Nairobi, Kenya. Africa. For a first-time traveler to East Africa everything is overwhelming; the sights, the sounds, the smells. The corrugated iron stalls selling multi-coloured fruits and vegetables that line the main streets, the shouts from every direction of the bus ticket sellers and the tradespeople treding their wares, the smell of mud and wet rubbish that is swept down the streets by the floods of the rainy season, washing away the roads as well as the mess of daily life on the streets of Nairobi. My senses are saturated by the information from this exciting, foreign environment full of untidy and uninhibited living.

And yet within this alien setting, I see familiar sights; stretches, squat jumps, the dreaded abs warm up… I’d arrived at the Mighty Jambo Circus Academy. I was lucky enough to meet John Otieno Dindy, the founder and executive director of the Mighty Jambo Trust at the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain at the start of this year. A former acrobat himself, John set up the circus academy with the aim of empowering youth by giving them tools to express themselves through art. The Mighty Jambo Trust now works to help artists embrace the...