Take Care Conference #3 Relationally Curious: Awareness, Behaviour, and Well-Being
After the opening conference in May 2025 at CircusDanceFestival and the second edition in April 2026 at Circusstad in Rotterdam, the European project Take Care, led by FEDEC, is reaching the end of its journey with a final gathering at the ON THE EDGE festival in Vienna. Around About Circus is participating in this Creative Europe project, supporting its communication and dissemination. In this article, I introduce the full day taking place on Saturday, 7 November, from 9:00 to 16:30 at Theater am Werk im Kabelwerk.
What does it mean to be fit, respect our own bodies and guide our minds in ways that support them? Can we learn to feel better and devote ourselves to self-care without falling into the trap of performance anxiety? And can we take care of ourselves and others while building relationships of trust and interdependence that leave no one behind? Can we train our bodies and minds to develop new, healing habits?
With the title Relationally Curious: Awareness, Behaviour and Well-Being as its guiding theme, the final conference of the Take Care Creative EU project explores collective responsibility and the healing power of relationships within and around artistic creation. Rather than approaching well-being as an individual pursuit, it asks how our relationships, behaviours and shared environments can contribute to feeling better, together.
Conceived as a full day of immersion, experience, and collective learning, the conference will include two keynote presentations, three parallel workshops, a cinema screening, and a final panel. The event opens with accreditation and coffee at 9 am, followed by a collective welcome from the organisations cooperating for the day, FEDEC, CircusDanceFestival & ON THE EDGE, with a recap of the day’s schedule.
Keynote - Relationally Curious: Creating an Ecosystem of Care by Anna Mendelssohn - actress, performance artist and systemic psychotherapist
Being relational in a healthy way is essential to mental health and wellbeing. The opening keynote, Relationally Curious: Creating an Ecosystem of Care by Vienna-based actress, performance artist and systemic psychotherapist Anna Mendelssohn, explores how we navigate the relational ecospheres that shape our mental health every day. She invites us to consider relational empowerment as social activism. By using curiosity as a way of becoming more aware of what happens within and between us, we can reach for our best possible selves, thereby creating healthier relationships and a more caring relational ecosystem.
Keynote - Circus, Science & Care: CODARTS Take Care Survey Results by Rogier van Rijn - PhD Human Movement Scientist, Associate Professor at CODARTS
From an inspirational speech, we then move to a scientific approach to well-being that brings research into the discussion. Delivered by Associate Professor at CODARTS and member of the PEARL research lab, Rogier van Rijn, the keynote, Circus, Science & Care: CODARTS Take Care Survey Results, closes the loop on scientific insights into the circus training sector and its relationship with mental health. The findings reveal important connections between injuries, stress, and broader health concerns among circus students. These results are a valuable outcome of the Take Care trajectory, providing the sector with evidence to understand and address current mental health challenges.
After the two keynotes' frontal presentation, the conference moves to a more interactive section with three parallel workshops. The workshops are free, open to 20 or 30 people, and available for registration. The workshops are expected to engage a broader audience, from Vienna-based younger practitioners to national and international circus and performing arts professionals.
Workshop - Let There Be Pie! Playing between personal needs, collective interdependencies and performative practices with Verena Schneider - interdisciplinary circus artist & Christina Rauchbauer - choreographer, performer and theatre facilitator
Facilitated by Christina Rauchbauer and Verena Schneider, whose artistic practices span contemporary circus, choreography, performance and participatory formats, Let There Be Pie! Playing between personal needs, collective interdependencies and performative practices invites participants into a shared space of movement, play and exchange. The workshop offers a playful laboratory for exploring care as an embodied, relational and creative practice. Through a combination of somatic practices, physical exploration, improvisation and conversation, care is approached as something continuously negotiated, with ourselves, with others and within artistic processes. Expect movement, conversation, unexpected encounters—and, of course, a shared piece of pie.
Workshop - Relationally Curious: Curiosity as a tool to navigate an Ecosystem of Care with Anna Mendelssohn - actress, performance artist and systemic psychotherapist
Led by systemic psychotherapist Anna Mendelssohn, Relationally Curious: Curiosity as a tool to navigate an Ecosystem of Care is seen as an applied session of her opening keynote. In this workshop, Anna draws on her experience as a systemic psychotherapist to explore how we navigate the different systems and relationships we are part of, and the roles we take within them. Through practical exploration, we will look at curiosity as a simple, yet not always easy, tool for noticing what is happening around us and between us. Together, we will explore how curiosity can be cultivated as a skill, helping us better understand our relationships, respond with greater awareness, and care for the relational ecosystems we are part of.
Workshop - Fit Your Brain: Physical Preparation and Stretching for Neurons with Chiara Marchese - multidisciplinary artist
One of the goals of the Take Care project is to give young artists hope that a career is possible despite their mental health difficulties. How to do circus arts when you are neurodivergent? How can neuroscience and psychotherapy help alleviate the morale of circus artists in training and in the profession? How to self-help in situations of psychological distress? With Fit Your Brain: Physical Preparation and Stretching for Neurons, we learn together with the experience of Chiara Marchese, diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016, and creator of the autobiographical show The Weight of the Soul (circusnext laureate 2021), how to dissect the difficulties of living with mental health disorders, not only on stage. Taking care of one's mental health allows for better expression through the body, breath, voice, movement, visual arts, and circus. She will share her experience and work based on the concepts of authenticity and resilience.
After a lunch break, the conference continues with the Take Care Films Screening. The Take Care project has invited two independent filmmakers as partners, Filip Jacobson and Miikkael Kukkula, to amplify awareness of the topic and demystify the subject through the medium of cinema. Both authors accepted the challenge and created artistic films focusing on the psychological challenges of the circus artists. The intent of both authors in approaching cinema through this trajectory can be seen as complementary. Filip is oriented toward documentaries, while Miikkael is intrigued by developing fiction.
In the two sensitive documentaries by Filip Jacobson, the artists Alice Rende and Alice Poppy Davies reflect on their mental health in their professional practice. Miikkael Kukkula’s fictional short films, together with Ron Beeri and Marina Cherry, are based on the artists’ collaborative residency work, in which they have explored the relationship between mental health challenges and artistic practice, reflecting on these themes through their own experiences. The four short films are screening for the first time at the Take Care final conference and are ready to travel internationally.
The panel Conscious Creatures: An Artistic Exploration of Mental Health closes the day. Moderated by me, as in the previous ones in Cologne and in Rotterdam, the roundtable brings on stage filmmakers Filip Jacobson and Miikkael Kukkula, multidisciplinary artist Chiara Marchese and FEDEC’s director Isabel Joly to share reflections on the experience of mental health. Together, we will discuss how personal and collective mental health can shape artistic creations; the personal stories behind the scenes of producing the short films; what lessons we can learn from other artists’ career experiences; and the current challenges in schools on the topic, from the perspective of FEDEC’s network. Birgit Kellner’s live drawings accompany the conversation.
After the roundtable and a moment with snacks and drinks, the event gives the floor to the ON THE EDGE festival program, with three performances: Running Gag by Sööt/Zeyringer (AT/EE), Cracks in the Wood by Maria Madeira (PT/BE), and Dark Glowing by Laurence Felber, Silvan Strübel, Caroline Schenk (CH).
Check the PROGRAMME TIMELINE & REGISTRATION FORM to join us in Vienna!