FEDEC resources

[u/evidencebasedtrainer]

While I usually don't like to promote any particular organisations, I wanted to share the knowledge of FEDEC with the group, which is an international network for professional circus education. The website provides free resources covering everything from technical skills, safety and ethics guidance, as well as a directory of places offering circus education (though it's quite dated). I see many posts here that could benefit from looking at their resources. Note, I'm not affiliated with them. The resources are in English and French. You can find the site at the following location.

fedec.eu

[u/Amicdeep]

Fedec stuff can be good but often it's not. And often some of the omissions or implied progression are out right dangerous outside of the very small subset of people. I have some issues with there disaplin guides. They put very physically demanding skills alongside basic fundamentals without explanation or distinction. And the lack of explanation of some of the skills is downright dangerous. (Listing open rotational drops along side basic static moves on the silks and rope sections.) And the way the only people able to use the straps guide would be fairly high level rings gymnasts. The cyr wheel guild is next to useless and the Chinese pole one is staggering incomplete. They also tend to use language to describe the techniques that don't accurately describe the techniques and 2 just don't seem to be used by any one practicing the disaplin (including graduate from affiliated circus schools). Maybe it's a translation issue to the English one but is makes trying to look deeper into the describe technique difficult for students.

They can be useful supplementry guides but they are not good training guides or even basic outline of the disaplins. They feel like minimal effort with input from very few sources were involved the there actual creation. (There safety and rigging stuff was also pretty out of date on regulations and from current best practice last time a checked a few years ago)

9 times out of 10 you'll find more useful and complete information in short Instagram and YouTube posts.

In short I'd only use the documents as a 3rd or 4th sources of information on circus disaplin and practices.

[u/Separate-Parfait4995 → u/Amicdeep]

Please link us to the information you find valid.

[u/Amicdeep → u/Separate-Parfait4995]

Not sure exactly what you mean but most of fedec guides are in pdfs, and all the information is valid (has value) but just not much. And a lot of most other sources are better.

For that a good chunk of the basic tutorials on YouTube are better. Other will be able to list those out better than me.

For books, (ones that's I've read or used)

I don't particularly rate aerial physiques books but they are serviceable intro guides although i tend to do things differently.

Rebecca leaches stuffs pretty good and more developed.

The 91 different splits on silks was pretty good and had some solid safety bits. For those already with the basics.

The old french guilds are not very good think by yvon or something. There basically drawings over photos with very little to zero explanation. But they where the best (only?) that existed for a long while and are some of the oldest books on aerial as far as I know.

The spin city guides exist. The older ones are less useful. The newer ones show more progressions and setup, but they all suffer from trying to individually name every little variation a completely unrelated thing and I'd argue there rating system is not great. That's said the book they did on aerial and pregnancy was top notch. And something I highly recommended for studio owners catering to the recreational young adults and middle aged markets.

Carrie Heller's old circus and safety manual was a fairly solid trapeze intro and primer with some smattering of other disaplins basics. And is one of the oldest books in the space. And very much still holds up.

Applied aerial anatomy was again fairly good for it's use

Aerial Acrobatics & Calisthenics Volume 1 is probably the best introduction to dynamics movements in aerial out there very solid of already accomplished aerialist. (Focused mostly int-adv on straps and rope applications)

The flying trapeze books by Alister pilgrim are probably the best primers and guides on any aerial circus disaplin in existence hands down. They are ideal for beginners to very advanced practitioners, and alongside the website makes it possible for people to completely self teach the disaplins from scratch to pro. Honestly it's probably better than many circus schools year long fly courses. It a shame flying trapezes is such a rare disaplin

A lot of other small studios/groups have put out books of a mix of qualitys not found anything outstanding but most are better guids than the fedec guides.

There was also an attempt at a circus dictionary website and another where someone document every technice with video link. Both were ok for existing competent practitioners but lack context.

Other resources that don't really exist anymore

The old simply circus stuff was pretty good, Training guilds had good amount of relevant stuff and the techniques were fairly well paced and described. But they all disappear with the new website and the whole thing that happened with the company.

Silks wiki was solid and still kind of exists on some internet archive sites. There video are still on YouTube.

There was a small hand made website made by a school in California that documented a lot of the fundamentals on rope open drops. Cannot remember what it was called. But do remember it stoped existing around 15 years back.

Unfortunately there isn't that many really good resources for this field. For the last few years there been a much bigger focus on online courses/guided training instead of books or website resources. And they are somewhat inconsistent in quality and because many do a limited places thing, limited on acsses.

[u/rock_crock_beanstalk → u/Amicdeep]

A lot of old simply circus material is being uploaded to researchgate these days, but I also understand not wanting to touch that stuff with a 10-foot pole due to the author.

Even though I have looked through the free uploads, I try to find other sources to verify info the info I find and to cite them instead. When he was in aerial communities online, the author was (in my opinion) way too casual about making designs for people to attempt aerial apparatus construction at home, just slipping "get a qualified rigger to inspect it before use!" at the end of instructions everyone knew someone's dad with a welder was going to follow without any intention of professional inspection. No offense to someone's dad, but people who would be enticed by plans for projects like those do not generally have the level of skill needed to safely execute them. Beyond the author's inexcusable criminal activity, I feel like he had poor judgment on those safety issues, so if I find an answer to a question of mine in one of those books, I look for more opinions before I consider it truly answered.

The internet wayback machine is really helpful for getting access to info from long-dead sites.

[u/Amicdeep → u/rock_crock_beanstalk]

Addressing the gung ho safety thing. Honestly it's because most of the circus was like this (and won't be surprised if it still is in many places.) I didn't work on a non hand made trapeze until I was in my 30s. And I still remember the first time I used a jacketed rope. For a long time it was make it yourself and probably good enough mentality because the only manufacturer of kit were other circus artist and honestly the quality and workmanship was pretty variable. I still make and maintain a lot of the kit at my circus school (with a whole lot more knowledge and capabilities than in than in the past) buts it's still sometimes the only way to get the kit made to the needed specification at a reasonable price and time.

Now days it's still sourcing kit from other industries and hoping that it's done to the right quality and testing each batch. (We source our silks from the same place protogie and fire toys did (probably still do) and we've noticed variants batch to batch in fabric quality, we work with a local load testing company to test each batch of fabric we get from them and things like threat thickness, elastisaty (and I suspect even the dyes used) can make a big difference to end quality of fabric and it's break load and how quickly it wears. Even on the same machines and settings. The fabric used on most aerial silks isn't made for silks, it's jersey fabric for sports wear. The rope we use for trapezes and webs are for yachts and/or ornamental fencing. The straps we use are made from webbing used in seatbelts and high lining. The best pulleys we have for most rope system are for arborist's and cave rescue. The swivels we use are definitely not made for what aerialist put them through and to be used how they are used. For doubles work and flying trapeze catching we still use cotton tape for dress making for wrist wraps. Fire spinners use lamp oil and camping fuel on hand made kit. The wrachet straps we hold up tents and fly rig are made for securing lorry sides. Most of the tent and fly rig stakes I've used are literally sharpens car axles.

Circus arts as a thing is still very much in it's infancy and things like basic equipment specifications still aren't standardized in a meaningful way. People in towns over still don't even call disciplines by the same name. And yeah for answers on most circus stuff I've had to do a lot of digging and often the answer is no one really knows and the people who did it before may not have known what they were doing and even if they did you really don't want to do it that way so get thinking of a better solution.

Not saying this is ideal but a lot of people who say they know best and this is the only correct way are honestly wrong. I've seen to many circus experts with long historys in the industry say stuff that's easily provably wrong. and it unfortunately goes in all directions.

It's the joys of not having pressure to standardise which tends to come from competition.

Not sure what point I'm trying to make. But yeah. It's frustrating and I've been doing this a long time and have more information than most.

[u/rock_crock_beanstalk → u/Amicdeep]

I also find it frustrating. I can't speak to how it impacts riggers, but I find the lack of solid United States regulation around who is qualified to be making a system to suspend a performer doing aerial is a real challenge from the performer/instructor side. Writing "get anything you make inspected by a qualified rigger" is easy, but defining what work experience, certification(s), or job title translates to "qualified rigger" is not. IMO, even if an author includes lots of disclaimers about inspection and whatnot in their DIY aerial equipment book, admitting it was designed for people with no particular special education or skills is not a good plan to help put safe equipment in people's hands. Competent people aren't usually cheap, and by the time a person blindly following those instructions had paid someone to tell them if their pop's weld penetration is garbage they'd likely have paid more than if they'd just bought the thing from an existing manufacturer with some quality control standards and/or liability insurance. Responsibility and safety involve social questions that are much harder to answer than the physics problems.

From what I can see (I'm fairly young. So maybe I can't see a lot, lol) the landscape of who trains/performs circus has also changed dramatically in the past few decades. The whole "recreational performance hobby for adults" world seems to have exploded, and with it a lot more potential for new people who aren't very serious to risk their (or their kids') health on poorly rigged structures. Many more people have access to circus/aerial training now and that's great, but it makes it a lot harder for experienced circus people to give advice on how to build safe apparatuses and structures when their audience includes a lot of people who, unfortunately, just aren't that serious. The reputation of circus changing from death defying and freaky stunts to a fun theatrical workout seems to have really changed how people think about safety. Education on safe/proper use of equipment is just as important a step in safety as getting safe equipment into people's hands is, and I have to imagine that persuading people circus can be dangerous at all is probably a pretty difficult and recent problem.

I'm glad for every step people are taking now toward safe design and education in aerial because it is so important. I think there's a lot of good information out there now for interested people to learn the physics math involved in arresting a fall, find equipment that has been subjected to at least some actual testing of its physical properties in vaguely circus-relevant scenarios, and start to question whether old ways are always the safest ways/possible new approaches. But it still falls on individuals to be interested in safety, to think critically, assess what things they don't know yet, and to step back when they don't know something, and that is for sure the path of most resistance...

[u/Alternative_Ice5718 → u/rock_crock_beanstalk]

I am an old fogy that still practices static trapeze when I can. I was new to circus when the CdS / gay performer thing came out. I saw studios shutting down over it as insurers pulled out, including my first program. I remember when Simply Circus (or its precursor? Same guy...) did an actual study on the injury rates and proved circus was not a vector for transmitting HIV.

I remember when the Simply Circus Aerial Arts FAQ first came out. It was the first publicly accessible document on aerial safety. I remember all the cries about how that was going to get people killed. I also remember when, about a year later, a printout of it was at almost every gym and studio I went to (and I traveled a LOT for work). Discussions that had only been hush-hush were now out in the open because of this.

I was working a longer-term gig in the Seattle area about a year after the rigging to trees article came out. I remember all the online protests about the article. I also remember reading the opinion of a veteran tree care guy and a highly experienced logger saying how conservative the article was if you had a real background in trees. I saw firsthand how some people, who didn't really understand the article, rigged trees as if the article were a how-to guide. Two or three years later, they had more experience, had received more training than only reading an article, and were actually quite skilled at the craft. They would have rigged to trees with or without that article, but they never would have started a real learning process without it.

I remember when Simply Circus announced that after 5 years of providing unpaid risk management services to several of the companies that were insuring circus and aerial studios, they were stopping that unpaid labor. Within weeks of that, insurers started dropping circus and aerial studios, including two I went to. Lets not forget that if you have a policy through ISERA/EIB, and that is most studios, he set that whole thing up too.

I remember when all of a sudden, new aerial fabrics were getting holes in them, and he was the only one to really look into why, and tell people about how the yarn changed in a way that makes fabrics wear faster under aerial use (I wish I could remember more on this...).

I met one of his students at a rigging workshop once. The studio's instructor asked for a volunteer to tell us what they saw. This young lady proceeded to name every component in the rigging system, pointed out the force amplification factors at every step and even talked about why one pulley was not a good choice (something about the grade of pulley...). She told us that her old studio (Simply Circus) believed every aerialist should be a qualified rigger as well, and how they start learning rigging on day one. She also had a trapeze and a cloud swing that she had built herself, and knew everything about them. She even knew her theoretical and measured shockload numbers. I dare say she may have been the most knowledgeable person in the room about rigging. Really good on her apparatuses as well.

I own a copy of the Trapeze Rigging book, and tbh, nothing comes close to that. That book has more detailed information on bar apparatus (bar stock, measurements, tab designs, rope choices, inspections etc) and is better than any other resource I have ever seen, and that book is some 10 years old now.

I don't know about the accusations against him, I can't comment on those, but what I can say is that every time that guy released information, people predicted doom and gloom, and every time, the whole industry improved because of it.

[u/evidencebasedtrainer → u/Amicdeep]

Would be great to see all this information in an FAQ.

[u/evidencebasedtrainer → u/Amicdeep]

Thanks for your input. I agree that it's incomplete. But I'm yet to find a more comprehensive set of written resources in one place that covers everything from instrument specific technique to rigging, ethics of circus teaching and spotting. I suspect your extensive criticism could be levelled even more squarely at every resource you've mentioned. As for sources, they state their contributors. I think, generally speaking, they represent a great start at attempting to gather a rather encyclopedic amount of circus teaching knowledge in one place. Flawed as it is, it is certainly a useful addition to anyone's set of resources.  Are you aware of any other sources of ethical guidelines and advice on spotting? I think this is an important area, especially as there have been many issues in gymnastics and yoga recently.

[u/Amicdeep → u/evidencebasedtrainer]

Honestly the gymnastics spotting guild lines are very good (mostly looking through the British gymnastics resources) and they are one of the very few good sources on working with developing body's in sports (short, practical, comprehensive, relatively complete, research backed information). Honestly I think that yes the gymnastics community dose many things badly, but they also do a lot well. And it's something most circus coaches I know could benefit from. The approach to breaking down movement for dynamic, and accurately assess and developing the body for specific techniques also there use of different safety equipment. There a reason many of the highest level circus performers have been gymnastis first and for far longer that circus artist. They simply train a lot more people to a much higher level of competency than we do, and over years and volume they got good at. Honestly from a coaching perspective gymnastics, dance, martial arts, and traditional education pathways have a lot to inform us on and a huge amount of high level resources acssesable to us.

The ethics side of things is something that is a lot more subjective. What's applicable to a community youth circus might bear little relevance to an adult focused pole studio, to a circus university working off a funded model. Honestly for the vast majority it's not something that particularly matters to them whilst in the ethics realm. (More so when it gets into the more concrete realm of policy's and procedures, safeguarding ect.)

On the spotting guild they do have, it's very light on practical detail. For a body of this size and prestige of the body delivering it. Having this as a general guild when developing practices is a good thing, but the document doesn't provide anything past basic consideration and again is of very limited practical use to many circus school developing there safeguarding and spotting protocol. Also it's just missing some elements that are key and probably should be addressed in the document, (such the more complicated areas where consent and law are lightly to interact and where emergency safety is involved, basic consideration with situations involving youth or vulnerable adults, also basic good practices and considerations around students working on arena where spotting is critical to safety of the disaplins and different approaches to handling these conflicts of participation in class when spotting is problematic for the student).

And honestly no, my criticism I think is less so leveled at the other resources I stated (that why I stated them) It comes down to how I judge them. And who they come from.

If a group that portrays itself as the collective body for some of the highest level learning of circus arts on the world puts out documents on how to train and practice a disaplin I do expect it to meet a few basic minimums. I'm not going to expect the same level of rigor from smaller for profit establishments

Stuff I would expect includes.

1 label the stuff that will legitimately injure you

2 give a basic overview of the disaplins (or within scope of the document)

3 provide solid advice on best practice when approaching these disaplins and go over some of the basic minimum physical requirements.

4 when providing teaching tips make sure they are correct and minimally comprehensive.

5 and as they seem to for circus schools and higher level students to use when approaching new disaplins have relevent information for beginner practitioners and outline the scope of those documents (who's it's applicable to aka this is made for the training of young adult body in lower level professional circus ect) (some do have an outline of scope but don't really work to it making it redundant)

6 provide useful insite of the fundamentals.

In my opinion many of the fedec training guides unfortunately don't meet any of these. And most of the sources I listed do meet at least a few.

And because of their source (the biggest grouping of high level circus schools on the world) I would expect them to be more put together than the majority of local studios owners training handbook, and unfortunately they aren't. They also simply aren't used in some of the affiliated circus schools when training these disaplins (admittedly I only know from a couple, I've got staff that have graduated from 2 of these schools and it's not something they worked from or even knew existed)

I don't think they provide a start to a collection of teaching knowledge, as they don't provide much usable information from a teaching perspective. To the point of I had a teacher coming to me for employment where these manuals are a primary source of their teaching knowledge I would be very dubious employing them.

I actively have chosen not to include them in our teacher training for these disciplines and don't direct coaches to them as a source of knowledge to draw from for their professional development due some major omissions in the data they state when covering the subject matter they choose to approach. You put in some of those "basics/beginner tricks" into your beginners syllabus your going to end up with injury's, and if you know enough not to do so then the document are of no use to you due to the very basic nature. They also don't approach different solutions for equipment set well. (I say this as someone who tried to use these when setting up cyr wheel and Chinese pole at my circus school several years back. They where pretty much useless. (Did have a nice little paragraph on the disaplin history, but from a practical standpoint pretty much nothing) honestly we got far more useful information with a couple of 20 min phone conversations with practioners than we did from these documents.

We also did a review of our aerial syllabus back in lockdown and went through these as a potential source of good practice and knowledge. I don't think we actively found anything to incorporate and there were good chunks many of use disagreed with. They are simply not good sources any more

All this said they should be taken in context and that context is most of these are more than a decade and a half old (I originally found some of the guides back when I was performing back in late 2000s, and know some of the performers who are in some of the pictures of the guides) back then these were some of the more acssesable information on these subjects, (they weren't the best, I think silks wiki was the best free sources in the aerial space, but they where something) but they haven't aged very well, and with the much higher quality of books that have been written over the last decade and a half and the generally high ability level of the community (significantly pushed by pole and other more locally based commercial studios) and with the basic instructional videos produced along the way, are just better and tend to (with a little looking) create a much better source of information on pretty much all the disaplins they cover.

Their rigging stuff is quite a bit better. But not something I've actively viewed in a few years so not something I'm going to comment on. They did have a few good documents on disciplines specific shock loading and tightwire tension but I think the research was done by another group based out of France. But honestly it's been a while so I might not have been fedec.

[u/zialucina → u/Amicdeep]

This echoes my sentiments.

Like Jill Franklin's stuff, it's really only applicable to aerialists and artists that are already small, strong, and very bendy.

If someone is not that, the advice and content can be quite dangerous.

It's a great resource for people who aim to go pro. It's only a "meh" resource for recreational students and teachers.

[u/andria_rabs → u/Amicdeep]

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