The Circus Play Project | โครงการ เล่นด้วยกัน | အတူတူကစားမယ်
We plan to return to Mae Sot from early October 2025 and work through to late December 2025 and then maybe do some more in March – June 2026.
Donations can be made at any time to support our work!
You could join our project in Mae Sot
– teach circus, art, play –
and help support disadvantaged youngsters.
Share your skills for a week or two.
October – Dec 2025.
Please email info@circusplay.org for details.
Circus Play Report 2024-25 available now
Our Report on the project last season (2024-25) is available here. We start out new season late September 2025!
Project photos
Here’s a selection of photos from Mae Sot and Pho Phra learning Centres. Mid-Oct 2024 to early Jan 2025. I hope you can see the surprising and wonderful skills the youngsters are learning in our weekly 90-minute sessions. They learn really fast, build their capacity week-on-week, improve their abilities, help...
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Circus Play December video
https://youtu.be/mfv18CPI9rg Our workshops and trainings continue. These young students showing fast-learned juggling skills and an ability to take risks and learn more each session.
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Circus Play Nov video update
https://youtu.be/7Bkndy-vMoA About mid-way through our project this season. The youngsters at Hope learning centre in Pho Phra show us what they are learning. The school supports the circus class with teachers present and helping with the play and circus trainings.
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Mae Sot 2024-25 post#1
Project up and running in Mae Sot! 12 learning centre each week Mon-Fri, Circus club at Stardust Studio on Saturday and 2 learning centres on Sunday. Social Circus every day! Working with 400 young people/children each week for 10 weeks. Yes, we are teaching skills through Fun and Play –...
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Some feedback from Schools (Migrant learning Centres):
“First of all, a massive thank you for conducting the circus program for us. This program has had a lot of positive impacts on our school and students.”
“The circus has arrived to inspire and teach our students! This fantastic opportunity helped to ignite their creativity, teamwork, and showmanship. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the organizers for bringing this enriching experience to our school community”
“We noticed that you paid attention to each of the participants’ needs, and encouraged them to exceed their expectations. With your positive attitude and guidance, our students were able to improve their creativity and communication. Above all, we saw that they were having fun while performing the things that they learned. We would like to have more programs like this in the coming academic years!”
READ THE PROJECT REPORT 2023-24.
The Circus Play project Phang-Nga and Mae Sot. Complete Jan 26th 2024
ကျောင်းများ (Migrant Learning Centres) မှ ပြန်လည်တုံ့ပြန်မှုများ
“အရင်ဆုံး ကျွန်တော်တို့အတွက် circus အစီအစဉ် ပြုလုပ်ပေးတဲ့အတွက် အထူးပင်ကျေးဇူးတင်ရှိပါသည်။ ဒီအစီအစဉ်က ကျွန်တော်တို့ကျောင်းနဲ့ ကျောင်းသား၊ကျောင်းသူတွေအပေါ်မှ
“Circus အစီအစဉ်က ကျွန်တော်တို့ကျောင်းသူ၊ကျောသား
“ကျောင်းသား၊ကျောင်းသူတဦးဆီရဲ့ လိုအပ်ချက်တိုင်းကို အာရုံစိုက်အလေးပေးပြီး သူတို့ရဲ့ မျှော်မှန်းချက်တွေကို ကျော်လွန်အောင် တိုက်တွန်းအားပေးခဲ့တာကို ကျွန်တော်တို့ သတိပြုမိပါတယ်။ သင်၏အပြုသဘောဆောင်သောသဘောထားနှ
Everyone Needs to have Fun!
Where ever we go we bring Fun and promote change – soft power to support and influence society to make it more inclusive, build-bridges across communal divides, promote gender-equality; inspire confidence, problem-solving, creativity, cooperation. We are building a community that share in Fun and Respect for each other.
We need your help to continue this subtle but vital work.
The 2023-24 project in Khao Lak
24th Nov. Short video
https://youtu.be/UOeylZ_mYscA short video of sessions last week. We don’t have a video maker on location so our video capture
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23rd Nov, Alex Durrant photos
Alex Durant is a natural circus workshop trainer. She is also a qualified pysiotherapist, and budding photographer. Her photographs
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20th November, ULC, Grade 4 and Grade 6 students
30 students, Grade 4 at 9am and 35 students, Grade 6 at 12:40. Only a few photos, other photos
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Wat Commaneeyaket school, 17th November
The “philosophy” of Circus in a Suitcase lives strongly with Circus Play. We lug our suitcases in and out
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Making and Playing, Ban Bang Niang School 15th November
Juggling balls: 140 made! Thanks to Alex Durrant and Wei Phyo. 20 hula hoops in action. Rola Bola training
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Pakweep, Thai School, Khao Lak 13th November
At a Thai school Pakweep, 15 kms north of Khao Lak, today. An introduction for the Thai youngsters to
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Khao Lak 10th November 2023 at ULC
Grade 6 workshops. Great young people. 9 classes lined up for next week, some in different schools 15 kms
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Workshops – week 1
Circus Play is Go! First full workshops today at FED Unified Learning Centre. Alex Durrant and Jules Howarth lead
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The Circus Play Project is bringing new skills and fun to children and young adults living around Khao Lak, Thailand.
Playing together helps us live together and our motto is
“Everyone Needs to have Fun”.
The Circus Play project in Mae Sot Dec 2022 – Jan 2023 has been completed
We have had good feedback from the schools and it was an absolute joy to meet and get to work with so very many young people and teachers.
We are planning to return in Jan 2024 and have a new project in development for Nov-Dec 2023 in Phangna, southern Thailand.
A report on the project is now available.
engaging with about 220 children each week and weekend juggling workshops took place at Joy House Arts & Peace Community centre.
The Circus Play Project continues the work of Social Circus Myanmar which delivered social circus workshops in Yangon every dry season (November-February) from 2014-2020 to thousands of young people. The project builds on the foundations laid by Spark Circus which toured shows and workshops in Mae Sot and Thailand from 2007 – 2019.
Working with Help Without Frontiers which runs Migrant Learning Centres and provides support for people in and around the Thai border town, Circus Play will provide regular social circus and play workshops from November 2022 to February 2023.
The project will be funded by donations. Social Circus International, based in UK, will gather funds for the project and monitor finances and project outcomes.
Our workshops use circus skills and play as tools to promote healthy activities, co-operation, self-esteem and provide a much needed opportunity for fun and laughter. Accessibility, inclusion and gender-equality are key elements in our project delivery.
As well as workshops in learning centres and schools, the project team will train local young adults as circus play trainers and supply equipment so the workshops can continue throughout the year.
“Given the situation in Myanmar, we can’t resume social circus activities in Yangon but we can work with the large Myanmar community near the border. We want to use our fun, skills and silliness to get Thai kids and Myanmar kids playing together, building lasting friendships.”
– Project Manager, Jules Howarth. Social Circus Myanmar.
“Spark Circus is very excited to support the Circus Play Project. Being unable to work in the region during the pandemic, we are very happy to know that the migrant children in Mae Sot, will once again get the opportunity to play and explore the circus arts. We will be sending some Spark Alumni to support the project.”
– Charlene Whitehead, Spark Circus.
“This is a great idea – it’ll help the children’s wellbeing and give them an alternative to the dire circumstances in which they are living.”
– Sally Thompson, former executive director of The Border Consortium.