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SUPPORT US! Help children defy gravity, soar with confidence and leap over social barriers, all at the same time. Click his nose to donate! |
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SUPPORT US! Help children defy gravity, soar with confidence and leap over social barriers, all at the same time. Click his nose to donate! |
Press Release for May 8th Performance
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Patchwork Circus is a new community-connecting, people-inspiring youth circus project from the Circus Day Foundation, an organization that uses circus arts to build character in individuals and build bridges between communities.
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As stated in their mission statements, “The Circus Day Foundation teaches the art of life through circus education. We work to build character and expand community for youth of all ages, cultures, abilities and backgrounds. Through teaching and performance of circus skills, we help people defy gravity, soar with confidence, and leap over social barriers, all at the same time.”
For the past two years, we have been working on the Circus Partnership concept bringing together two different groups of children (as in Circus Salaam Shalom with Jewish and Muslim children) and using circus as a common language and putting on a show as a common goal. Our long-term objective is to create an entire circus made up of children from all different backgrounds from all across the St. Louis metropolitan area. We have now combined and expanded our previous Partnerships into one, big open Partnership called the Patchwork Circus. The name “Patchwork” was chosen because the participants will be like the pieces of a quilt—each different piece with its own history coming together to form a beautiful and unique work of art. Patchwork Circus is currently comprised of Jewish children, Muslim children, adopted Chinese children, African-American children, Caucasian children, urban children and suburban children.
The life skills we learn, as children, are the tools we take with us into adulthood. If we teach children when they are young to overlook differences and focus on similarities, to focus on working together to fix something rather than abdicating responsibility and blaming instead, those skills could result in a more peaceful future. When you are trying to do a human pyramid, you need to know the technique and the terminology so that you and your partner are speaking the same language physically and verbally. You learn fairly quickly, that to succeed in performing the pyramid, you cannot blame each other if something goes wrong but you must figure out what you can do together to make it work. Whoever you are and wherever you are from, there is some circus skill that you can accomplish because circus is an art form made up of a variety of skills.
In the world right now, especially in the Middle East, people yearn for peace. We yearn to see that peace is even possible. The path to peace is a path of cooperation and communication. In today’s society, it is necessary to learn, from a young age, the importance of cooperation and communication. Race, religion, socio-economic standing and other labels that describe us, do not DEFINE us. No matter who we are and where we are from, we can find a common place, where our individual boundaries touch, overlap or—better yet—disappear in the face of what connects us. Teaching children from different neighborhoods how to stand on each other’s shoulders may seem like a strange way to take this path. But it’s the technique we use!
The goals of this program are to use circus arts to actively and artfully demonstrate that children can do amazing things both physically and socially. The program is needed by children so they can meet and interact with other young people who come from different backgrounds than themselves. It is needed by children so they can test and push and surpass what they thought were their own limits. This program is needed by physical children who don’t think they like performing arts and by performing arts youth who don’t think of themselves as physical. It is needed to show everyone what great results are achieved when individuals work together. This project is needed because the world today thirsts for every bit of proof it can muster to show that people of different races, religions and socio-economic backgrounds can live and learn together.
Circus Day finds circus to be the most boundary-crossing, across-the-board appealing art form that we know of. If you go on the back lot of any circus around the world, you will almost inevitably find performers from a vast variety of different nationalities. The circus has traditionally been a performing arts melting pot like no other art form. The St. Louis metropolitan area is also made up of people from a variety of different backgrounds. We are working to have people from throughout the area represented in the Patchwork Circus. The Circus Day Foundation teaches circus arts in numerous programs throughout the area and we are always looking for potential youth circus performers. Learning circus builds character in the individual participants as they develop life skills like goal setting, persistence and focus. Learning circus with others teaches trust, responsibility and teamwork. When the others are from different backgrounds, everyone’s sense of community is expanded to include these new partners. The Patchwork Circus performers will indeed personify our mission statement as they "defy gravity, soar with confidence and leap over social barriers all at the same time!"
