This is a personal account of the difficulties experienced in finding opportunities offering access to excellent training in order that Jenny can follow her chosen career. The comments and observations are made in the light of someone with learning disabilities and seeking a career as opposed to leisure opportunities.
So who is Jenny? Jenny is 20, lives in Denby Dale, attended the local mainstream high school and has set her sights on teaching dance and performing whenever the opportunity arises. She also happens to have Downs Syndrome.
Jenny lives and breathes dance. Dance makes it worth getting up in the morning. Choreography is frequently underway before breakfast with a call to go and see the latest sequence.
Jenny has lived in a mainstream world using local buses, singing in a choir, taking weekly flute lessons and playing in a band as well as attending the local dance school. She has mainstream aspirations, but she tells it better than I do.
Jenny's story
I need to dance. Dance is my passion and my dream. Dance gives me lots of exercise and it will keep my weight down. Dance is very important to me in my heart and soul. I need dance, not drama. In the future I want to teach dance, to share the fun I have and encourage others. They may have disabilities or not. I will teach where there is a need and I am welcomed. Performance is very important too. I can be nervous, but I am fine on stage. It makes me feel like I am flying.
First I need to train. I work on disco at the local dance school - it is great and I love it. I also work with Martin and Tess from Tin Productions. They make me believe in my right to dance and in myself.
My Millennium Award helps with dancing in Durham with Martin and Tess. Durham is about two hours from home in Denby Dale so I have to travel there each week and stay with friends.
I go to Durham because it is a fantastic opportunity to train in dance, which should be my right but has been difficult to find, and Martin and Tess want me. Tuesday is Moving Tide and Wednesday is Flex. They are both special.
In Moving Tide we warm up and learn dance techniques led by Tess with Martin on drums. They make me supple and strengthen by body and bones and hips. In creative dance we work things out together, what fits in with the music in small and large groups. We did one on celebrations, which starts off by being a bonfire. In the centre Tess and Marianne lift me up like a rocket and then I shoot off into swooching and turning around. In small groups we take turns to be the leader in front, which is good training for becoming a dance leader.
I really really want dance for my career. I have just got back from Shrewsbury where I went to a movement camp with Disability Arts in Shropshire (DASH). It was great and I'd love to go again.
Sue Blackwell
Non-disabled people have a choice - dance school, music college, drama school or a performing arts course. People with disabilities should have that same choice. Why should they automatically be channelled into the local option, whatever that is, and told that it is therefore appropriate for them? Why should they automatically be channelled into opportunities exclusively for people with learning disabilities?
Where are the role models? Excellent access is important in some circumstances but career training demands access to excellence.
After a mainstream education it is certainly helpful to mix with more peers with disabilities, but difficulties are compounded when you are thrown from the mainstream world into the learning disabled world. It creates serious confusion and loss of a sense of identity. It can devalue experiences to date. Apart from any other reason, the interpretation of instrumental playing, singing and dance all tend to be very different.
The recent Government paper, Valuing People, supports choice, and a research publication by Scope, That Kind of Life, shows the almost inevitable consequences of not supporting people to live a life of quality. Many of our friendships result from interaction with people with a common interest. If you are not enabled to follow that, you are likely to be deprived of valuable friendships - another area of their lives which people with learning disabilities invariably find particularly difficult to fulfil and require sensitive and appropriate support.
In order to understand herself better and know what made sense to pursue by way of a career, Jenny needed to actually experience some options. She had always enjoyed dance, but the career of choice for many years was to become a nurse. So when she was seventeen Jenny spent a year working one day a week at a local residential home which first seemed to confirm that decision. But over time it became obvious that the caring scenario worked because of the opportunity to use dance and music in a performance capacity.
As an 18 year old, Jenny trialled a new vocational GCSE in English that required her to experience and report on potential career choices, also to work with the careers service. We began by investigating local performing arts organisations and writing across the country working, with or visiting some thirty organisations, seeking information and networking as we went.
Jenny worked with numerous parties during this final school year, I spoke to many others on her behalf and we jointly undertook a lot of travelling with its associated expenses. Almost all the opportunities for people with learning disabilities seemed tame and lack-lustre after her 'normal' experiences. The first glimmer of hope came as the result of three days of workshops with Heart 'n Soul in Leeds in. At last she'd found somebody working in learning disability where there was passion, energy and belief.
By the time Jenny left school the Careers Service had washed their hands of her, as she didn't fit the mould. Jenny needed a training opportunity to allow her to grow as an individual socially and emotionally, to become more independent and to develop her skills, experiences and understanding of dance.
May to October was a particularly demoralising time for Jenny as we received many exciting promises, offers and suggestions, which led nowhere:
- a dance development officer's suggestions included piloting a course to enhance confidence and independence through dance for Jenny and others in conjunction with the local technical college
- a dance agency suggested a chance to participate during a week long course and work during the coming year with community dance workers
- a dance agency saw an ability out of the norm, suggested Dance Leaders in the Community training and an interested teacher for one to one work
- a college lecturer wanted to include Jenny in Post Graduate training for those wishing to work with people with disabilities one day a week so Jenny could learn from the course participants and vice versa
- Jenny auditioned for a BTEC Foundation course in dance and was told that she must continue to follow her dreams, that she had talent, that they could not provide a suitable course and could not advise her where to go.
All this occurred at the moment of leaving school and going into the wider world, a challenging enough time for any teenager. But somehow Jenny has never lost her determination.
By now performing arts had narrowed to dance and music in that order. As a 19 year old she did a self-constructed, Mum-supported, part-time curriculum featuring dance, singing and flute playing but also maths and letter writing whilst continuing to look for a suitable education opportunity.
As Jenny has said, she is now gaining training with Tin Productions in Durham for two days each week, but it demands a lot of her. We have been able to set up support from various parties for travel, for breakfast, for friendship and accommodation but Jenny is utterly focused. She wants to be a community dance leader and will do what it takes. During our journey we have met with many and varied reactions including:
- downright rejection
- apparent interest, but no follow through
- promises or suggestions supported by some effort, but in reality did not happen this has probably been the most difficult scenario to cope with
- invitations to join sessions or groups which did not help Jenny's career focus
- people unable or unprepared to offer any support beyond the dance opportunity even when it is not local to home
- a few offers to keep us informed of pending projects, and a few people who genuinely understand the need for quality training and the dilemma we faced.
For training to be successful for people with learning disabilities there needs to be a determination to make it work - not just a place on offer. There needs to be emotional and social support as well as exposure to different styles of dancing and working methods appreciating that different people work in different ways.
In our view there should be:
- an accredited, course or courses of varying lengths, full time or part time, open to people with and without learning disabilities in order that able non disabled students gain a real understanding of some of the complexities of living life with a disability
- proper long term resourcing
- opportunities for work experience and apprenticeships, permanent and visiting community dancers
- support to participate in normal life experiences beyond dance and to enjoy the normal patterns of friendship and relationships
- an associated residential option.
In spite of all these difficulties there are reasons to be hopeful:
- we have met with, worked with and talked to a handful of inspired and committed individuals
- there are interested young community dancers seeking experience in this field
- Arts Council research will be available by the end of the summer mapping current provision for training and identifying gaps.
- there is a commitment to improving opportunities, especially training
- The Dancing Differently conference took place and you have just read this.
And now the future: Dance FX
Thanks to the networking opportunities afforded by the Dancing Differently Conference. Jenny Blackwell met Emily Fox. Both are young disabled adults who cannot self-advocate and feel there is a void in provision, but nonetheless aspire to a career in dance. Before the conference both had been progressing their careers independently as their networks allowed. Emily has been attending the Orpheus Centre in Surrey to pursue skills towards a career in dance and independence. Jenny is working regularly with Tin Productions in Durham and local groups in West Yorkshire concentrating on dance and music.
Emily's ambition to create an inclusive dance company was helped on its way through a Development Project led by Cheshire Disabilities Federation, Centre for Integrated Living, and Cheshire Dance that supported Emily to co-lead 3 inclusive workshops for disabled and non-disabled young adults. The success of the initial project led to the conception of Dance FX.
Dance FX is unique. It has been initiated by the disabled dancers who struggle to effectively self-advocate. It aims to become a contemporary dance company through which disabled and non-disabled participants can achieve long term career and professional development. Emily and Jenny want to take dance seriously, and they want 'a life'.
Enthusiastic and committed partners, dancers and workers are needed to make this a reality in the long term. Some have already been found through the Dancing Differently Conference and Cheshire links, but others are needed. The headquarters will be in mid-Cheshire but there will be a nationwide catchment area.
Dance FX will gradually increase in momentum continuing to provide regular workshops for all-comers as well as focused time for the core group. It aims to be fully operational in September 2003.
If you would like to know more, can offer support or funding, or are a disabled or non-disabled dancer for whom this has resonances we would like to hear from you. Please contact Merle Ochota, CDF, CIL, Hartford Business Centre, Chester Road, Hartford, Northwich, Cheshire, CW8 2AB E-mail: cdfcil@btinternet.com or Sue Blackwell sueblackwelluk@aol.com