New Circus: the benefits of Circus Training for young people in a residential setting,

Circus 1 to 3 is a circus school, based on the concept of New Circus, for boys resident in St. Patrick's Training School, Northern Ireland. The project is designed, not only to teach Circus skills, but also to foster social and personal skills. This report details an evaluation undertaken to assess die extent to which this programme meets these aims. A study of participants Circus records indicated that significant gains in co-operative behaviour, team-work, attitude and participation, as rated by Circus tutors, were evident over the course of boys involvement. A qualitative study was also conducted. These interviews with Circus 1 to 3 participants indicated that this project enhanced the quality of life for boys resident in St. Patrick's Training School. In addition the project, through the use of positive feedback, provides opportunities for boys to develop their social and personal skills. This evaluation concludes that Circus 1 to 3 is a worthwhile and successful endeavour.

Residential segregation in Northern Ireland in 2001: assessing the value of exploring spatial variations

Segregation measures have been applied in the study of many societies, and traditionally such measures have been used to assess the degree of division between social and cultural groups across urban areas, wider regions, or perhaps national areas. The degree of segregation can vary substantially from place to place even within very small areas. In this paper the substantive concern is with religious/political segregation in Northern Ireland—particularly the proportion of Protestants (often taken as an indicator of those who wish to retain the union with Britain) to Catholics (often taken as an indicator of those who favour union with the Republic of Ireland). Traditionally, segregation is measured globally—that is, across all units in a given area. A recent trend in spatial data analysis generally, and in segregation analysis specifically, is to assess local features of spatial datasets. The rationale behind such approaches is that global methods may obscure important spatial variations in the property of interest, and thus prevent full use of the data. In this paper the utility of local measures of residential segregation is assessed with reference to the religious/political composition of Northern Ireland. The paper demonstrates marked spatial variations in the degree and nature of residential segregation across Northern Ireland. It is argued that local measures provide highly useful information in addition to that provided in maps of the raw variables and in standard global segregation measures.