Imaginarius – International Street Theatre Festival of Santa Maria da Feira has been re-elected to the Steering Committee of Circostrada Network, the largest European network for the promotion of street arts and contemporary circus. The network is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission and the French Ministry of Culture. With this re-election, Imaginarius maintains its active participation in an exclusive core group of eight members from six countries, responsible for defining the strategic development of this international community, made up of 150 partners from 40 countries.
Circostrada operates under a model of collaborative governance, established through its Steering Committee, created in 2014, which works closely with the coordination team to define, develop, and implement the strategic vision of this international network.
The Steering Committee, composed of eight members from Italy, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Sweden, elected its new members during the network’s most recent annual meeting, held in late January in Marseille, France. This marks Imaginarius’s second consecutive three-year term on the committee.
Circostrada brings together professionals from across Europe—as well as from other diverse regions—united by a shared commitment to street arts and contemporary circus. Its membership includes both small and large organisations, independent entities, public institutions, festivals, residency centres, creation and performance spaces, support organisations, national networks, resource centres, and development agencies.
The network’s annual calendar of initiatives is designed to foster meetings and knowledge exchange among its members, with a view to strengthening European and international cooperation. Highlights include the annual Circostrada meeting, a key moment for dialogue, reflection, and collaboration; FRESH Street, whose second edition was hosted in Santa Maria da Feira in 2017; and FRESH Circus, two flagship events that promote street and contemporary circus arts in Europe. The network also organises training, capacity-building, and mediation actions that are essential to designing programmes tailored to each country’s reality and the cultural events they promote—ultimately strengthening collaboration across the network.
Created to respond to the dynamism and needs of the contemporary circus and street arts sectors, the Circostrada Network plays a decisive role in the dissemination of information and the sharing of knowledge, promoting meetings, cooperative actions, and partnerships among professionals that strengthen the recognition of these two art forms.
As a resource platform, Circostrada provides and circulates well-grounded data on the state of both sectors to European Union institutions, as well as to national and regional policymakers, thus contributing to the evaluation and implementation of specific and appropriate cultural policies.
Imaginarius has been a member of the Circostrada Network since 2014, but its first election to the Steering Committee occurred in 2022. With its recent re-election, the Santa Maria da Feira festival will remain on the committee for another three years. Telma Luís, the festival’s project manager, continues to serve as its representative and spokesperson within the network.
Participation in international networks like Circostrada aims to keep Santa Maria da Feira and its cultural events at the forefront of discussions and action around new directions for contemporary circus and street arts at both the European and international levels. This is in keeping with the region’s nearly three-decade history of artistic exploration in public space and its established identity as a hub for producing street-based artistic content that drives social and economic development.
