Our Blog

Goodbye from Circadium

June 1, 2026

The last shows have been performed. The last diplomas have been given out. A week of hugs and tears and library-book-giveaways is finally at an end. And with that, the radical experiment of Circadium comes to a close.

Throughout every challenge we faced, our vision never wavered. Contemporary circus in the United States deserves far greater investment. The potential of circus as an art form is limitless. And young people who want to build careers in this field deserve to be supported.

I am extraordinarily proud of what we built over these nine years. The thought and care Circadium’s faculty brought to curriculum design — and to nurturing their students, year after year — was both an inspiration and a gift. I am deeply grateful to every one of our teachers.

Profound thanks go as well to the hundreds of people who made this school possible: everyone who donated, served on the Board or a Committee, volunteered at a Gala, or came to a performance. We built something remarkable together.

Now it falls to our graduates to carry these ideals forward. We expect them to be trailblazers. Circadium’s closure is not the end of bold, creative circus-making in this country — it is a beginning.

Graduates: remember what it means to dig deep. To challenge yourself to take an idea further. To hone your craft. And to show up for your ensemble.

Doris Lessing said, “Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”

This is so true for us as circus artists. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission, or a contract, or the space / time / money to make what you’re dreaming about. I can’t wait to see the paths you forge in the years ahead.

See you down the road. 🎪

Closure Announcement

It is with profound regret that we announce Circadium’s closure, effective June 1, 2026. We will complete our ninth year of classes and graduate our seventh cohort.

When we founded Circadium in 2017, we envisioned creating something unprecedented: a licensed, accredited institution of higher education dedicated to nurturing contemporary circus in the United States.

Against all odds, we achieved this vision. While our days were devoted to providing rigorous training in physical circus skills and artistic craft, behind the scenes we navigated the labyrinthine world of accreditation—expensive, complex, and demanding. The process transformed our systems in countless ways and earned us recognition from organizations worldwide, from FEDEC to Philadelphia’s City Council.

Yet one of our central reasons for pursuing accreditation was to secure financial aid for our students. The defunding of federal education programs has made this impossible.

The cumulative weight of pandemic losses, the steep costs of accreditation, and government policies increasingly hostile to the arts, international students, and financial aid have ultimately proven insurmountable.

Over the next five months, we will continue to work with our students on their artistic processes and their career paths. We will produce two final performances: The Benefit Show on January 17, and the Grand Finale on May 26–27. We hope that all of our supporters will come out for these special events.

A final note to our graduates — you are the living embodiment of our hopes and dreams!

Only thirty-five Circadium Diplomas of Circus Arts will ever exist in this world. We hope you treasure them. We hope you treasure each other, and continue collaborating to create the art you believe in, the art the world needs to see.

Our NEA Grant Termination

Dear Circadium Community,

We are writing to share some deeply upsetting news.

Less than a month before opening night, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has withdrawn its $15,000 grant for our 2025 end-of-year show, The Garden of Earthly Delights. This production—created and performed by our graduating class under the direction of famed French director Daniel Gulko—is scheduled to premiere May 30–31 as part of the Philadelphia Contemporary Circus Festival.

Circadium Gains SEVP Approval: International Students Welcome to Apply!

12/17/24 by Executive Director Shana Kennedy

We have been approved by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to accept international students through the Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVP).

A student from outside the United States who applies to Circadium should follow our regular admissions process. There will be a video audition option. Upon acceptance to the program, the student will receive an I-20 form, which they will submit to SEVP along with a $350 one-time application fee.

If you have any questions about the process of applying to Circadium from outside the United States, email info@circadium.edu

The Journey to Accreditation

2/22/24 by Executive Director Shana Kennedy

In 2015, I was working hard to establish the Institute of American Contemporary Circus in Philadelphia. I was learning how to form and run a nonprofit, design a curriculum, get licensed as a vocational school, find a new facility… it was a lot.

Out of seemingly nowhere, I got a call from a man who said he was opening the Circus Conservatory of America, in Maine, which was going to be an accredited, degree-granting college in a custom-built facility. He had enlisted a powerhouse leadership team, was making beautiful promotional materials, and was even interviewed on NPR.

I was crushed. I was confused. All of these puzzles I was trying to solve—how had he so quickly solved them? Everyone I spoke to placed obstacles in front of me—from the Pennsylvania Board of Education to the Department of Licenses and Inspections, from the charitable foundations to the universities, from the insurance companies to the banks—there was a never-ending list of people I had to convince, applications that had to be submitted, fees to be paid, rejections to withstand. And this guy in Maine had just figured all of this out? I very nearly gave up, imagining that he had some secret store of knowledge or money that I would never have access to.

The best thing that came out of that episode was that I changed our school’s name. IACC had never felt quite right. It described our school’s vision in a somewhat clinical, grandiose-sounding way. But it was far too similar to the Circus Conservatory of America. The name Circadium came to me suddenly, in the midst of the identity crisis, and it immediately felt right.

My small team and I adopted the new name and got back to work. It’s a good thing we did, because within a year, the conceptual Circus Conservatory of America had completely evaporated. The school never opened at all. For a while some vestiges of it held on—there was a facility in Maine, and a community of people there, who had invested a lot and cared deeply about the project. But the higher-education program turned out to be a complete illusion.

How vindicated I felt! I knew this wasn’t going to be that easy. All of my research told me that years of work lay ahead. But the gloating did not last long, because all I had really won was the ability to keep doing the work, and to keep discovering new layers of challenge.

Getting our initial license to operate from the Pennsylvania Board of Education was the first major hurdle that we cleared, in 2017. We were allowed to open the school, and we became the first licensed vocational school for circus in the United States.

I had learned, by that time, that accreditation was a different level. That no national accrediting agency would even look at us until we had a class of graduates, three distant years ahead. It wasn’t even clear any national accrediting agency would consider us, ever. The first two that I tried shut me down, saying that we did not meet their requirements.

Other problems arose from being a non-accredited school. We couldn’t get visas for international students. Parents couldn’t use 529 funds. Trying to explain to prospective students, year after year, the difference between being licensed and being accredited was exhausting.

And then there was a pandemic. 2020 disrupted our first graduation and made it impossible for our graduates to find work; it destabilized our finances. When we finally crawled out of the rubble enough to apply for consideration for accreditation to the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges in 2021, they determined that we weren’t financially stable enough, and told us to come back a year later.

And so, it wasn’t until 2022 that we were able to officially apply for accreditation. Part 1 of that process was fairly easy—I submitted basic information about the school, and they gave me permission to do Part 2. Part 2 is where things got truly difficult.

I wasted a few months in 2022 staring helplessly at this application, unsure of how even to begin. So many of their questions involved things that we weren’t doing at all at Circadium, and I didn’t know how to do those things.

The best decision I made was in the fall of 2022, when I hired a consultant, Rosario Nunez from Bayside Consulting in Florida. While I was deeply worried about the costs of hiring someone, I know now that I never could have done this without her. Rosario and I began an intensive period that we spent up to 10 hours a week in Zoom calls together. She helped me take apart every system of the school and rebuild it again to meet ACCSC standards. She trained me on how to actually run a school properly—and how to fill out an application thoroughly. She had no patience if I sought an easy way out; she told me directly, at every turn, where the school was not doing a good enough job. And every time she pointed out a problem, I had to fix it, and the school got better and better.

The second best decision I made was in December of 2022, hiring my assistant, Sylvia. It was Rosario who told me I needed to do this. She said, “You cannot do this by yourself. You need to hire someone. Now.” And she was, as always, right. Sylvia became the second pair of hands I absolutely needed—her smart judgment, patience with repetitive tasks, and willingness to cross-check everything multiple times became critical to getting the work done.

The work itself was probably a thousand pages of documentation. Hundreds of pages were the written applications alone—but they referenced files, catalogs, policies, meeting minutes, lists and charts, and innumerable other documents that all became part of the infrastructure of the school. Every item had to align with every other item. Attendance records were reflected in Satisfactory Academic Progress reports. Survey results were documented in the Institutional Assessment and Improvement Plan. Professional development records were maintained in employee files.

Not being an academic, I had lots of terminology to learn: institutional outcomes, instructional methodologies, clock hours, applied general education, learning resource systems. I also had to teach Circadium’s faculty how to work with these concepts.

Peak stress came in November of 2023, when we had our on-site visit from ACCSC. After submitting the application and revisions, evaluators spent two days reviewing everything—files, staff interviews, and the facility. They even brought in an occupational specialist as a circus expert.

What a relief when they ended their visit telling us we had “no findings.” For a first-time applicant, and a school unlike any other in the country, this was a major achievement.

The final step came in February 2024, when the ACCSC Board reviewed the reports and granted accreditation. The process lasted two years, but truly reflected nearly a decade of work.

There are more steps ahead: applying for federal financial aid and permission to admit international students. But before starting those, I am taking a moment to appreciate reaching this milestone.

The quest for accreditation had practical goals, like financial aid, but also a symbolic one. Circus in the United States is not widely recognized as an art form or a legitimate career path.

The way to change this is by doing the work—building institutions, cultivating artistry, and educating practitioners.

There is no reason circus cannot achieve the same recognition. But it requires persistence and commitment. Too often, the work stops before it is even created, and audiences never see contemporary circus.

Circadium is here to show that things can be different. With perseverance, we can build the world we want to live in.