People Dancing

The final session of the Dancing Differently? conference asked delegates to work in small groups to identify some of the key practical steps they thought needed to happen to move the work forward, these were then presented to the conference as part of the final plenary

Some of the key steps were aspirational and others more specific and targeted at particular audiences conference delegates wanted to take action.

They fell into the following key categories:

• education and training


• profile raising and advocacy


• information and knowledge


• employment


• funding


• sustainability.

Education and Training
The education system was perceived top be crucial in not only providing an entitlement to dance for all, but as the key societal structure outside the family to tackle the discrimination of disabled people.

Schools
Specific to schools was a call for a rethink of the curriculum, giving dance a distinctive role outside Physical Education and including disability as a topic within education about citizenship. There was a request that schools should invest in specialist equipment to aid access and participation in dance and that they should employ a wider range of dance and movement specialists to ensure full entitlement to dance by disabled children and young people.

Examination Boards
There was a call for the examining bodies to re-examine their dance syllabi and examination methods to enable disabled students to enter for examinations and succeed.

Higher and Further Education
The delegates asked that dance leaders courses should be established specifically for disabled people and that an HE/FE Forum should be established to discuss better provision and share practice.

Conferences
The delegates thought it was important to hold further conferences with disability as a focus to engage specifically with key groups of professionals in health and education and to seek other ways to build out from the conference, engage others and create a more inclusive debate.

Specific Training
A 'long' choreographic lab should be established to support emerging disabled choreographers.

Profile Raising and Advocacy

• the Delegates called for more varied opportunities to platform, share and show work, including festivals and regional showcases so that funders can see what we want to do rather than having to chase their criteria


• empowerment of the practitioners in relation to the gatekeepers in the 'caring' profession


• putting work in context - helping audiences to better see the process


• involve disabled people from the beginning in the planning stages


• there was a call for further mapping of the range of work being undertaken


• there should be research undertaken to look at interface between different approaches to developing dance by and with disabled people


• ensure evaluation and documentation is disseminated


• there should be better information and understanding of local authority structures and officers who have a responsibility for disability and the arts.

Employment

• dance agencies should appoint specific posts, such as a disabled project coordinator, so that the 'voice' of disabled people goes across all projects


• the issue of 'benefits' in relation to employment should be explored further so that disabled artists are not disenfranchised.

Funding
The arts funding system should:

• give further consideration to the application process to provide alternative and appropriate formats enabling more disabled people to apply for funds


• Not use the medical model of defining disability as a basis for awarding grants


• consider the implications of short-term and project funding in relation to the benefits gained and lost


• consider how funding criteria sometimes prevents artists from undertaking the work that is important to them.

Sustainability

• steering and focus groups should be established to engage with dance agencies to ensure communication and consultation, evaluation and mentoring


• when planning projects organisations and agencies should consider a range of pathways out of projects to ensure greater continuity.

Wider Issues
There was a call to continue the debates about aesthetics, disability culture and dance culture. The conference was not, in all reality, ever going to resolve these issues. What it did was provide a space in which they could be raised, listened to and heard.

As Lauren Scholey says in her article the sector is 'ready to fly'. 'If we are going to do that, these debates need to continue with the dance profession and beyond, with disabled and non-disabled dancers working together to make aspirations raised by the conference become a reality.'

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Animated: Summer 2002