September News

September has included a lot of new experiences for the world of circus dealing with a pandemic. There has obviously been a massive impact to everyone’s lifestyle and careers but we are starting to see some changes.

We have seen a number of circus training organisations re-opening up in the UK for the first time since lockdown. So now we are finally able to put into practice the policies and procedures we have been working on together over the last few months. We have seen how students are responding to the new policies (very well in the main) and we are also seeing how many people are coming back to circus training. We will be keeping a keen eye on how we adapt and change over the next few months. We’d love to hear from you if you have anything to contribute to the conversation.

COVID-19 Resources

• Here is all the public COVID resources we have on the site
• Here is the recording of the last online event on 'Practical COVID-19 Solutions for Circus Schools'

Force Tests

We have started to collate the data we have on the force tests that have been performed in the UK over the last few years. The aim is compile a database of forces applied to different pieces of circus equipment by different artists using different techniques.

We were aiming to add to this body of knowledge in May of this year during our circus rigging conference. However this ended up being virtual rather than physical. Our next steps are to discuss how we should perform future tests and what data we should capture, then we plan to come up with a tool that others can contribute to as well. We'll discuss this further in October's members meeting

NOTE: Please read the caveats that are on the webpage before going to the results.

IMPORTANT: Please do not share this outside of this group, as the results cannot be guaranteed to be accurate or scientific and may lead to people drawing incorrect conclusions from the data.

The database can be accessed by paid members here

Safe Training at Home

A small group of us have been working together to define ways for people to train safely at home. We have a three part series of documents in development and the first of these ‘Introduction to Safe Training at Home’ is now available for member review before we make it public. The second document ‘Setting up a safe Rigging Point at Home’ is in an early draft form but will be available in October.

Please send us any feedback you may have to help improve these documents.

Videos

As part of the series on Safe Training at Home we have been shooting and editing two videos in partnership with Firetoys on how to rig different types of aerial hoop. These are targeted at recreational students and parents. We have some small reshoots to do but they will go live in October.

Circus Rigging and Safety Forum

If you are a paid member and want to join the Rigging and Safety Forum on slack please drop me an email and let me know. This is where we discuss all the above topics and welcome people who would like to help out.

October Events

I’ll publish our October events in a separate email but we aim to have one members meeting about ongoing work and the content we are creating and a second public event which is likely to be on solving rigging problems. We had to postpone it from this month due to other work.