EDUCATIONAL
MISSION
My personal goal is to inspire and support
the dreams of the people I work with.
Elsie and I say that we ‘teach to the heart’
which means that whatever our students
aspire to, we will help them with that
journey to the best of our ability, with
honesty and joy and fierce dedication to
their needs.
Speaking on behalf of NECCA, an
organization that I am grateful to be a
continuing part of, I’m pleased to share
that we recently went through a lovely
exercise of evaluating our Mission. The
original mission pointed to developing
a facility, and now that we’ve been in
our new trapezium for a year, (I can’t
believe it was June of 2017!) it was
important to reflect on our driving goals.
Our updated Mission is the clearest
statement of who we are, and our
organizational commitments: At NECCA,
the transformative power of circus
arts enables a diverse and inclusive
community of artists, teachers and
students to realize their dreams.
In my opinion, speaking broadly,
professional circus artists need to be
multi-skilled, dynamic, and personable.
I believe there must be attention paid
to innovation and being unique, while
also understanding what market you are
aiming for or might find yourself in. More
specifically, circus artists must have a top
‘product’ to sell, and at least one act or
focus area, preferably two.
I believe having the broad capacity to
jump in and help out both on stage
(tumbling passes, strolling characters,
dance choreography, group juggling)
and behind the scenes (costume sewing,
26
lighting/sound
production,
music
editing, website development, graphic
design) is vital to making an ongoing
life in the performing industry. In
NECCA’s ProTrack, we include content to
support these capacities of physical and
theatrical training, and we also include
workshops in stage makeup, costume
production, and aerial rigging. Students
get high quality video and photos of their
acts, and in the final year we assist with
website development and marketing
strategies.
NECCA also believes that students
in the end must be able to manage
themselves out in the world. The life skills
associated with making your own way are
considerations we bring to all levels of
our programming. Another way to say it
is we try to teach the how of learning, in
addition to the what of learning. NECCA
supports inquiry-based teaching, which
means that we ask students to be a part
of the curiosity and decision-making
in all levels of their experience. This is
useful for beginners through advanced
students and we feel it develops dynamic,
inventive, resilient, capable humans—
important traits whether they stay with
circus or not. If they do continue in
circus, like our ProTrack students for
example, we find that inquiry deepens
creativity and inspires newness rather
than simply recreates what has come
before. Another effect of inquiry-based
learning is that when students leave our
school, they are capable of training and
devising under their own guidance, and
will thus continue to grow and develop
throughout their careers beyond our
doors.
27