PEARL research lab

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PEARL research lab

PEARL offers next stage support for performing artists and athletes to stay both physically and mentally fit and to reach the biggest stage possible.

28/07/2025

New publication on mental health in (pre)professional circus artists!

Mental health in preprofessional and professional circus has received little attention despite the performance demands, cognitive skill, and emotional labour required. This newly published narrative review aimed to consolidate the literature, identify research gaps, and serve as guidance for future research and practice priorities that will provide a foundation for understanding mental health in preprofessional and professional circus artists.

Results illustrated that circus artists may experience more symptoms of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and disordered eating compared to the general population. In addition, mental health symptoms may be related to circus discipline, age, gender, professional status, coping resources, environmental demands, and injury. Although there is still insufficient evidence to support the development of best practice guidelines for a multidisciplinary team in this context, multidisciplinary collaboration to support mental health appears to be important for (pre)professional circus artists.

Read the full paper now via the link in our bio!

24/07/2025

Looking back at PAMA 2025 – Performing Arts Medicine in action

Two weeks ago, PEARL researchers took part in the PAMA Symposium 2025 in Washington D.C. — a vibrant and inspiring gathering of clinicians, researchers, educators and artists from around the world.
We’re grateful for the opportunity to present our work, join critical conversations on artist health, and connect with colleagues across disciplines and continents.

From performance anxiety to injury prevention, and from circus arts to public policy — it’s clear: the performing arts deserve the same evidence-based care and attention as any other profession.

A big thank you to everyone who made this event possible. We’re already looking forward to PAMA 2026!

18/07/2025

On the Saturday of the PAMA Symposium, PEARL member Janine Stubbe presented a Circus Panel, together with Stephanie Greenspan, Shenea Stiletto and Melanie Stuckey, titled “Pathways to Improving Healthcare Practices and Wellness in the Circus Arts”. Circus artists face unique physical and mental stressors, often without access to healthcare providers who understand their artform. Therefore, their panel focused on practical solutions, grounded in research and real-world experience.

Some of the topics discussed, were:
1. the artist’s lived experience of injury and mental health (Shenea)
2. standardizing surveillance methods for injury prevention (Janine)
3. the current state of research on mental health in circus (Melanie)
4. circus-specific concussion protocols (Stephanie)

We would like to thank everyone involved, for discussing this important topic! Want to know more? Send us a direct message!

14/07/2025

Last Friday, PEARL researchers Janine Stubbe and Stephanie Hulsebosch together with international colleagues Shenea Stiletto, Stephanie Greenspan, and Melanie Stuckey, took part in two policy meetings on Capitol Hill during the PAMA Conference 2025 in Washington D.C.

In conversations with the offices of Senator Blumenthal and Congresswoman Titus, they shared research-based insights on the mental and physical health of circus artists, highlighting tools and programmes developed at Codarts, such as:
· the Student Life programme
· the Performing Artist Health Monitor (PAHM)
· and PEARL’s broader work on Healthy Artists

The meetings focused on two proposed U.S. bills:
· the SafeArt/SafeCircus Act, expanding health and safety protections in the performing arts
· the Circus Arts Recognition Act, advocating for formal recognition of circus as an artistic discipline

This marks an important moment where practice-based research informs international cultural policy — bridging evidence, education and advocacy.

10/07/2025

Today, PEARL member Janine Stubbe will be presenting on the prevalence and risk factors of Music Performance Anxiety in classical music students. Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) is a common phenomenon among classical musicians that can lead to reduced performance enjoyment and quality of life. PEARL investigated the prevalence of MPA among classical music students and its risk factors, as this can give important insights to support preprofessional musicians. Interested in the outcomes? Come by during Janine’s presentation or send us a direct message!

08/07/2025

Tomorrow, July 9, a PAMA pre-conference event on Occupational Health in Music will take place in Washington D.C. The event advocates for tertiary music institutions to take responsibility for creating safe learning environments, and to recognize occupational health as essential knowledge for every musician.

Relevant resources which will be published this year include a position paper and a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Musician’s Health, co-authored by our PEARL research team.
Both publications highlight the award-winning Codarts Student Life programme as a best practice for embedding health and wellbeing in higher music education.

We hope to see you at the pre-conference, to exchange knowledge on this important topic!

07/07/2025

This week, the 43rd Annual PAMA (Performing Arts Medicine Association) symposium will take place in Washington, D.C. The symposium fosters an environment of education, networking and growth, all to support the health and wellbeing of performing artists. We are excited to be joining again this year and hope to see you there!
Also, keep an eye on our socials, as we will be posting about our contributions soon!

22/05/2025

On June 7th, in Cologne, the CircusDanceFestival will host a conference of the TAKE CARE project (co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission, and led by FEDEC). At the conference, PEARL member Rogier will present an overview of global research on health challenges within the circus arts sector. Additionally, he will introduce the Performing Artist Health Monitor (PAHM), an online tool developed by Codarts Rotterdam University of the Arts, for universities and companies. PAHM collects data on the physical and mental well-being of performing artists, offering real-time, personalized feedback to users about their strengths and potential health risks. It also generates high-quality data for researchers. Based on PAHM insights, Rogier will also present findings on the prevalence of health concerns among circus arts students at Codarts.

Interested? Visit https://www.circus-dance-festival.de/en/ for more information!

14/05/2025

The TAKE CARE project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission, and led by FEDEC, aims to prevent mental health issues in the professional circus sector and to encourage good practice in caring for young people in learning and working environments. The project will raise awareness of mental health issues among circus practitioners, and collect, develop and disseminate tools and resources to help the sector evolve structurally, towards more conscious and sustainable models.

Codarts/PEARL will be in charge of designing, implementing and analysing a study on mental health issues in circus education. The study will monitor the mental health of students in higher education circus schools in Europe during the 2025-2026 academic year. The results will give insight into the health of students and consequently, the possible interventions and best practices to support the students.

Find out more, via: www.fedec.eu/en/take-care

08/05/2025

In 2024, FEDEC, an international network for professional circus education, launched the ‘TAKE CARE’ project. TAKE CARE is a European project that supports mental health and well-being in the circus arts sector by raising awareness, providing training for stakeholders, facilitating the exchange of best practices in caring for young artists and monitoring students’ mental health. Codarts/PEARL is a proud partner of the project, together with the CircusDanceFestival, Filip Jacobson, Miikkael Kukkula and Around About Circus. TAKE CARE is a European project co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission. For more information, visit www.fedec.eu/en/take-care

24/04/2025

One of our current collaborating partners is the Medical School of Hamburg (MSH). PEARL and the MSH work together on monitoring the health of professional dancers of German dance companies. This collaboration has shown us that health problems, especially injuries, are frequent among professional dancers and affect their ability to dance. One of the most frequent subjective reasons for injuries was too much workload. In addition, sleep problems were frequent among dancers and were related to physical health, mental health and also workload.

These findings illustrate that the health of dancers shouldn’t be overlooked and that offering good healthcare for dancers is of great importance. We are therefore excited to be able to contribute to better healthcare by providing our TATA tool to partners such as the Dutch National Ballet!

17/04/2025

As mentioned in our previous post, we have started an exciting new collaboration with the Dutch National Ballet. A couple of years ago, the PEARL team conducted a pilot study at the Dutch National Ballet, investigating the user experience, content and conditions for the use of our other online tool; PAHM (Performing Artist Health Monitor). The results showed that dancers were positive about the use of our online tool and it gave us information about which topics were of interest in this population. Dancers also mentioned to be reluctant about sharing personal information, thinking this could influence their opportunities for roles and performances.

We will take this knowledge into our current collaboration and we are looking forward to further developing our TATA tool based on user experience.

The article from our previous collaboration can be found in our bio.

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Kruisplein 26
Rotterdam

Website

http://www.pearlresearchlab.com/

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