What We Can Learn From Circus Pedagogy
Paloma Holmes, Senior Design Researcher at Normative, Toronto, Canada
Before I became a Design Researcher, I was enrolled at the University of Toronto pursuing my PhD in Exercise Sciences, exploring the role of risk to social bonding.
I am fascinated by the social psychology of pushing ourselves to extreme limits through creative experimentation and performance. Exercise Science was a strange place for me as I wasn’t a particularly good jock, I didn’t play any Varsity sports. I’m a terrible Canadian, I can’t skate, and I’m not a fan of hockey. In a department where students were studying physiology and biomechanics, I was the black sheep, and joked about running away with the circus for my doctoral research. Then I did.
I spent two years conducting an immersive ethnographic study of contemporary circus pedagogy in Montreal, Canada. What began as an exploration of risk culture developed into a case study of radically different ways of approaching education and creative coaching. These are some takeaways:
Students often expressed that they “didn’t fit in regular schools”.
For students the feeling of “failing to fit” could refer to anything including, although not limited to: I’m gifted, I’m bored, I was diagnosed/undiagnosed with a learning disability, I was bullied for being different, etc.
Many students shared that it was difficult to see a path towards success outside of a standardized education stream and silos. As educators and designers, we need to:
- Challenge the idea that failing is inherently negative, and reframe failing as necessary to learning and growth.
- Consider the ways educational institutions fail to embrace difference and reproduce risk-adverse mentalities.
- Imagine and create more inclusive pedagogic spaces.
Philosophies Of Learning Are Mirrored In Our Architecture
In most traditional educational models, you attend lectures and sit at a desk in an auditorium. Circus schools necessitate learning by doing, and working collaboratively with peers and coaches. Our learning spaces shape how we learn.
The root of the word circus is related to the idea of a circle. Working in the round facilitates a coaching-mentorship model that is more similar to apprenticeship rather than a top-down lecture approach.
Working in the round is ultimately an iterative process because you always have an audience. This learning space-philosophy trains students to constantly iterate and share their works in progress, which necessitates embracing failure and discomfort as an essential part of learning .
Words Are but a Small Component of Human Expression
Over the course of my ethnographic study, I met a student named Jason who pointed out that verbal communication was complicated for him because he was attending a multilingual school and experienced hearing issues. His coach of 3 years speaks Russian, Jason speaks English and Swiss German, they trained closely together for over 3 years. His pedagogy was an apprenticeship, which meant that language was secondary to learning by doing. By listening to non-verbal cues, rhythm and using haptic strategies Jason became a master of his craft.
This wasn’t limited to Jason, other students would say things like “there’s no English word for that” or “I can’t explain it, you have to see it.” Many artists were going to school develop a performance that tells a story through physical expression and playful interactions using body languages, gesture, tone, rhythm, etc. Circus is an art of telling a story with no words.
Verbal communication is but a small human component of our broader capacity for expression and connection. Struggles with language and translation can remind us to pair down complexity and work to make our interactions more accessible.
Fail Better and Bounce Back
Traditional educational models can focus on success in ways that perpetuate a fear of failure.
Years in academia watching students and living with the threat of “publish or perish” taught me that fearing failure further contributes to a risk-averse mentality.
Coaches and students shared that students took more risks when educators celebrated creative experimentation and made room non-evaluative spaces. The best teachers are: excellent facilitators, lifelong students, and kids at heart. They facilitate spaces to fail, experiment, and be vulnerable because this is where we exercise our full capacity and flex our creative muscles.
We fetishize success but we need to realize that our strength and learning is built from the work we do outside of our comfort zone. Our failures are not our limits; they exist as starting points to improve collaboration, and communication. Constraints can also be a surprising source of creative power.
What I Learned From This Experience
Ethnography is the study of a culture through immersive participation and observation over an extended period of time. Knowledge and stories are all partial and limited, and produced through our interactions. As such we can never completely know the culture we study, but we can commit to telling a story about experiences and interactions. The goal and value is that this approach allows us to generate a rich account and deeper insights into a particular culture. This ethnography taught me:
- Be a student forever. You are not the expert. You are a student and a visitor. This nomadic work taught me that we are often guests on other people’s land and homes. The luxury of mobility to come and go in spaces we want to understand is a profound privilege. And with privilege there are opportunities to do better. A student’s mindset is an opportunity to embrace humble learning, collaborative work, and reciprocal hospitality. How can we suspend our assumptions and value judgements so that we can become more curious listeners and learners?
- Be willing to embrace failure and discomfort. Both a ballet dancer and ethnographer told me the same thing: “if you’re comfortable, you’re probably not doing it right.” Ethnographic practices put us in challenging and unfamiliar spaces — so that we can learn from them. How can we situate our capacity to learn from our mistakes and failures, and use this as our metric of success?
- Be a kid, embrace playfulness. Circus necessitates an openness to the stranger, and the wild unknown. While we applaud and support creative play with children, play for adults is generally limited to games with a winner and a loser. We need to do better at supporting creative experimentation and risk-taking because this is what builds stronger teams, trust, and skill sets.
- Be critical, curious, and reflexive. The body is a research tool and instrument of data collection. Ethnography reminds us that our emplacement and participation in a culture is how we learn and eventually write about a culture or context. Writing is always a process of framing, inclusion and exclusion. Therefore, this process requires critical self-reflection on our positionality and how this shapes the stories we write and tell.
Here is a link to another related piece I wrote on risk:
Embrace Risk on Your Way to Innovation
How do we create an environment of constructive risk-taking that launches successful and innovative products and … ratsnest.io
Video of the presentation
About Paloma
I am a researcher and analyst who explores what moves people — physically, conceptually and emotionally. My work is underpinned by questions like: What are the emotions, beliefs, and narratives that drive different cultures, our identities and sense of belonging, and how does this shape what we desire and consume? How can we tap into different mediums of expression to best articulate our stories and build meaningful connections?
My research interests and background includes:
- Sociology and cultural studies
- Qualitative methods and ethnography
- Aesthetics, art, and the politics of representation
- History and philosophy of science
- Risk as a means of social connection
- Sexuality, gender studies and queer theory
For my doctoral research, I conducted an ethnography of how participation in cultures of physical struggle and risk-oriented activities serves to create social bonds, community, and alternative forms of kinship through a case study of circus arts in Montréal, Québec.
I am passionate about how visual media and story-telling offer significant ways to connect with different audiences and build client relations. My experiences involve researching, developing and actualizing the creative potential and vision for different groups including, students, athletes, private clients and major companies.
