Young people need to be flexible, imaginative and resilient in this rapidly changing world.
They must be able to use their creativity holistically and appropriately in everything they do, constantly engaging with others. Yet while education remains focused on testing and attainment, how can dance-based creative partnership be given the educational space to develop the creativity every child needs? Close Encounters illustrates how creativity and the special relationships that facilitate it can be nurtured through dance within education.
Dance Partners for Creativity (DPC), an intensive two-year qualitative research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, underpins the book. The authors and their collaborating researchers argue that dance-based creative partnership should be given greater space in the curriculum because of its ethically-grounded and humanising practice, and they describe examples of how this is done.
With policy makers and practitioners facing questions of what is and what might be, the book offers enquiry and research-based ideas about dance-based partnership’s role in current and future education. It will greatly enrich the thinking of practitioners, researchers and policy makers interested in arts practices and 21st century educational futures.
Kerry Chappell,
Linda Rolfe,
Anna Craft and
Veronica Jobbins are the core DPC research team, based at the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter and at TrinityLaban Dance and Music Conservatoire. Their expertise and influence ranges through dance education and creativity in education practice, management, teacher-training and theory, both nationally and internationally. The book is enriched by the voices of the the experienced arts practitioners who are co-researchers and co-authors alongside the core team.
For further information about
Close Encounters and the
Dance Partners for Creativity research project go to:
education.exeter.ac.uk/projects.php?id=339