From the editor
Ken Bartlett, Creative Director, Foundation for Community Dance
By the time you are reading this issue of Animated we will have held the official launch of Making a Move: a strategy for the development of a professional framework for community dance. Making a Move is a fundamental gearshift for the Foundation for Community Dance and will, if we succeed, have significant impacts and benefits for artists, practitioners and their employers.
We asked people in a variety of roles - artists and practitioners, managers, employers and providers of continuing professional development opportunities - to respond to the Strategy from their individual perspective. Tom Bewick, the Chief Executive of Creative & Cultural Skills, the Sector Skills Council for the creative and cultural industries, has kindly written an overview to place Making a Move in a wider context.
All of the contributors have acknowledged the challenges of bringing this to fruition and have offered timely warnings about the time it will take and the obstacles to be overcome. What we can reassure people about, is that it will resonate and reflect the fundamental values of community dance that were so well articulated in the last issue of Animated; that it will reflect the diverse range of people and their practice, and contexts with which community dance engages; that it will affirm and support best practice across the sector; that it will be flexible enough to take account of different learning styles; and that it will be in synergy with developments in other professional practice across the arts and beyond. We will, of course, continue to work in closely with our Members to develop this strategy further.
Scilla Dyke continues her series of profiles of early pioneers of community dance with Dick Matchett, who worked at the Arts Council of Great Britain (as it was then) when the first community dance animateur posts were established, and Marion Gough, who will be known to many for her work in dance education.
We have also included a series of articles from Real Life, Real Dance a conference initiated by Protein Dance in association with East London Dance held in June this year, about developments in dance with young people who offend. Graham Robb a head teacher and member of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales sets out some of the opportunities available to dance professionals wishing to engage with this part of the criminal justice system. Tara Herbert, Artistic Director of Dance United, describes the establishment of two Academies that will provide longer - term benefits to people within the criminal justice system as the company's practice has developed.
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Animated: Autumn 2006