National Youth Circus Event 2025

National Youth Circus Event

Friday 11 – Sunday 13 April 2025

The annual National Youth Circus Event (NYCE) brings together youth circus schools from across the UK, NI and Republic of Ireland for an action packed, circus filled weekend. Young people (11 – 16yrs) have a chance to try new skills, challenge themselves and meet, share and learn from one another in a fun, creative environment!

Applications are now open for the 2025 National Youth Circus Event.

Youth Circus Groups across the UK, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland are welcome to apply

NYCE offers a packed 2-day-programme of circus masterclasses, activities and professional development sessions for group leaders.

The event aims to spark excitement and inspire young circus participants to dream big, reaching new heights (both metaphorically and physically)! We hope it also serves as a platform to strengthen connections within the youth circus community.

Applications are due by Friday 13 January 2025

All applicants will be advised of the outcome by Tuesday 21 January 2025

Further information

Costs

The National Centre for Circus Arts financially supports the event and provides all activities, workshops and catering as well as arranging free accommodation for groups coming from outside of London.

Groups attending will need to pay for their own travel to, from and during the event*.

*Please see our access information for more details.

Group Leaders and Young People

To take part, groups must be able to commit

2 group leaders aged 21+
Up to 4 young participants aged 11 – 16 years**

Group leaders and Young People will need to be confirmed when successful groups are asked for their second round of paperwork.

**Please see our access information for more details.

Safeguarding

The safety, health, and wellbeing of children and young people, and adults at risk is taken very seriously by the National Centre for Circus Arts. There are considerations that schools and group leaders need to account for to ensure the appropriate and the highest standards of safeguarding are met. Safeguarding is embedded in all aspects of the event from application stage, delivery and evaluation.

Application process

We receive more applications than we have places available. For this reason, we use the following selection process to ensure there is wide representation, considering the breadth of the sector:

Location, size of organisation, training focus and young person representation from the following:

Global Majority (Previously known as BAME)
Index of Multiple Deprivation Decile Q1 & 2 more info
Declared Disabilities more info
Families with a combined income of £42k or lower.

Our expectation is that 2 of the 4 places for your attending young people should be represented within these target areas and you will be able to evidence this on request.

We appreciate that this may not be possible for everyone, and there is an option to explain this in the application process. Please remember that every application will be considered. We encourage you to still apply even if you do not collect this information on participants, or you don’t feel you meet this expectation.

Shortlisting

Stage one: The Documents required at application stage are:

Your Safeguarding policy
Your Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Policy.

Stage Two: If you are shortlisted, we will require further information & documentation:

Group leaders and participants details
Provide a risk assessment for attending the event
Send confirmation from the Chairperson of your board about the validity of your group leaders.

If you are unable to supply this information, we may be unable to offer you a place on the NYCE 2025.

Access Information

We are fully committed to making NYCE as inclusive and accessible as possible. We aim to work with schools and organisations to better understand the barriers to participation so we can work together to overcome them. We appreciate that taking part in the event has financial considerations and do our best to support within our resource and within the guidelines of reasonable adjustments.

If your young person is aged 17 and above, and has special education needs or is disabled, please let us know so we can discuss further.
Due to our strict budget, we may not be able to cover any extra support workers who are attending with groups. If you may be affected by this, please let us know.
Care pot – we have a small amount of funds that can be used to support with costs such as travel. More information is TBC, and we’re happy to discuss further if you feel financial considerations are a barrier to you applying.
Participant support: using access audits/ riders are part of our established practice at the National Centre, we welcome these to help prepare for and support with access needs to the best of our ability.

Event Schedule

This is an outline for what the weekend may look like, it may be subject to change.

*Excitingly, we are hoping to host a Cabaret this year. This is an opportunity for young people to perform, watch and celebrate everyone’s hard work. Please note, the Cabaret is optional and yet to be confirmed.