Circus as Culture and Lifestyle.
Necessities and consequences of its recognition as part of the UNESCO Intangible Heritage across different countries
Intangible Cultural Heritage represents today's customs, knowledge and practices that people have acquired from the past. Safeguarding these aspects supports their survival by ensuring viability, ongoing re-creation, and transmission. Heritage and practices constantly recreate themselves through their interactions. This living dynamic represents the evolution through time of societies.
By learning and actively performing these practices, curating archives, documenting, researching, communicating, raising awareness, and promoting them through educational formats, different communities can pass on their knowledge to future generations, ensuring that their traditions will not be lost in time.
Throughout its history, circus culture has developed its distinctive practices and aesthetics, incorporating an impressive variety of expressions. Its recognition in some of the UNESCO national registers outlines and unifies categories and reaffirms its diversity, contributing to the definition of its developing identity as an art form.
To portray a glimpse of the necessities preceding the UNESCO application processes in various countries at different times, representatives from the Netherlands, Wallonia, Germany and Great Britain provide an overview of this unifying topic, stimulating an international reflection towards its meaning.
Netherlands, December 2013
Artist and artistic director of the Circusstad Festival Menno Van Dyke recalls the recognition of what they call Circus Culture in the Netherlands in December 2013 as a natural and necessary process for the sector in its complexity. With Ineke Strouken and Arie Oudenes as main initiators, the application was supported by several key players within the Dutch circus field and submitted by the network association representing traditional circuses in the nation, which at that time was called Circuscultuur. The Dutch government and its specific department affiliated with UNESCO, Centrum immaterieel erfgoed, recognised the Circus on European criteria, including all its variety of circus expressions and communities.
The recognition acted as a unifying factor, stimulating the merging of traditional, contemporary, social, and educational circus in a broader network. It was only in 2019 that Circuscultuur evolved, incorporating Vereniging Nederlandse Circus Ondernemingen (VNCO) - representing the traditional travelling circuses, and Circomundo, representing social and youth circus, becoming Circuspunt, the support organisation and platform for the united Dutch circus field.
In the case of the Netherlands, it was the traditional players with their travelling circuses that initially felt the necessity of being recognised as Intangible Cultural Heritage. However, from that impulse, they realised it was necessary to incorporate the evolving variety of circus forms.
The heritage recognition represented a common ground. It facilitated the players to share an overview and to share knowledge, helping the circus become stronger, overcoming its categories and being taken seriously as a unified community. Inside Circuspunt, several working groups have been created, from focusing on artists' needs to tent regulations - sometimes discovering that traditional and contemporary organisations share similar necessities.
Nowadays, for example, Festival Circolo creates a tent village hosting contemporary circus shows. Via the dedicated Circuspunt work group, the festival and traditional circuses are actively exchanging their knowledge on circus tent regulations, tackling and discussing the most relevant issues on safety together.
Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, February 2021
In the state of Wallonia, the application for recognition has been motivated by the need to preserve and renew the relationship of the traditional circuses with the region. Since February 2021, the Traditional Travelling Circus has been recognised by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation thanks to the application submitted by Alain Gombert Chabri of Chabri Circus.
Alain started to think of applying for Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition in 2018 - the year that also marks the 250th anniversary of the modern circus - stimulated by the varied expressions of circus arts celebration during Focus Circus Brussels. While the Brussels media focused on describing the art form as established in the 80s with the creation of professional schools, he knew that traditional Belgian circus families can be traced back to around 200 years ago.
He started to research his family, enriching archive materials with the help of other traditional circus families from all over Belgium motivated to preserve circus traditions not to be forgotten and not ignored by the institutions. Alain presented the resulting application to the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and successfully received recognition.
In the past, traditional circuses were disconnected from cultural politics. The recognition of Traditional Travelling Circus in the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles in particular was necessary to protect the richness of circus traditions and their living community. One of the effects was to improve the relationships between the circus families and the various municipalities, facilitating their travelling from city to city.
Demonstrating the multicultural aspect of its community, the variety of audiences, and the relevant aspects of innovation in the traditional circus companies was also fundamental for the application. According to Alain, the challenge of our time for traditional circuses is to foster ongoing communication and cooperation with institutions and innovate artistic expression.
He is currently cooperating with contemporary circus organisations like Circuscentrum and Archipel 19 and Circus Chabri received a label of quality awarded to the institution that preserved the Cultural Heritage of the circus, another quality recognition tool to validate traditional circus tents that facilitated relationships with the cities. For him, the next step after this recognition is the creation of a federation of traditional circuses in Wallonia to continue the integration process between travelling circuses and the region.
Germany, March 2023
Helmut Grosscurth, Director of the European Circus Association (ECA), explains that in the successful German application submitted in March 2023, the definition of Circus as an Independent Form of Performing Art has been crucial, including all its forms and venues, helping to highlight its general qualities, and defining its categories. Focusing on the circus as an art form, the process brought together a range of circus associations in a network.
ECA oversaw the project, but all the other associations also worked very constructively to answer the questions on the application form: Verband deutscher Circusunternehmen e.V. (VDCU), Bundesverband zeitgenössischer Zirkus e.V.(BUZZ), Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Zirkuspädagogik e.V. (BAG), Zirkus macht stark e.V. (ZMS), and Gesellschaft der Circusfreunde e.V. (GCD).
Jenny Patschovsky, chairwoman and co-founder of BUZZ, echoes that the Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition of circus in Germany relied on the strength of a highly heterogeneous community representing a variety of circus forms and expressions working together for a common goal. The submission defines and distinguishes circus in its variety and highlights the relevance of the sector’s richness, its necessity of diversity, and the uniqueness of this art form and its community.
The submission initiated a process to advocate for circus in public relations and raise visibility, nourishing the German sector and fortifying its foundations and self-confidence as an art form.
German contemporary circus artists and managers are increasingly involved in cultural politics. The recognition represents a significant step forward to create awareness around the history and artistic practices of circus arts among the nation and a renovated confidence in the vital status of the art form.
In 2024, BUZZ ran the programme Circus&Heritage – European Encounters as part of the Europa-Schecks state initiative by North Rhein-Westphalia, dedicating a one-day symposium to the topic in collaboration with the CircusDanceFestival in Cologne.
Helmut Grosscurth concludes that after the national recognition of circus in seven European countries, the next goal is to enter the worldwide UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. “We are working on it”, he says.
Great Britain, in progress
Talking about this topic with Martin Burton, Chairman of the Association of Circus Proprietors (ACP), we learn that Great Britain's recognition of circus as Intangible Cultural Heritage is still a work in progress. For him, it is important to clarify that there is no need to differentiate traditional and contemporary circus; to achieve recognition as part of the Cultural Heritage, the circus needs to be considered a cultural institution and a lifestyle.
In Great Britain, UNESCO has been recognised as a cultural institution only recently by the end of 2023, and the government body handling Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition is the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The ACP had a meeting in June 2024 to discuss the recognition of circus with the Prime Minister and the head of the DCMS. However, the meeting had to be cancelled due to a call for a new election. The new government had other priorities, which led the ACP to create a petition calling for recognition of circus as part of the Cultural Heritage.
In July 2024, a picture of Tweedy the Clown ended up on national media showing the artiste with a comically large letter in hand, literally knocking on the Prime Minister's door in Downing Street. An effective campaign bringing attention to the circus sector's needs. The ACP is waiting for a new meeting with the Prime Minister to be scheduled.
This article is published in Dutch as part of the special issue of Circusmagazine: Landschapstekening Circus by Circuscentrum.