People Dancing

Lisa Craddock, Professional Development Manager and Project Lead, ArtWorks Navigator asks, what can strategic organisations do to improve access to professional development and networks across artforms and settings?

In this edition of Animated, the site-specific examples of practice in community dance show the levels of artistic collaboration required to deliver such projects. Site-specific work inherently involves collaboration across artforms, responding to people and place. This work asks you to consider for example, how you might deliver a visual impact or how sound works when you are in outdoor settings, in old or new buildings.

So, the Foundation for Community Dance (FCD) professional development team thought you might like to know what we are doing to support you to meet, deepen your relationships with and collaborate with visual artists and makers, musicians and writers who are as interested in people participating as you are.

ArtWorks Navigator is a new project that FCD’s National College has embarked on to investigate and compare the current modes of practice in different settings and professional development needs for artists across artforms.

Our programme is designed to reveal your opinions of what makes an effective practitioner, and support debate across artforms. One part of the programme will build on the learning we have achieved together over the last six years to develop our own standards in dance leading that are nationally recognised (see them here: www.communitydance.org.uk/ dtap if you haven’t already). We bring this learning to music, visual art and writing practitioners to see if they can connect with and make use of these standards too.

Our core partners in the ArtWorks Navigator Pathfinder are: A+ (a-n The Artists Information Company and Artquest), engage, National Association of Writers in Education and Sound Sense. However, we know this isn’t the full picture across artforms or across settings in terms of professional bodies you might engage with, so we have built in space for us to listen to who you would like us to join up with, and why.

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation has setup and funded the initiative until 2014 and seeks to achieve a step change in respect for artists from employers, greater awareness in artists about their true competencies and joined up working between established existing professional bodies to improve pathways in career progression, whether a new or advanced practitioner. FCD’s part is to ensure that we connect in more meaningful ways with fellow professional artists and organisations in different artforms.

So, if you have ideas of how you would like us to support you to connect and deepen collaborations across art form and to find out more about the programme and ArtWorks Navigator database contact lisa@communitydance.org.uk / visit www.communitydance.org.uk/navigator

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Animated: Winter 2012