Towards a cultural history of community circus in Australia

Community circus comprises an integral part of the contemporary Australian circus ecology - a field that includes high profile professional companies, traditional family-based circuses, as well as contemporary circus-infused physical theatre, neo-burlesque, and street performance. The overlapping practices of contemporary 'youth' and 'social' circus are direct descendants of the community arts movement that was prevalent in Australia - as in some other developed Western nations - during the 1970s and 1980s. Governments at Australia's federal and state levels enacted fundamental shifts in attitude to the role of the arts in society during those decades, in turn provoking changes in the ways that cultural productions were delivered, consumed and participated in by the new and diverse audiences they targeted. The creative opportunities opened up by the community arts funding initiatives of the 1970s-80s attracted young and enthusiastic arts workers with few or no ties to institutionalised arts practices of production and consumption. Their alternative approaches to art and performance making were infused with energetic idealism for social change at the grass roots strata of society. Despite four decades of activity, the persistent phenomenon of community circus has to date received very little attention within social or performance histories. This article begins a narrative history of community circus in Australia, framed by the national trends and political policies that contributed to its emergence during the 1970s and 1980s.