Youth Circus Access Scheme

About Youth Circus Bursaries

Circomedia is committed to making circus more accessible to a wider range of people. As part of this, we aim to help families overcome financial barriers which prevent them from accessing our Youth Circus classes and camps.

We offer full- and part-funded places for our regular after-school Youth Circus classes, and our Holiday Youth Circus Camps during school holidays.

Bursaries are available for ages 4-18. To find out more about who’s eligible, how to apply, and how we make bursary decisions, please read our information below.

Who can apply, and how are decisions made?

You can apply for a bursary if you are unable to fund, or fully fund, the cost of a Youth Circus space yourself.

You don’t need to live in a particular area as long as you can arrange travel to and from classes or camps yourself.

There are no set financial thresholds for who can apply (e.g. you don’t need to have a household income of under £x per year or be in receipt of certain benefits). This is because we recognise that lots of factors make up a family’s individual financial circumstances.

Whilst we do take household income into account, we also look at other factors affecting your financial situation. This could include other dependents in your household, significant expenses outside of the cost of living, and other childcare or extracurricular expenses.

We use a points-based system to ensure bursaries are allocated as fairly as possible. Decisions are primarily made based on financial barriers to accessing our programme, but we also consider location (based on Bristol’s areas of deprivation indices) and general opportunity for accessing other similar services.

We won’t consider a student’s suitability in terms of their skill level, previous experience, or enthusiasm for circus. This is because our classes and camps are suitable for all levels and we actively encourage beginners to join. Therefore, it wouldn’t be fair if we assessed bursary applicants based on these factors.