The Social Circus in the Construction of Citizenship. A study from Citizenship Competencies for A Democratic Culture

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the role of the Social Circus in the constructionof citizenship through the learning and practice of citizenship competencies. TheSocial Circus provides a platform for learning circus and creating spaces forcollective creation to promote personal, group and community empowerment toimprove the quality of life of the participants and the society that surrounds them.Previous research has focused on the Social Circus’ personal and group workspace,but there’s still little literature on the construction of community and citizenship.This research studies the qualitative component in more depth, using a caseanalysis approach and The Reference Framework of Competencies for DemocraticCulture developed by the Council of Europe (2018). To achieve so, two projectsthat use the concept of Social Circus and have a community perspective havebeen selected. Semi-structured interviews, group discussion and data analysiswere used for the selection process. The results indicate that the Social Circus isan ideal setting to learn and practice citizenship competencies for a DemocraticCulture during class, in the preparation of the show or final exhibition and/or inthe community spaces related to the project.