Background

In 1987, Mexico City was bombarded by the media on the subject of youth violence and gangs.

In Mexico there are currently almost 25 million youngsters between 12 and 24 years of age, almost half of which are in a state of poverty or extreme poverty and there is no clear social policy to care for them.

How can Action-Research contribute to a situation of this nature? This was the situation in which Action-Research began working in 1987 to assess the situation of working-class youth identified as “gangs” to curb the growing violence and find mechanisms that would enable them to be reincorporated into a society that regarded them as “adversaries”.

This gave rise to the Flying Circus, whose name comes from the meetings we held in the streets when we used to wonder what we should call ourselves. Most of them had animal nicknames (The Cat, The Flea, The Dark Animal, etc.) and they said, “We are a bunch of animals, as though we were a circus…but with nowhere to land, we are a Flying Circus.”

Hence, we started to look for a place where the proposal could “settle down”, which we achieved a few years later (1994), after 7 years of radiophonic work and the promotion of youth culture, a “Commodatum” Agreement with the City Government, a Revocable Temporary Administrative Permit (PATR by its abbreviation in Spanish), by which we received, free of charge, the loan of a spacious, old movie theatre abandoned for more than 10 years, in exchange of their rehabilitation and maintenance with the collective work of the youngsters, to be used for their attention.

Mission

To reinforce the different sectors of society –which are usually excluded for economical and political reasons, because of their gender, identity, sexual preference or any other type of group condition—to find new forms of insertion in their individual and collective life with the support of the projects and through the systematic and permanent professionalization of the activities programmed, always taking into account our responsibility with the community, with the participants, with the authorities in office and with the destination of resources applied in this work

Objective

Our objective has been to start, from the “Common Culture” (Paul Willis, 1994), as a means to build up the integration of values and the reconstruction of the social weaving among the different social sectors, through the strengthening of young identities via the revaluation of their skills, their potential and raising their self-esteem (towards the poor) and, simultaneously, the construction and dissemination of common languages (towards the integrated sectors). From this union, we seek to identify possible partners that will support this initiative, through two basic strategies: to negotiate a physical space where we may carry out the activities that arise from the proposals of the young from popular sectors –to assume a role of broadcaster and foreseer and not of “driving-force”—and, on the other hand, that the proposals are coherent with the programming themes of the project to facilitate the participation of different social groups with similar objectives.

Project Overview

Circo Volador is an applied research model which draws a horizontal line between two poles: the “integrated society” and the “marginalized society”, that may be joined, brought together and approached through the creation of a “social attention infrastructure”, represented, in this case, by the Cultural Center (Circo Volador), seen as an interaction space for different social groups, which starts working and identifying values and quality of the work and creations produced by the poorer groups, in order to consolidate them, broadcast them, giving them a professional character and making them known in other contexts, as well as used (the space as such) as a neutral point of encounter between the two identified poles.

The work method and strategy resulted from our imagining a “social limit” established at two extremes, which comprised a society of exclusion, with rich and poor. First of all we identified poor, excluded youth groups, which we set about contacting, to establish an “initial link”. We met with them to find out what they thought, saw and/or produced, in other words, their skills and strengths, on the basis of which we created archives and designed working proposals that would give them an opportunity to begin to influence their environment.

At the opposite extreme, we found a sector of the population in which young people travelled, had free time, universities and spaces to enjoy themselves and be in fashion, who constituted a minority with opportunities to obtain access to education, health and social well-being. This led us to assess the status of youth and we decided to draw a horizontal line through the previous situations, which became a “social infrastructure” represented in a cultural center (i.e. Flying Circus), seen as a “forum for social attention” which began to sow and crystallize proposals by young people from the poorest groups, as well as being a neutral meeting point between the two poles identified through our methodology.

Involving the community in the remodelling, cleaning up and refurbishment of the area was an attempt to establish the site in their everyday life, which enabled us to achieve a level of trust, which was reflected in the active, constant participation of the population, which gave the participating actors an alternative forum for expression which they themselves had constructed.

The work has enabled us to re-appraise the creative work of young people, included various social groups and enabled the experience to be publicized in the media, by sensitizing and inviting society to take a first-hand look at this reality, which few people know about.

It is worth pointing out that “social infrastructure” does not necessarily involve Flying Circus, since it can just as well be substituted by a radio program, a competition, a workshop or a recording study, if people wish to repeat this experience.

Attention Center (Focus)

The target group are the young male and female, from working class sectors of the city in general, in order to promote their development through the strengthening of their own interests, their culture, their skills, their potential and the positive points of social interaction they have with their communities, providing them with tools that will allow them to have access to better jobs or, in an independent way, to self-employment, through the opening of workshops that will integrate them to the microindustry o small enterprise; transformed into important social actors, with the ability to act, to dialogue and with their own proposals.

Key dates:

• February 1987: Beginning of Action Research Project with the aim of assessing the status of young working class people identified as “gangs” to find the best way of reincorporating them into a society that regarded them as “violent enemies.”

• September 1988: Start of nightly radio broadcasts of program entitled, “Just for Gangs” on 105.7 FM through which, over the following three years, we began to make contact with the 1,500 youth gangs detected by the original diagnosis of the Research Project, whose initial objective was “to lend a voice and presence in the media to those who had no way of pubicly defending themselves from the attacks that denigrated them” and engage in a dialog with other important social actors for this groups (such as the police, parents, teachers, social leaders, local authorities, alternative projects, artists and musicians, etc.)

• August 1989: First Youth Competition entitled, “Rock in the Concrete Jungle” in which 164 groups of various genres (including Punks and Anarchists) participated, including some from other states. This established the Flying Circus as an emerging institution that people could trust because of the transparent way the competition was organized, the open, inclusive invitation to participate, music-related prizes to enable them to professionalize their work and the proposals to integrate most of the participants into new areas of the project’s development.

• June 1990: Legal constitution of the organization with a public notary under the name of “Research and Development of Sub-Metropolitan Projects” dedicated to developing projects to support youth under the Flying Circus banner.

• October 1993: Start of broadcasting of second radio program, “The Tunnel: an underground passage to where it’s at.” until September 1995, on 1590 AM, where in addition to giving them a voice, we began to disseminate the archives on Youth Culture we had been compiling since the start of the project, with the aim of professionalizing young people’s work so that they could publicize their various cultural creations. This also set a precedent in Commercial Radio due to the fact that a private radio station was willing to accept a project of this nature, which culminated in the broadcasting of one hundred hour-long, theme-based programs linked to youth programs, including the participants’ independent creations.

• February 1995: Signing of the Loan and Restitution Agreement with the Government of the City to use the Francisco Villa Cinema (abandoned for over 10 years) which would be the future headquarters of the project and start of restoration proejcts with the participation of youth and their families. This building, together with many others in the city, was part of a policy for providing community services in the late 1960s. Over the years, however, the city government gradually washed its hands of these recreational and cultural activities for the poor population and many of the facilities began to be abandoned and closed to the ´public. An agreement of this nature was made possible by the visibility we had achieved through previous projects.

• July 1998: Inauguration of Flying Circus Center of Art and Culture and signing of the first inter-institutional collaboration contracts with international and national organizations such as NOVIB (The Netherlands), AVINA (Switzerland), ASHOKA (US), SDS (Mexico).

• February 2001: Start of two years of radio broadcasting of the third project called “Young People on Monitor”, at 88.1 FM on the most important news station in the country (“Monitor”) within a solid, private firm, to present current youth projects to an adult audience with a higher economic status, which provided enormous support for the Flying Circus project, as well as for the dissemination of its everyday activities.

• February 2004: Creation and design of website called www.graffitiarte.org, a page on graffiti resulting from a researh project undertaken years before, which contains articles on the history and development of graffiti in Mexico and the world, with photographs divided into categories and types of graffiti. This page received an award from the French page AMELATINE for the best Latin American page on graffiti.

• February 2004, The First Festival of Sub-metropolitan Popular Youth Culture “Youth Cult” was also held, with the support of NCCR N-S (Switzerland) which sought to “stimulate and promote the participation of young people in processes that develop the creation of alternative spaces to the exclusion caused by global changes.” This event enabled young people to be incorporated into broader contexts, which in turn allowed them to interact with non-governmental organizations, the mass media, government and private enterprise.

• September 2004, Named, “One of the Best 12 Social Practices in the world” by the Uited Nations in it´s Program (UN- Habitat).

• April 2005, Two years Agreement of collaboration with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

• October 2005, Certified as “Best Practice” by the Foro Iberoamericano y del Caribe, Fundación Hábitat Colombia y la Alcaldía de Medellín.

• October 2005, Start of radio broadcasting of the forth project called “Tolerancia Zero”, at 105.7 FM. “Reactor”

• September 2006, Opening of the “Circo Volador” Recording Studio, initiating the work of recording and production of 25 national bands in free form.

• March 2007, The Second Festival of Sub-metropolitan Popular Youth Culture “Youth Cult” was also held, with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foudation.