This is an article from the Preston Planet by the excellent north-west journalist Sian Claire Owen. Read Claire's original circus school article with additional picture.

By Sian Claire Owen
March 11th, 2008

Ever wanted to fly through the air with the greatest of ease? Perhaps you always dreamed about juggling knives whilst blindfolded, or taming huge ferocious tigers? Preston Community Circus School offers the chance to taste life in the circus, minus the knives and predatory cats. Sian Claire Owen investigates.

I want to run away and join the circus. I have done ever since I was a youngster, when we were taken on our annual school trip to Blackpool Tower Circus. For us school kids, they were the most exciting, exotic events EVER. Elegant, sparkly acrobats would fly through the air, whilst beneath them huge majestic elephants would spray fountains through their trunks. Okay, so animal rights and hygiene issues aside – elephant snot might not get past Health & Safety these days - these memories stayed with me into adulthood.

Fortunately, thanks to the Preston Community Circus School, run by Judith Barberel and family, I can now indulge my childhood fantasies of being a glamorous tightrope-walking equilibristic circus star.

As Barberel says: “We set the circus up when our son was younger. He works as one of our trapeze instructors now. His godmother was circus trained, and she noticed that he had great hand-eye co-ordination. We figured that if he could do it, then loads of kids could do it as well, so we set it up as a small workshop, but it’s expanded since then.”

This is an understatement. The small workshop is now an established school with workshops across Lancashire and further a-field, and strong links with Bill Smart’s Circus and Blackpool Tower Circus, to mention a few. Furthermore, a number of their pupils have gone on to perform professionally in various travelling circuses, and have even performed as extras on television programmes such as Casualty, and Holby City - hospital dramas. The irony of this is not lost.

Barberel & Co hope to encourage adults and children to get involved, learn about circus and performance skills, and basically have obscene amounts of fun playing with stilts, tightropes, unicycles, and trapeze. Yes, that’s right folks, trapeze.

Their trapeze workshop is open to all, and is taught by Davi, a former member of the Flying Jetsons who are notorious for performing the triple somersault. You can tell how death-defying these people are, they don’t tend to use safety nets.

But fear not ladies and gentlemen, if terrifying feats of aeronautical acrobatic ability isn’t your bag, there’s plenty to get stuck into. And you don’t have to be under ten years old to join in.

Helen Lister first came along with her son Thomas, and now the whole family spend their Saturday afternoons clowning around, so to speak. “This circus school is absolutely brilliant!” she shouts, whilst whizzing around on her unicycle. “It takes me back to my childhood, it makes you feel so young, and free!” And then off she goes.

Dave Elliot, her partner, adds: “It sounded quite interesting when we heard about it. The unicycle is great fun but spinning plates is a lot easier. I’m not sure about the trapeze yet, I don’t think they can lift me up on it”.

Of course, the school has a lot of young children joining in, and why not? As Barberel says: “It’s great because the kids get to do something they wouldn’t normally do. Sometimes people can get too over-protective, so we give them a bit of ‘risk factor’.”

There is the inevitability of bumps and bruises associated with careering around on oversized ball-bearings, but there are also real advantages to learning circus skills. As Barberel explains: “We’ve heard of examples of how improving hand-eye co-ordination can increase concentration in the classroom. Recently, one of the teachers at Corpus Christie High School in Preston taught juggling, and there was roughly a 30% improvement in exam results.”

“We know of one juggler who was given three knives and a blackout mask,” she adds. “He was told to juggle blindfolded, and he did it with no problems because he knew the pattern.”

Blackout masks and sharp knives? So that’s what she means by ‘added risk factor. Hmmm. But this is all part of the allure of the circus. The thrills, dangers, and adrenaline rushes are precisely what make the circus so much fun.

What if the trapeze artists were wrapped in cotton wool and asked to swing over a giant trampoline? “Look, see how they… bounce?” What if the lions had their teeth extracted for health and safety reasons? Where’s the fun in watching a lion-tamer get sucked to death? None whatsoever. We want the possibility of near-death experience and mauling. So hop on a unicycle and break all the legs you want, the show must go on!