Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to be involved with a variety of circus projects, performances and festivals; some big, some small, but all of them with a little bit of magic. However, nothing prepared me for the spectacle of Lifeline. The video associated with this text captures some of the colour, vibrancy and power of the performance; it shows the what of Lifeline. The interviews with the participants and organizers reveal more of the how. This text will delve deeper into the why of Lifeline. For me, the why of it all started with watching the performers cross the river to warm rounds of applause and seeing each crossing finish with cheers and hugs, which led me to wonder, “What motivates someone to step out onto a wire and walk across a river?”

As can be seen in the accompanying video, “Lifeline: A funambulism spectacle organized by Galway Community Circus,” the performers were motivated by their national and international partners and an army of volunteers. On Saturday, 16 July 2022, 140 performers crossed the Claddagh Basin on a series of highwires.

Lifeline’s performers came from a broad cross-section of backgrounds. They ranged in age from ten to 66 years old, and while some were professional circus artists, many were beginners and novices whose only circus experience had been the preparation for this feat. The event was part of the Galway International Arts Festival and took place on an unusually bright and sunny day.

The rainbow colours of the performers’ costumes shone as they crossed the dark water. An enormous audience filled the banks of the Claddagh and cheered as each participant crossed the wire. The question of why—why someone would intentionally and willingly cross a treacherous river on a wire in front of thousands of people—is a question worth dedicating some time to answering.

Lifeline was an international participatory project that promoted physical and mental well-being, safe risk-taking and social inclusion through funambulism—tightwire walking using a balancing pole. The project was produced and presented by Galway Community Circus and a host of other funders, partners and contributors.¹

Lifeline was a spectacular performance—Europe’s largest highwire performance event—that saw 140 performers cross over the River Corrib on a series of seven high wires. The site of the performance, the River Corrib in Galway City, has been described as a suicide hotspot. The rushing water, the closeness of the river to Galway Bay and its vicinity to the centre of the city meant that over the years, many people, especially younger people, died at this location by suicide (Keating).

In our interview for this article, Ulla Hokkanen, Director of Galway Community Circus and Artistic Director of Lifeline, explained that one of the primary goals of the project was “to use the art of funambulism to create a spectacle performance over the river that would give people hope, that would build resilience and [would allow] people here in Galway to look at that site in a different light.” Hokkanen elaborated on the thought process that led up to Lifeline in an interview for The Irish Times newspaper:

It seemed very bad in 2016 […] I was living beside it, and it was constant. Every week there was another death. You would hear the helicopters, and everyone who lives in Galway knows what that means: that someone has jumped into the river and the helicopters are looking for them […] we thought about this idea of trying to address youth mental health and wellbeing through circus. We are not trained mental-health experts, but with community projects, like circus, we can help create a preventive space, a safe space, for young people to overcome challenges and support themselves and each other. (Keating)

When asked about their feelings toward the River Corrib’s rushing waters in an interview, participants spoke of fear, anxiety and dread. Specifically, multiple participants mentioned the dark feelings that took them when they heard the helicopters at night, a sign that another person had gone into the water.

So, the organizers choosing to utilize a circus art that specifically conjures up these darker feelings by asking performers to place themselves in the apparent jeopardy of falling into the water created an event of catharsis for the community.² Through their enjoyment of the spectacle and their wonder at the performers’ abilities, the thousands of Galwegians and arts festival attendees who watched the funambulists perform could purge the dark feelings connected to the river. Funambulism was, in this way, the perfect medium to achieve the organizers’ goals.

Elsewhere, the multidimensional nature of circus art has been shown to allow for a very wide variety of people to participate.³ Lifeline set out to show that funambulism could exemplify that same multidimensionality. It was decided that performers would be able to choose the length and height of the wire they walked, and that they would also be able to choose figures with different degrees of difficulty, from a simple step-by-step to sitting or lying on the wire.

But if the project was to allow for beginners, professionals and everyone in between to cross the river, then a new training programme would be needed. Becca Clayton, the Producer of Lifeline, highlighted this in our interview:

So traditionally, before this point, [funambulism was] a solo activity passed down through the generations. To do this project, we had to find a way of being able to teach it to people who weren’t experts before; people who have all kinds of different ages and backgrounds.

The video we made of Lifeline captures the fun and vivacity of the event, but the social and communal impacts of the project aren’t as easily captured visually. The following section will delve further into the project’s social and community impacts and, in doing so, briefly step away from the audiovisuals.

Lifeline can be considered a prime example of a social circus project in a number of ways, including the application of circus arts within a caring, supportive environment and the pedagogy employed, which focused on the development of trust between participants in a community-building setting.⁴

The term “Social Circus” refers to a form of non-commercial circus education and performance where the focus is on personal development, social inclusion and self-expression, as opposed to the achievement of a high level of artistic technique such as provided by professional circus schools. Essentially, social circus is the use of circus arts as a means rather than an end in itself.

One of the pioneers of the social circus movement, Dr. Reginald Bolton, is also a pioneer of circus studies. Bolton was both a practitioner and a theorist, and his work on both sides of the stage began in the early 1980s. What sets Bolton apart from many others is that he also documented and analyzed his practice, and then published those findings. He spent decades teaching younger people the basic techniques and skills of circus. Trust is one of the key skills he returns to repeatedly throughout his work.

Trust in oneself and others is a vital component of the personal, interpersonal and social skills that develop through the practice of social circus. Bolton argues that risk is an important experience in a young person’s life, and that youth and social circus provide people with strategies for taking risks in a safe and healthy environment. Circus practices and activities are centred on a certain element of risk, here defined as something distinct from danger or hazard:

[…] a toddler, learning to walk, must risk falling. She may fail many times, but her skill and therefore her chances will improve, and ultimately, she will succeed; she will win. Each attempt to stand is a gamble. If you want to avoid the risk of falling, simply remain sitting or lying down. (Bolton 30)

It would appear that the care and time taken by the tutor team in their training for the event greatly impacted the effectiveness of the skills learned and the quality of the training experience. Darragh says:

You knew that they knew what they were doing, so you just trusted them to show you how to do it. And I think that’s really important […] you know, you can tell, and you can pick up on it. And these guys, they were amazing.

Seeing the tutors perform the act well gave the trainees confidence in the tutor’s abilities, but seeing them perform in a calm way—and having that calm approach carry through to the bespoke learning outcomes and assessment for each trainee—meant that the trainees could also see themselves performing well and in a calm way. It could be said that they identified with or saw themselves in the tutors as calm and proficient funambulists, and they were then given the room to realize this. Mahon explains how this approach was intentional and explicit throughout the project:

So, it comes from the experience of the tutor in his own feelings […] and then also recognizing certain patterns in people’s behaviour; certain nervousness, certain psychologies, certain facets of how the mind reacts, and how that displays physically. There’s a couple of tell-tale signs. You know, stress, tears, all of that sort of stuff as anxiety. And you don’t want to push someone too far into there. All you can really do is say, “No, I believe you. The option is here, I think you will be fine. We can go together.” But you’re not going to push. You’re not going to put them in the uncomfortable zone, but you can make them aware; “I think the uncomfortable zone is safe for you at this time.” And, again, that comes from experience, having been there yourself, and the observations that happened in the days before or even the hours before.

Based on the quote above, it appears that trust, and maybe some sort of identification, were involved in the performers’ motivation. If we combine this idea with Bolton’s understanding of the importance of risk within circus arts, we arrive at a position where a person who wishes to cross a river on a wire for their own personal reasons encounters circus arts tutors who show them how to do it safely, and that process promotes trust. The participants identify with the tutor, and through their shared appreciation of the importance of risk, they are able to find within themselves the physical and mental strength to achieve their goals. I like to think that through this experience of trust and the shared understanding and appreciation of the importance of risk, a new, and very particular, sense of community is built. This sense of community motivates people to trust in themselves and the organizers, to the point where they are comfortable while also feeling excited and possibly scared, but simultaneously motivated to cross a rushing river on a wire (“Feelings about Lifeline”).

The word “community” is present in so many aspects of Lifeline. The video shows the Claddagh Basin lined with Galwegians watching, cheering and enjoying the performance. It seems appropriate to use this term to describe the motivating emotion of the performers in Lifeline, but what “community” exemplifies is also referred to by the performers when asked about their motivation. Darragh says:

I can’t even put into words how amazing they were; so supportive. And they genuinely wanted people to succeed, so you really felt that energy when you were working with them. And everyone, even the other participants, was so supportive, and it sort of turned into a little family. And it’s so rare—I mean, that’s kind of common in circus, that people help each other out and build each other up to do the scary things. But I think maybe not so much from the general public, that you hear people being like “Go, Go! You can do this!” unless it’s a sports game or something. So it’s really nice. You felt like everyone wanted you to succeed, and I think that that played into how well everyone did.