A Clown's Mind

A Clown's Mind is an Erasmus+ training course, consisting of 10 days of program and 2 travel days.

The objective of this training course is to explore the potential of clowning, movement and mindfulness, employing diverse approaches and modalities, as methods for enhancing the skills and abilities of youth workers.

This project aims to assist youth workers in developing the skills and confidence required to create safe, inclusive, and enjoyable learning environments for young people. Incorporating clowning, movement, and mindfulness practices into the project will enable participants to foster their social and emotional skills in an entertaining and engaging manner. Through these practices, participants will learn how to connect with young people on a deeper level, build trust and rapport, and facilitate positive change. We aspire to establish a learning environment where participants can develop crucial abilities and skills that they can leverage in their future personal and professional lives through this project.

Who is this training for ? 

The training is designed for youth workers, volunteers and anyone working with people and seeking to refresh their skills and habits in their job and personal lives.

​Participants must be over 18 years and must be able to understand and communicate in English, so they can participate fully in a program that will be held in English.​

You can apply to this training if you are resident and traveling from (and to) France, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Greece and Germany. 

This training course is about:

The ability to play, be, and move with reality, mixing it with fiction, and walking like a tightrope walker on the edge of paradoxes.

​Playing, especially in groups, to collectively create something different from reality, while remaining anchored by it.

​Improvisation frames that push us to "throw ourselves" with the body and the voice, as well as with the mind.

The discovery of our own "Clown's mind," an attitude of being, way before acting and doing, lightly in balance in the presence.

Improvisations (with some different "themes," constraints, directions), in which to explore the dimension of "meeting" oneself as a creature free to play, move, express and create with what is available (body, emotions, environment). The clown reveals oneself like an open book (becoming a novel, detective story, poem, or comic strip as he pleases).

We will attempt to repeatedly open the door to the unknown, to find (and find ourselves in) something new every time, to experience how reality, even personal reality (character, cultural background, education, everything that has contributed to making us become what we are...), comes to be more or less consciously the material, the nourishment, or seasoning of the theatrical event itself

Throughout the training, activities will take place both indoors and in the beautiful natural surroundings. The training will heavily rely on non-formal education methodologies that encourage active participation and cultivate an atmosphere of acceptance, trust, openness, and non-judgment within the working group. Operating frequently in small workgroups will promote more reflection, feedback, as well as the inclusion and free expression of all participants. The program includes various activities designed to cover the entire learning spectrum as defined by Kolb: experience, reflection, abstraction/conceptualization, planning/transfer.

This training is for you if you are willing to: 

• spend time outdoor, move, play, walk and dance.
• go out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. 
• improve your facilitator/trainer skills.
• acquire new tools and ideas for your job and your daily life.
• open yourself in order to share your own skills and learn new ones.
• commit to this work during the whole duration of the project, dissemination and follow-up included.
• empower yourself with the support and the care of the group.

Working methods

You will learn by doing ! This will be a collective experience in which everyone will have to invest. The course will be anchored in the sharing of ideas, opinions, experiences and practices. Joining us will be an opportunity to share and gain confidence in your own skills and experiences.​

Also, bear in mind that previous experiences with clown, dance, theater and singing practices are not needed to attend the training.