiance, taking place in what organisers understand to be the neutralised zone of the city centre.

The Festival of Fools might be compared with other annual events in the city calendar – Orangefest, for instance. Launched in 2006, Orangefest was intended as a means of diversifying participation in Twelfth of July celebrations. When interviewed in 2009, its organiser Mervyn Gibson commented: “I was never a communist, but I always thought all the soldiers and the tanks in the May Day parades looked really impressive. You can enjoy the theatre of it all without buying into the politics” (Geoghegan, 2009). This bizarre but highly suggestive comparison refuses to take account of what the Twelfth signals for many on both sides of the traditional divide in Northern Ireland. The aestheticization and transformation of the Twelfth into a tourist attraction can be seen, in other accounts, to have backfired. Reverend Brian Kennaway (2015), whose efforts to divert the Orange Order from extremist politics back towards religion were the cause of much controversy, gave a critical assessment of the apparent good intentions that lay behind the rebranding:

An “Orangefest”, or Orange Festival, cannot get the Institution out of its present predicament. A “Mardi Gras” is not the answer to the protection of cultural identity. Any intelligent assessment of the present state of the Institution will recognise that there is a foundation within Protestant culture beyond which it cannot go and without which it loses its raison d’être (p. 74).

Charles R. Batson and Karen Fricker (2021) indicate the usefulness of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque for scholars looking for a theoretical frame through which to view circus (p. 235). The carnivals and holidays from which Mikhail Bakhtin derived this concept were, of course, associated with the religious calendar: they represented an opportunity to turn the world upside down, as Bakhtin saw it, and break free from the strictures of established authority and hierarchy. In Kennaway’s assessment, the “Mardi Gras” approach to Orangefest is problematic not least because, without fully recognising the religious foundation of the Orange Order, the force or impact of a carnival is neutralised as the root meaning of holiday is lost. Subversion without just cause is simply excessive. The Festival of Fools is crucially different since it was created with the religious history of Belfast very much in view. Will Chamberlain had a long-held vision for a street festival in the city centre that would counterbalance the traditional and the habitual with the extraordinary and the unfamiliar; tradition and habit were, it would seem, provocations, just as they were for Stitt and MacLennan. The festival Chamberlain created does not need to remind spectators that it’s all about history, because, in a very real sense, the Festival of Fools takes place in spite of history – or local history at least. Its relationship with place and space is not one of domination and control, more of reclamation and reconstruction. The Festival of Fools is fundamentally about subversion and regeneration.

Neutral space: the Belfast Community Circus and urban regeneration

I first came over in ’97, and at the time there were very few company names on the high street I recognised from living in London. Most shops and businesses were specific to Northern Ireland. Now, the high street in which we sit our festival now is full of White Stuff, Seasalt, Starbucks, all of those things. And I think that’s quite interesting: that over the lifetime of Festival of Fools our stage – the high street in Belfast – has transformed. I’m not saying it’s any better. It’s just different.

(Georgia Simpson, personal communication, 19 February 2021)

Commenting in 2012, Chamberlain drew explicit attention to the long historical and political context of the Festival of Fools, and its potential to assist in projects of reconciliation. His aim, through circus, was:

to bring the streets alive, to encourage people to take back ownership of the city centre … We wanted to make it a place of celebration after so many years when the city was unsafe territory, and to declare that normality was here. We wanted to bring to people’s attention the amazing quality of street theatre around Europe and the rest of the world, but also showcase the artists who live and work in Belfast. (Belfast Community Circus, 2012)

Putting aside the irresistibly mischievous suggestion that establishing a festival of circus street performance in which clowns assume control of the city’s streets was a declaration of normality, that sense of reclaiming the space is felt by countless local festival attendees. “Sitting about in the street in Belfast would not have happened 20 years ago,” one audience member commented in 2012 (Belfast Community Circus, 2012). Whilst social studies such as those of Mesev et al. (2005) have revealed that “the vast majority of fatalities in Belfast during the conflict occurred within segregated communities composed of over 90 per cent Catholics or Protestants” (p. 894), the city centre suffered in its own way. For decades, bombing campaigns, violence, and the heavy and intrusive presence of security forces evacuated the centre of the kind of urban busyness – a mixture of economic and cultural activity – that one would expect in a capital city during business hours. Neither was it a place to relax or for leisure pursuits; at the end of the working day, the heart of the city was deserted.

The Laganside Corporation was established by the government in 1989 with the aim of socially and economically regenerating 140 hectares of land in inner Belfast. The following year, the Cathedral Quarter conservation area was marked out. The Cathedral Quarter was officially designated in the City Council’s Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan in 2004. Four years later, the Cathedral Quarter Steering Group (CQSG) was founded to pick up where the Laganside Corporation left off in 2007 and create a vision and framework for the area’s strategic development. In 2010, the Cathedral Quarter became a “place destination” in the city’s integrated strategy for tourism, while CQSG published its development plan. Seeking to prevent the increased popularity of the area from driving rents up and thereby stymying the cultural activity that made the area attractive in the first place, CGSQ renewed its commitments to economic, environmental, and social sustainability. In their vision, the Cathedral Quarter was the ideal space for: “building community cohesion, civic engagement and a celebration of diverse identities; promoting a sense of belonging and connectedness and reducing social alienation and exclusion in our city through participation in cultural life” (Cathedral Quarter Steering Group, 2010, p. 16). In some assessments, this vision, though laudable, has lost sight of the place itself. The Laganside Corporation and later CQSG have carried out what McManus and Carruthers (2014) describe as “extensive infrastructural work” aimed at preserving “the distinct identity and character of Cathedral Quarter”. However, in their assessment, “linkages to the history and heritage of the area are somewhat underdeveloped and there is potential for greater integration to enhance a unique sense of local context” (p. 97).

BCCS have been mindful of the subtle ways in which that unique sense of local context is enhanced through their work. In my conversation with Jenna Hall, the idea of local context was strongly allied to the freedom of the individual as we discussed how an BCCS’s international workforce and student body engages with the city’s history:

It’s not that it’s irrelevant, but it’s that it’s very rarely, if ever, at the front and centre of our work. But rather, we use circus as a tool through which we can bring communities together and develop and change the conversation. And we do that through building strong relationships and building an understanding that individuals are important and valuable regardless of their previous lived experience or beliefs. So I think that it’s […] it’s not something that we seek to bring to the front and centre of our work. (Jenna Hall, personal communication, 19 February 2021)

Responding to Hall, Festival of Fools producer Georgia Simpson highlighted the significance of working in the “neutral space” of the city centre:

Our geography is city centre [sic.], which are neutral spaces where everyone feels welcome and that they can come in, and in terms of the acts that we programme, we’re trying to get a variety of styles […] and bring fantastic international acts to the people of Belfast. (Georgia Simpson, personal communication, 19 February 2021)

What these comments don’t convey is, perhaps, the BCCS’s own proactive role in diffusing the charge of the city centre. Moreover, while the organisation has always recognised the importance of working in these so-called neutral spaces, but the concept of neutrality in this context is not unproblematic (Belfast Community Circus, n.d.). In 1999, BCCS moved to a purpose-built home located in the Cathedral Quarter of Belfast’s city centre. Paul Quate described the move in interview:

[W]e were in the Crescent Arts Centre, and Will [Chamberlain] had been in discussions with the Laganside Corporation […] about a home. And they […] had identified an old banana warehouse in the Cathedral Quarter. And in those days, I think there was only one or two other residents: there was […] a pub at the end of the road, and possibly Worthington’s Solicitors […] And this opportunity came up and they [Laganside] loved what we were doing, so we were given, essentially, an old banana warehouse […] to transform that into Ireland’s only purpose-built circus building. Will and the team were very clever, because we had a new building, but we didn’t have the trainers we would need to deliver. So he then went back and said we’d love to run a year-long programme – like a professional circus development programme – and they went, “Oh, right, OK. How much would that cost?” And I don’t know what Will did and the team did, but they said yes, so a number of us got the opportunity to take part in a twelve-month, full-time circus delivery, circus programme to prepare us. (Paul Quate, personal communication, 9 March 2021)

McCarthy’s (2006) arguments concerning the role of public art in urban regeneration, made with explicit and extended reference to the Laganside’s Public Art Strategy of 2001, are worth noting here. Following Julier and Miles, his concern is that “cultural regeneration strategies, and cultural quarters in particular, often seem to present a formulaic approach, resulting from social replication, that ultimately leads to cultural quarters in different cities becoming more like each other” (McCarthy, 2006, p. 247). McCarthy is, of course, focused on public art and the risks of installing works which, in his words, “reflect hegemonic images of the city as a consequence of place branding priorities, which can lead to homogeneity and erosion of distinctiveness” (p. 244). Bland, safe, or neutral public artworks can have a detrimental impact on both the image of a city and on the security of its identity. McCarthy’s comments were echoed by performance artist André Stitt (2012) when he explained why, in his retrospective view of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, “[c]onventional art mediums failed at a specific time in a specific location”: “because conventional practice separated art from everyday experience by operating in traditional terms in neutralised spaces such as galleries and art institutions”. By contrast, we can derive from Quate’s comments a very real sense of the unique opportunity BCCS represented to the Laganside Corporation and to Belfast in the late 1990s, as well as the organisation’s gratitude for and pride in having created a bespoke space within that singularly appropriate old banana warehouse. McCarthy hints at the special potential of live performance when it comes to refreshing a city’s image and keeping homogeneity at bay when he highlights Brian Connolly’s “Performance Space” as a notable contribution. Connolly, an academic and artist with equally strong ties to the Cathedral Quarter as his contemporaries and associates Stitt and MacLennan, was surely influenced by international performance art movements such as those led by the Brazilian practitioner Augusto Boal (2008) when he coined the term “installaction” in the 1990s to describe his socio-politically motivated performance work, which so often endeavours to negotiate the histories and legacies of violence in Northern Ireland. Creating the space for live performance within a city and its calendar with a view to understanding and interpreting those performances as works of public art indicates a willingness to allow both the image and the identity of that place to be plural and to change over time, since ephemerality is at once one of the greatest strengths and poignant afflictions of live performance. An annual event such as the Festival of Fools, which positions circus and clowning acts as installactions of a kind throughout the city centre, trades on the same sense of excited anticipation that benefited traditional circuses in their heyday. A Festival of Fools spectator might watch in self-conscious awareness of themselves as a kind of audience participant in acts for social change – one of Boal’s spect-actors – or with innocent wonder.

Walking the Tightrope: from community circus to circus enterprise

Research for this article began in February 2021. While completing the project, Belfast Community Circus School underwent a major transformation: after two years of consultation with staff, independent circus artists, and the general public, BCCS became Circusful in November 2021. Jennifer Beth Spiegel (2016) sees social circus as a productively self-defeating entity. “The goal,” she explains, “is to arrive at a situation where the supports of social circus are no longer needed” (p. 64). But what happens once that goal has been reached? As Spiegel asks: to what kinds of future modes of relationality might this lead? The transformation of BCCS into Circusful provides some indication of what the post-social circus might look like, and what its functions in contemporary Northern Irish society might be.

The team leading changes at BCCS under the direction of CEO Jenna Hall narrate the decision-making process on the organisation’s new website. For them, the pandemic provided an opportunity to “learn more about what makes our work special and why it is important” (Circusful, 2022). Activities are now strategically framed in terms of their “impact” on the communities Circusful serves – impact which is no longer “magic” but instead measurable – and this includes the community of professional circus artists who are represented and promoted by the organisation (Circusful, 2022). Outreach is still a core part of Circusful’s activities and two members of staff are described as Outreach Officers, but today that outreach is explicitly understood in terms that are familiar to scholars working in the field of circus studies, as Circusful (2022) quotes academic studies while presenting itself as “a global pioneer of social circus”. At the same time, Circusful makes itself available in the marketplace for team building and corporate support, weddings, birthdays, and conferences (Circusful, 2022). In charting the move away from community circus to circus enterprise so publicly, Hall and her team are consciously developing an account of the social and cultural effects of social circus. Such accounts, Bessone (2017) contends, are scarce, but in them might be found the justification governments, local authorities, and arts council funders require to continue their vital financial support.

Acknowledgements

I am sincerely grateful to Jenna Hall (Circusful), Paul Quate (Belfast Community Circus), and Georgia Simpson (Festival of Fools) for their generous contributions and interest in my research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For an interrelated definition of youth, social and community circus, see Funk (2021), p. 204.

2 In reading the meaningfulness of the circus in this way, I am influenced, inevitably, by circus theorist Paul Bouissac, whose book Semiotics at the Circus (2010) decodes traditional and contemporary circus performances.