Friday, 26th August 2022
Our very own Manager of Community, Hannah Gumbrielle, studied Inclusion and Exclusion in Circus with Stockholm University of the Arts to further her own practice as a teacher. A lot of Hannah’s job also includes working away behind the scenes on funding applications, so there's lots of exciting things coming up! If you, or groups you know, would like to get in touch about circus for children or adults with disabilities or additional needs or other important areas of inclusion get in touch with us at info@takingflight.ie. The last year Hannah has been working on expanding different community and inclusion projects which you can read more about below:
LEGacy Circus
We also had a staff session with Erin Ball of LEGacy circus with a particular focus on climbs for students with upper and lower limb differences and grip differences.
Erin Ball works as part of LEGacy in a contemporary circus arts duo with Vanessa Furlong. LEGacy is described as “a multidisciplinary rollercoaster of emotions and story telling” that creates unique and innovative circus approaches by the incorporation of leg attachments, mobility aids and much more into their practice along with traditional and non-traditional circus apparatuses.
In April 2021, Taking Flight tutors began training with Erin Ball and Vanessa Furlong of Kingston Circus Arts and LEGacy Circus in an eight week long Flying Footless program. Flying Footless is a program for aerial coaches working with amputees and aimed at creating increasingly accessible and inclusive circus practices in general.
Erin was also zoomed into our studio all the way from Canada earlier this year in February 2022. We are working to develop our inclusion programs and are very excited about future plans.
Youth Theatre Ireland
Since last year we have been working with Dublin Youth Theatre (DYT) combining aerial circus and theatre practice in hybrid workshops run for both our own Teen students in the studio and for DYT’s members. This has been the first part of a three year partnership with Youth Theatre Ireland with plenty more opportunities such as this on the horizon.