The text will move to the inside of the larger circle.

Click off the circle/text, then click on the larger circle and click on the “Flip horizontally” button.

The new text will be at the bottom of the new circle.

Select the new text and the larger circle, then from the menu, Text/Put on path.

Type the text for the bottom of the circle.

In my example, I turned off the fill and set a stroke so that the original circle and the upper text is visible. Use the alignment tools to center the new circle over the first one.

Draw another circle larger than the first one.

Rotate until you like the placement of the text.

Click on one of the corner arrows and drag it to rotate the circle.Click off of the circle/text to de-select it, then click on just the circle twice to get the rotate/skew bounding arrows.The text will be put on the bottom of the circle. From the menu select Text/Put on Path.Click on the “Select” tool and if the text needs to be resized, hold the control key and click and drag one of the bounding box corner arrows until you like the size of the text.You can now close the “Text and Font” window. If you want to change the font, with the text still selected, click on the Font tool and select the font you want to use, click “Apply”.Click on the Text tool then click in the work area and type your text for the top of the circle.Open Inkscape and click on the Circle tool then make a circle by holding down the Control key then click and drag the cursor in the work area.Here is how you would use Inkscape to put words around a circle. See this post from CleverSomeday for more info on word art from MS Word.

Another way is to use a word processing program and create word art-this is especially good for text distorted into a shape. I prefer to do this directly in Inkscape. Another question is how do you have both the top text and the bottom text read from left to right. A common question on the SCAL forum is “How do you make text in a circle?”.

Inkscape curved text