People Dancing

Dance Included is I think an honourable attempt by the Arts Council to contribute through action research to the debate about the role of the arts in promoting social inclusion. Of course dance has an outstanding history in this field and, as I have written elsewhere, community dance from the very start was particularly interested in social inclusion and markedly successful with dispossessed and marginalized groups. It is part of the legacy of Rudolf Laban that dance culture in Britain is so committed to the idea that everyone can dance, and that personal creativity should be at the heart of dance making. What we have at present, though, is the hunt for how that recuperative project can - to be blunt - improve the public accounts by reducing expenditure on health, policing or social benefits. How, HM Treasury wants to know, can public spending on the arts be justified in terms of fiscal gains somewhere down the line?'

Dance Included, along with other similar projects, is an attempt once again to find ways of measuring personal outcomes in such a way as to show how these could have a wider or subsequent social impact. Social exclusion is, obviously, a social problem and not just a personal experience. We may be able through dance to alleviate the psychological effects of exclusion, or build up the personal resources that will help someone to take a positive decision for change. What is not so clear is whether dance, or any artistic activity, is in and of itself a force for good, far less being intrinsically a force for moral good, as Nicholas Hytner memorably pointed out recently, 'it is perfectly possible for someone to watch a Shakespeare play and then mug an old lady on the way home.'

So what is crucial, is not just the activity and its social and psychological or spiritual effect on the individual, but the social and institutional context in which it takes place. Therefore it is the structure of partnership around a project like this that is vital and, within that, the personal relationships between members of the production team, which must be characterized by trust and shared values.

The Water Project was conceived by Learning and Access at The Place in response to an invitation by Cardboard Citizens to provide the dance programme at Crisis Skylight, which opened in the East End of London last October. Created by the homelessness charity Crisis, the Skylight centre offers a wide range of activities, primarily for the homeless and ex-homeless, and including an extensive arts programme run by Cardboard Citizens, the UK's only professional theatre company for homeless and ex-homeless people, whose work centres on the Forum Theatre techniques developed by South American artist and activist Augusto Boal.

We were fortunate to gain funding from ACE under the Dance Included action research programme, and the project began with outreach sessions in four venues - hostels and day centres - in January of this year. The concept behind the project is to link dance with water - for health, for hygiene (and therefore personal dignity) and for exercise (swimming will also be part of the offer, though we have not managed to set this up yet). After three outreach sessions at each venue we launched a regular Thursday evening dance class at Skylight, and the programme has included two intensive weekends, a week-long course and six visits to see dance performances at The Place, as well as the Aquanox trip. In addition to dance in a range of styles, we have offered an introductory Reflexology workshop and Yoga-based cooldown sessions, and future courses will offer other complementary disciplines. The second wave of outreach sessions has just begun, and meanwhile the weekly sessions at Skylight attract a regular core group of about 15, as well as ten or twenty others who attend from time to time. So far the project has contacted about 40 people in all. Age range? 17 to over 60, the core group being mostly in their mid-twenties or thirties, but with some older members. Nationalities that I know of include British, Italian, Eritrean, Dutch, French, Argentinian, Lithuanian, Afghan and South African.

But while it seems appropriate to try to give this snapshot of the project and those taking part, the texture of any one session feels rich and elusive. This is partly in the nature of creative work, and partly because the mix of people is rarely exactly the same from one session to the next. There are a dozen possible reasons why someone will fail to show up, from a Benefits appointment or childcare crisis, to depression or a hangover, or catching up on sleep, or managing to get a place on a course, or work. (It can also be that they don't have a diary and just forget till Friday morning when a nagging thought reminds them...) And at the same time it is heartening to see new faces continually appear, and watch for a bit, and more often than not end up joining in. It is hard to generalise about 'the homeless and ex-homeless' for whom the project has been created, and as I hear fragments of people's stories I am made aware, not for the first time, of how near any of us could be to losing our footing, and our place in the scheme of things. Down and Out. Once there, once out of the loop, the effort required to get things back together is clearly enormous, and for some people is, just at the moment, too much. Once you are in the benefits system it is also very hard to get back into work as rents (paid for by housing benefit) can be as high as £350 a week. Few jobs pay highly enough to cover this.

It follows that the people we are working with are of every type and background, united perhaps only in this particular kind of adversity. It may just be that our group is self-selecting - that must to some extent be true - but the community spirit in the class seems to reflect an already existing fellow-feeling. In general this does not reflect shared interests, but is more likely to be based on shared experiences: it is the tolerance that grows from living in adverse conditions, and particularly in shared spaces with no privacy. But however it comes about, I find the degree of openness and collaboration in the dance sessions genuinely impressive. How willing they are to explore ideas in movement, to improvise, to have a go. It is certainly one of the most open-minded groups I have worked with.

Scene 2: interior, day
A long, light space, sunlight streaming in at one end. A circle of people sitting comfortably on the floor, being introduced to Reflexology. One member of the group has just wandered in - he hasn't been part of the earlier sessions - and, clearly having had a few drinks before he arrived, now wants to tell us a story with rather racist overtones. The atmosphere is becoming a little uneasy, but our project assistant from Cardboard Citizens defuses the situation quietly and effectively. The guy stays and takes part, the teacher treats him like any other member of the group and the session carries on without any further problem. Later someone writes in the project diary that the atmosphere was 'beautiful'.

The Water Project has scarcely begun, so it is premature to speak of success, or even of outcomes, but if we have avoided (so far) any dramatic mistakes, this is because of our partnership with Cardboard Citizens and, by proxy, with Crisis. The project is underpinned by a great deal of experience on both sides, in our different fields of work. In terms of contacting the intended beneficiaries and managing taught provision on a day-to-day basis, the specific knowledge and experience that Cardboard Citizens bring to the project is invaluable. And beyond that project management expertise are the physical structure and systems of Skylight, providing a physical and a policy framework for the project, offering us a context in which recruitment, security, teaching guidelines and hospitality are all dealt with in advance. For both of us, monitoring and evaluation are intrinsic to our planning and working process and, as experienced project managers, we share a ready awareness of what needs to be in place - and what can go wrong. At the same time we inhabit different organisational worlds and different artform cultures, and are still learning about each other's practice. So far, the relationship has been relaxed and unproblematic, though we all know that the project is still developing and changing - as indeed is the whole Skylight programme.

I am hugely impressed by my colleagues at Cardboard Citizens and in the various hostels and centres where we have been working. There appears to be a wide range of resources and programmes available to help the homeless. But for many people the commitment and perseverance required are hard, and so I hope that this project will help them to feel...what? Focused and energised? Supported? Confident and self-possessed? Yes, and creative, and therefore more truly themselves. I hope for all of these. I feel we are all in this together and that the partnership includes the participants as much as the institutions and the project managers.

We are keeping a collective project 'daybook' - a large handmade volume which I hope will be robust enough to last the 15 or 18 months, and which is being used to record thoughts and observations from those taking part. So far these range from visitor's book-type remarks to drawings, cuttings, and Alan's poems. I am hopeful that, as time passes, people will be willing to share not just their responses to the work and views as to its value, but also their ideas as to how it might develop, artistically as well as pedagogically.

The next step is to start making work that is a product of this extended partnership and which will speak to as wide an audience as possible, of what it is to be homeless, or just of what it is to be human. I hope it will be moving, or funny, or irreverent , or angry, or just beautiful. Knowing them, I suspect it will be different from whatever I imagine.

Scene 3: interior, late afternoon
The same studio as before. A group of about ten have been working with tutor Robert Eugene to create a dance in courtly Baroque style, in contrast to the Salsa piece they made and performed earlier in the day. Martin, who tells us he has a problem with depression, is elated and smiling - very energised. 'Fantastic. I love it when you just get it, when it just comes right. That feels really good. Let's do it again.'

Cardboard Citizens can be contacted on +44 020 7247 7747 or visit www.cardboardcitizens.org.uk For further information about Crisis contact www.crisis.org.uk

Chris Thomson is Director of Learning and Access at the Place. For further information contact or visit www.theplace.org.uk

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