Dance South West

The future of youth dance was championed last week by political, cultural and educational leaders at the Youth Dance England Conference.

Young People’s Dance: A Ten Year Vision, a plan for the progression of youth dance nationally in the next ten years, was launched at the event and outlines the swift development of youth dance in the last two years. It identifies where future investment is needed to produce high quality teaching, increased opportunities in participation and performance, as well as workforce development and careers for young people.

Until now, there has been no national plan in England for the future of youth dance, even though dancing is the fastest growing, and second-most participated activity in the county after football.

Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey who gave a speech at the event, championed the strategy and its plans ‘to build a coherent country-wide offer’ for dance.

His support was echoed by Lord Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House, Wayne McGregor, multi-award winning Resident Choreographer for The Royal Ballet, Dr Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England, and Chris Thomson, Director of Learning and Access at The Place, who all addressed delegates at the conference with their views on the strategy.

Wayne McGregor produced a nine-point action plan on how he felt the Vision could become a reality. He said,

“Dance is the perfect primer for creativity and resources individuals not only for physical thinking but to transfer this knowledge into a broad range of alternative disciplines. Creativity will be a critical factor in a future economy where young people will be job creators and not job seekers. We cannot imagine the job opportunities of the future – young people will invent them for themselves.”

McGregor stated that what he felt was needed was for people to read and think about the Ten Year Vision, offer young people more opportunities, engage with more young people who aren’t involved in dance and to take advantage of new connections such as the London 2012 Olympics.

The Vision explains ‘What’s So Good About Dance’, what the current national situation is, asks where we’d like to be in 2020 and what the goals are to provide a strong, cohesive dance offer for young people.

National Young Dance Ambassador, James Cousins said,

“In ten years time I want all young people to have the opportunity to take part in dance in schools and outside of schools and progress into a dance career, if they wish. Currently dance offers endless possibilities for young people – but there are limited opportunities to experience it.”

The YDE conference, which took place in London, also featured a number of specialist speakers in more than 30 different subjects, who talked about areas including education, careers, teaching development and disability dance for young people. Speakers from Australia, Finland, The Netherlands, Canada and Germany, gave an international perspective and a comparison of youth dance and shared aims, objectives and challenges faced in each country.

A new teaching qualification for practitioners and a new teaching guide were also launched at the event. The Diploma in Dance Teaching And Learning (children and young people) was discussed by Linda Jasper, Director of Youth Dance England and Maggie Morris, Head of Acting and Dance qualifications, Trinity College London. The qualification is set to change the future of dance teaching by practitioners while the new guide, Dance In and Beyond Schools, the first resource of its kind since 1993, was well received by event-goers who see the teaching guide as an essential tool in raising the standard of teaching in schools across the country.