Portraits of Inclusion with Craig Quat – Ep.2. Academic Frontiers [Circus Voices Podcast]

Craig Quat is the driving force behind a horizontal social movement known as Functional Juggling. Craig began his career in education at a very young age, when as a child, he managed to overcome the cognitive and social barriers of being a non-neurotypical person, who was growing up poor outside NYC during the 19080s/90s. This unique cultural background, mixed with his personal experiences of social circus intervention, set Craig on a path to develop and transform radically new standards and interpretations of inclusion from within Circus.
He is well known for creating revolutionary learning tools such as the Juggle Board, which uses a series of lanes to roll balls back-and-forth between partners, as opposed to having to throw and catch them. Additionally, he is also responsible for organizing a global movement of social circus practitioners who are collaboratively dedicated to the goal of enhancing new teaching methods through adaptation and re-imagination. Craig has collaborated extensively and traveled to visit many circus groups and cultures from around Europe and in both of the Americas over the past 12 years of his project development.
In 2014 he was the first recipient of the Award for Innovation by the American Youth Circus Organization, and in 2016 he received the Excellence in Education Award from the International Jugglers Association.
He is currently based in Argentina and preparing to embark on a two-year tour of Latin America and Europe that will include new project elements, such as documentation and distribution of information about all the interesting and diverse circus cultures he continues to visit.