Spring Time COVID Update #1

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Spring Time Covid Update #1

Hi Circus Family,

Our lastest COVID-19 policy revision brought us in line with the CDC for testing guidelines after exposure to COVID-19 (from 5-7 days after exposure to 3-7 days after exposure). We also have updated when students and staff can return to C3 after testing positive for COVID if they do not have any symptoms! Check out the full policies for more details.

In the last couple of weeks, the City of Boston has removed the mask mandate as well as the proof of vaccination mandate. We plan to keep these guidelines through the rest of the session and will be reaching out to the community in the next week or so to start thinking about our next policy revision.

Please keep posted and thank you for helping us keep safe during this time!

Best,

-C3 Team

January 3, 2022 Update

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Happy New Year C3 Family!

One quick update from us as of the new session and new year. As of today ( January 3rd), we have updated our mask policy. After hearing feedback from both our staff and students we have switched to requiring all people who come to C3 (coaches alike) to wear N95 or KN95s. We will be providing each student a new KN95 as well as a bag to store the mask in at the studio between classes. If you already have a KN95 (or an equivalent mask like a N95), you can feel free to use yours. KN95s are shown to be among the most effective masks against COVID-19 (and the Omicron variant), and also have shown to have excellent breathability during activity. Even easier to breathe in than double-masking or wearing a three-layer mask with a filter!

This change will also make it easier for our staff to be able to quickly see that everyone is wearing the appropriate mask.

Thank you for helping us keep this community safe!

Best,

Sophia Herscu & The C3 Team

December 22, 2021 Update

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Hello, Wonderful C3 Community,

We hope you are all having a lovely break! With the recent B Together order from Mayor Wu announced last week and with the current spike in COVID-19, we wanted to reach out to announce a new COVID-19 Policy Change that will be coming up on January 15th, 2022. We also wanted to let you know about all the ways you can help in keeping our community as safe as possible when we return for classes in January.

FOR THE FULL POLICIES READ HERE.

1. Register & Join the Session!
If you haven’t signed up for class yet, join us through this link: http://commonwealthcircus.comsign-up2.

2. Test to Return Encouraged:
If you traveled or attended a gathering for the holidays during the break, we are asking that you please take a COVID test and receive a negative test result within 24 hours of returning to the studio. Free rapid tests are currently available to the public you can find out more information including where to get them here: https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2021/12/20/boston-free-rapid-covid-tests-boston/. There are also many different locations still providing free PCR testing via the Stop the Spread initiative. You can find out about locations in Boston here: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/find-a-covid-19-test.

As always, we recommend frequent testing throughout the year but deem it particularly prudent with the holidays and the current spike occurring in our city. If you have any difficulty finding a testing site that works for you, please reach out, we are happy to help.

3. Proof of Vaccination Required:
We’ll be moving towards a proof of vaccination system as mandated by Mayor Wu’srecent B Together (https://www.boston.gov/departments/mayors-office/introducing-b-together) guideline. This will go into effect on January 15th for everyone aged 12+ who enters C3. You can upload your vaccinate photo on Amilia anytime prior to that date! Many of you have already done this which is great! We’ll be emailing you to remind you prior to the deadline.

As always, thank you for working with us to protect our community during this time.

Warm regards,

Sophia, Jacqueline, and Kenzi
The C3 Management Team

August 2, 2021 Update

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C3 Community!

We were originally planning to move to optional masking for vaccinated members as of 8/2/2021 but unfortunately, Suffolk County moved from moderate to substantial COVID transmission which was our internal cutoff to reinstate the masking policy. This rate of transmission is also when the CDC recommends masking even if fully vaccinated.

With this news in mind, we have decided to take a step back on our optional masking policy before we really began. We hope that in making this choice to return to required masks we are doing our part to mitigate this third wave caused by the Delta variant and that we will help keep our community safe in the midst of new cases (breakthrough and not) in our city and the surrounding area.

We also urge students to keep vigilant and continue to monitor themselves for symptoms and stay home if they are sick. Please let us know immediately if you have been exposed to someone with COVID even if you are vaccinated.

We will not be changing any other policies at this time and will continue to monitor the situation and follow the science and the CDC guidance on what our next steps should be. We will continue to send updates as we have them.

You can read our entire COVID-19 Response Page here: http://commonwealthcircus.comcovid-response-plan. Thank you again for your input and please feel free to email us with any comments, ideas, or questions! We’ll hope to see you soon, here at the circus in-studio or online!

Best,

Sophia

July 22, 2021 Update

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C3 Community!

Registration is now live for our August session of circus classes here at C3. We have just posted an official update about our COVID-19 policy updates, but we wanted to call special attention to the major change we will be making in our COVID-19 Policies for the next session (starting on August 2nd, 2021):

  • MASK UPDATE FOR ADULT STUDENTS/COACHES/RESIDENCY MEMBERS: After listening to responses to our community survey last month, we will be changing our current in-studio mask policy here at C3 at the start of our next summer session. Starting on Monday 8/2, students who participate in our adult programs will be able to train and learn circus in our space with masks optional if they have provided proof of vaccination (fully vaccinated means two weeks post your final dose). We believe this is our next step as a community but will continue monitoring COVID-19 levels in our city and the current science. We reserve the right to reinstate the mask requirement anytime during the session if necessary. During registration, you will be prompted to upload or email in your proof of vaccination.

  • All students adult who have no provided proof of vaccination will be required to mask at all times (except when drinking water) while in the studio.

  • All youth students will continue masking while in the studio as is currently mandated by the state. We will also have guardians of youth students and youth coaches continue masking as well.

  • We know that many of our students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, may choose to continue wearing a mask at the studio. We respect your choice!

You can read our entire COVID-19 Response Page here: http://commonwealthcircus.comcovid-response-plan. Thank you again for your input and please feel free to email us with any comments, ideas, or questions! We’ll hope to see you soon, here at the circus in-studio or online!

Best,

Sophia

June 10, 2021 Update

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C3 Community!

Thank you to the near 200 people who responded to our recent COVID-19 policy survey. We appreciated the time you took to weigh in on our next COVID steps. We have just posted an official update about our COVID-19 policy updates, but we wanted to call special attention to the major changes we will be making in our COVID-19 Policies for the next session (starting on June 21, 2021):

  • Masks: We will be keeping masks as a requirement for all students for our first session of summer classes and private lessons. Although mask-wearing is no longer required for adults in public places like C3, we feel that keeping masks for one more session is a good fit for our community. About 3/4 of our programming includes youth who are not eligible for vaccines yet. The majority of our survey responses indicated that adults will be comfortable with the option to unmask starting mid-summer. We anticipate we will move to an optional masking system during our second summer session but will continue to monitor the data.

  • Equipment: We will no longer be isolating equipment between uses and students should expect to share equipment during class. As with before COVID, students will not be guaranteed their own point during classes.

  • Studio Capacity: We will be increasing the capacity in the studio to ~25. That said, we anticipate most class slots will have fewer people than the limit. With three garage doors, our HVAC filtration system, and our added air purification measures (added fans and particle testing) we believe we will be able to keep the air moving.

  • Adult Partner Acrobatics: will be BACK on the schedule for public registration! This discipline requires coming into close contact with other students. In acro classes, students will work with various classmates during any given class. We have decided that proof of vaccination will be required for participation in partner acrobatic classes. Students will be prompted to upload a photo of their vaccination record during registration. The exception to this rule will be if there is a class that requires students to sign up with a dedicated partner.

Thank you again for your input and please feel free to email us with any comments, ideas, or questions! We’ll hope to see you soon, here at the circus in-studio or online!

Best,

Sophia

February 10, 2021 Update

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Circus Friends,

We are getting in touch today to let you know that we’re updating our Mask-Wearing Policies. The short version is that in response to recent CDC recommendations about mask-wearing, we are now requiring three-layer masks with a tight seal in the studio (or double-masking with a surgical mask). Thank you for your support of this policy update and for helping keep the entire community as safe as possible through this time!

Note: We have surgical masks and double layer cloth masks at the studio for students who don’t have a three-layer mask!

Check out the full policy here:

Best to you all,

-C3 team

January 30, 2021 Update

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Hi C3 Circus Family!

We now know that we’ll be rolling forward to phase 3 here in Boston starting on Monday, Feb 1st.

Although we won’t be ramping up the schedule too much (we’re still trying to limit the number of folks in the space at any given time), we WILL be expanding to offer a handful of recreational adult classes alongside our youth, residency, and point rental programs for our next session.

Next Session Dates: Monday 2/1-Sunday 3/14.

We have been so grateful for your help in keeping our C3 Community as safe as possible for in-person circus over the last few months. We will absolutely continue to keep the safety of our community top of mind as we navigate the coming weeks and will keep you up to date if things shifts. We are sending circus love out to you and hope you are doing as well as you can be at this time.

For our full response please check out our COVID-19 Response Page.

Circus Love,

-Sophia & The C3 Team

December 16, 2020 Update

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C3 Circus Family,

Thank you all for your patience and support as we reviewed the recent rollback policies for the modified phase 2 step 2 here in Boston. We hope this shift helps to ensure our communities stay safe and that the virus is more contained in our city because of it. This rollback does mean some changes here at C3 in our adult programming—mainly we aren’t able to run adult recreational group classes for (at minimum) the next three weeks. We will need to cancel the remainder of our December session of adult classes. Fortunately, we were just five days away from our winter break and had been expecting this rollback for some time so we were ready to respond and adjust! Today we will be reaching out to all students whose classes will be canceled in order to explain the options and how we are moving forward.

Although we have planned out the January 2021 in-studio session for youth and adults, we will wait another week to see how COVID-19 numbers are progressing prior to setting a launch date for registration. The youth session will (most likely) begin on Monday 1/4 and the adult session will begin when the city is back in phase 3.

We are able to continue with youth programming (for students under 18) and with professional training in the space. So the schedule for youth and for residency will remain unchanged through the rest of the year.

We have been so grateful for your help in keeping our C3 Community as safe as possible for in-person circus over the last few months. We will absolutely continue to keep the safety of our community top of mind as we navigate the coming weeks and will keep you up to date as soon as anything shifts. We are sending circus love out to you and hope you are doing as well as you can be doing at this time.

Although we will miss circusing with our adult recreational students in the coming weeks, we will look forward to reopening for in-studio adult group classes (hopefully) early in 2021! Please reach out if you have any question, idea, concern, or other comment. We’d love to hear from you.

We have recently revised our COVID-19 Response Policies with input from our community and hope you will review them and let us know what you think!

Best,

-Sophia & The Team

July 10, 2020 Update

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Hello Community,

With Phase III starting here in MA on Monday 7/13, we are getting ready to open our doors for a preliminary week of in-person programming. As part of our reopening plan, C3 is enacting several policy and procedural changes to help us keep our staff, students, and community safer in the era of COVID-19. Policies relevant to adult classes, point rentals, and private lessons are listed here; please read them thoroughly and reach out to us at info@commonwealthcircus.com with any questions before signing up.

We encourage you to read our full COVID-19 Response Plan and our COVID-19 Safety Agreement linked below before signing up for classes for the week of July 13th!

We know that C3 students, community members, and families are in different circumstances with regard to coming back to the studio. We look forward to one day in the future when we can all return to our circus home together! Online classes will be continuing and our One Song Workouts will still be held at 1pm M-F on Instagram. Our 10-Minute Break Series can also still be found on Instagram.

Online Schedule & Sign Up Here: http://commonwealthcircus.comsign-up

Warmly,

-C3 Team