The logic behind the plan
Through Enter the Ballroom, a project established in 1997, I became acutely aware of a group of older people our previous work had not managed to reach very well - the active independent older person. People not necessarily in need of residential or day centre care, living in their own homes and running an independent life. We reached some of these people through building up relations with ballroom and sequence dance groups and as we shared our passion for dance and our experience of it I felt saddened that I had missed out on the wealth of knowledge and experience that these people had of dance. Many of the group spend more time in any one week dancing than I sometimes do and they were carrying on a long tradition of dance from their youth, as their main social pastime. In contrast to modern social dance styles, the ballroom and sequence dance styles demands that the dancer understands rhythm and step structure, this skill transfers into any other dance class. Taking the work into a more creative arena was a bigger challenge.
The Barbican Theatre offers a broad spectrum of dance classes for the community. In 1999, the dance development worker Jules Laville established Time to Dance. This involved a weekly class for older dancers. This began as a very cautious structured dance and exercise activity for a small group of people. It has grown over the years to become an extremely popular class with a register of about 50, making work for performance, community dance platforms, city arts events and also work with a film maker. This is now an extremely confident and experienced group of individuals who have expanded their understanding and knowledge of dance through their involvement in this weekly session.
The two organisations became aware of their parallel vision for developing work with older people and felt that working together was the obvious way forward, drawing on each others' local knowledge, strength and skills.
In planning to take our work to older people we had some considerations to think about:
- How to create a sustainable opportunity
- How to develop the demand
- What the staffing implications might be
- Where to locate the initiative
- How to develop and promote the artistic vision
- What would be our contribution as artists to the social vision.
One of the difficulties with running a dance company that is also making and touring performance work, is the potential split of focus between the community and performance activity and thus a dilution of what we offer. With small core personnel, it is hard to sustain regular weekly classes, which can lead to education work being project based and unsustainable.
Last year attik dance was able to employ Laura Greaves as a permanent member of staff to develop the education and community activity. This post has allowed the company to sustain the local community and education work during times when it is touring, and has given us more confidence in long term planning. The Barbican Theatre also have a track record of setting up sustainable activities, with good planning and time management of the range of activities that Jules Laville is developing at the theatre. It was the confidence in this new post and the strength of partnership between the attik dance and the Barbican Theatre that gave us the confidence to initiate this long-term project.
We made contact with a local dance practitioner Claire Bond who has been involved herself in many classes run at the Barbican Theatre, but who also teaches regular community dance activities and runs weekly sessions in residential homes. In addition we have built in training opportunities to the project with a view to establishing new teachers to carry the project forward, it is hoped that some of these may be drawn from the class participants.
Whilst there is a wealth of dance on offer in Plymouth for the older generation, there is a gap in the provision for the kind of class that offers more focus on exercise and or creativity.
This project was established as a direct response from the participants of the original Time to Dance group. Time and time again anecdotal evidence from the class, revealed that it was a lifeline for the participants, offering them a chance to push new horizons and feel an identity with a group, providing an opportunity to be a part of something that was going somewhere. Many individuals have talked about this class being the only time they talk and laugh with others from week to week, many experiencing the thrill of working creatively with dance for the first time. The class itself was getting too big and unmanageable and many of the participants suggested that they knew of other people who they felt would love to attend such a class but might not have the confidence, or be able to afford to make the trip to the Barbican theatre, a theatre space still being another world for some that is intimidating to enter.
We now have a staff team of four people committed to this work and the management and marketing for the project is shared between the Barbican theatre and attik dance.
The areas in Plymouth in which we set up these new classes were chosen for their connection to work already being developed by both organisations and in response to requests from class participants. We aimed to make this project as easy as possible to access by choosing to run the classes in centres that were known and in the heart of each community. In one of the areas there was no obvious community centre to use, this lack of focal point is one of the problems for the area, also it is not well supported by public transport and to help attendance we have provided transport, in the form of taxis.
We decided to use the format of the current Time to Dance classes to give us a shared approach for the weekly sessions. The key aims of the session are:
- to create a safe environment in which people can exercise, dance and try new things
- to offer new approaches to dance, by playing with the structure of the class, the spacing, the qualities of the movement
- to encourage a confidence for participants to be able to contribute their own ideas
- to have fun and make space for social exchange.
In addition to these regular classes the project aims to develop potential experiences within dance as a creative artform, drawing individuals into the project from across Plymouth and Devon. We have already run a social event for the groups attended by 100 people. The next stage, planned for the summer, is an intensive choreographic project working with a film maker and a big social event involving workshops, informal sharings of work, guest speakers and lots of food and drink and a samba band.
We spent quite a bit of time as a group talking through our expectations of the project and the groups we would be working with, based on experiences we have and thoughts about where the project could go. The creative team were all coming into this project from a range of different levels of experience in working with this age group. Time was made to share skills and ways of approaching the work. It was our shared understanding that this group can some times feel isolated and that we could through this project reduce that feeling and reality of isolation. These are some of the reasons that have been shared with us as to why people feel isolated:
- loss of contact with people through the work place
- loss of partner, relatives and friends through death
- vulnerability to travel
- physical frailty
- no longer having a role/identity through work or parenting.
When we first advertised the classes, we expected to have to work very hard to encourage and give individuals the confidence to come forward. We made a big effort to make the marketing accessible and encouraging, using the existing Time to Dance group to feed back on each stage of the marketing images and text. We then did an extensive mail out to each community we were targeting, linking in with community news letters, marketing agencies and the local paper and radio.
We were completely overwhelmed by the response with over 200 people contacting us about the classes in the first week of the publicity going to print. We now have on average 150 a week attending regular classes. My perceptions of the particpants are challenged on a regular basis. Although never intending to treat them with kid gloves we have taken a lot of care in the planning, to encourage and not frighten or deter them by moving forward too quickly with the creative content of the activities. I have found the participants quick to come forward with thoughts and aims for the development of the sessions from the class structure, to the use of music and the content. We have adapted accordingly and there is definitely a joint sense of ownership between the participants and myself on the development of the class.
At tea breaks we have been amazed at the openness and depth of the shared conversations. I hope that some of this is because of the intimate and supportive environment that we have created through the sessions, but it has shown that the conversations and exchange that takes place here is an important part of the whole project. We have made Tea Break the title of our first choreographic event with the project.
We are at a very early stage of this project. It is due to last for two years and we intend to support its sustainability long into the future. At this stage we have been stunned by the hunger of older people to participate in a creative and physical activity that pushes the boundaries of what is normally available, and engaging with the opportunities that surround the regular classes to extend the experience and make participants feel linked into and part of a bigger community.
We are already changing our original plans to accommodate the needs and interest of the groups, for example we are developing training sessions for the participant themselves to teach in residential homes. It is the flexibility of this project that makes it so exciting, although we have key aims, we can shift and develop how we achieve them, according to our findings and the feedback from the group.
Sometimes it is scary to not plan in the detail of such a big venture, to not know exactly where and when you are going with each aspect of it. But I feel that this is going to be the key to the success of the project and to being able to make new discoveries for ourselves.
For further information about attic dance email atticdance@compuserve.com or telephone 01752 252 510