Nordic Circus Year 2011 is a project that is jointly carried out by the central Nordic circus organisations in New Nordic Circus Network (NNCN). The NNCN also welcomes a new Nordic partner into our project Nordic Circus Year 2011: Norræna húsið / Pohjolan Talo / Nordens hus in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The Finnish Circus Information Centre acts as coordinator of the project. The project is part of the strategic action points for culture, carried out by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, during the Finnish 2011 presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The Nordic Circus Year 2011 will manifest the central characteristics of circus art in a Nordic context. The project will research, present and build the culture-political, artistic, educational, research-based and social dimensions of the contemporary circus art form in the Nordic countries, the Baltic Sea area and on a European and global level. The present-day Nordic circus art serves as a useful tool in tackling with the challenges of integration in a new multi-cultural Scandinavia, as well as renewing our Nordic dynamic cultural heritage. The special strength in circus art is it’s versatile physical expression that is not based on any spoken language. Therefore the art form serves as a source of wellbeing that can be shared by all age groups – especially appealing to children and young people – and that has a quality of building a stronger sense of community.

During the one-year-long development project the NNCN will create a Nordic cultural policy recommendation for the circus art, as well as integrate circus as a central and visible partner in strengthening the cultural cooperation of the Nordic countries, the Baltic Sea area, and the European Union.

The wide dimension of the development project is based on the firm networks and long-term cooperation projects inside the global community of circus arts. These networks and projects stretch from Northern America through Europe and Asia all the way to Oceania. The Nordic Year of Circus will turn the global circus community’s active eyes towards the Nordic countries and towards our capacities in building focused and target-oriented cooperation and development in the field of culture and the arts.