Dance Out Of Line – Fostering Inclusion in all Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Dance Out Of Line – Fostering Inclusion in all Schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Inclusion – equity; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The most effective way to do it is to do it.
— Toni Cade Bambara (US-amerikanische Dichterin und Schriftstellerin)

Education, and in particular school education, remains a key factor for sustainable inclusion of people with disabilities. Figures from the 2018 European Disability Expert Report confirm the glass ceiling for people with disabilities in tertiary education. This is one of the determining factors for why the proportion of teachers with disabilities in schools remains infinitesimally small.
The Italian partners in our project addressed this issue among others: empowering people with disabilities in universities. Hungary, Slovenia and Austria are still struggling with the situation that children with disabilities have a hard time getting a general education. Consequently, this hinders equal access to the labor market and thus participation in society.

The Erasmus+ KA2 project DANCE OUT OF LINE (DOOL) created concrete realities:

Artists with and without disabilities facilitated 7,486 DOOL Days for students in Finland, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and Austria. Students in these five countries experienced PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN A LEADING FUNCTION in DOOL Action Days and DOOL Action Weeks.

Factors that we believe are instrumental for DOOL to successfully contribute toward increased inclusion are:
– that DOOL Day leaders are ARTISTS, and
– they perform as a MIXED-ABLED TEAM.

One artist without a disability and one artist with a disability go to schools and create lessons for students for 1.5 days. At “Dance Out of Line!” inclusion is not discussed, it is lived.
In “Dance out of Line!” the proven knowledge of contemporary dance meets the pedagogical knowledge of the schools in a complementary way. “Dance out of Line!” provides temporary learning units at schools (primary and secondary, as well as teacher training). In this way, students and teachers encounter people with disabilities in leadership positions in a very informal way. Dance out of Line! (DOOL) also brought mixed-abled artist teams into college classrooms and seminar rooms.

The realization of our goals: the basic_DOOL models and advanced_DOOL methods.

Through the Learning/Teaching/Training/Activities that took place at the beginning of the project, the artists were able to familiarise themselves with the pilot model for DOOL developed by MAD in Austria, develop it further for themselves, and generate from it the informances (information + performance), workshop programs, and methods for resonance meetings.
During the project period, 15 unique BASIC DOOL MODELS (IO1) and 22 ADVANCED DOOL METHODS (IO2) were developed in the five partner countries. Since the artists have very different focuses, skills, and methods, the DOOL_models and methods developed are unique. These were tested with students after the respective development period. ArtMan developed them under the title “NémArt, one day fun day!”, DanceAbility Finland’s regional title was “Mun kehossa” (“My body”), Slovenia’s was “Skok čez Luno” (“Jump behind the moon”) and the Austrian team’s regional title was “MellowYellow”. “Disabilità, arte e università: approcci critici per corpi sovversivi” (“Disability, art and university: critical approaches for subversive bodies”) is the name of the Italian team’s university intervention developed around the choreographer Chiara Bersani.

The theory papers of the Italian artists are a solution we found due to the tense Covid-19 situation – Chiara Bersani and Marta Montanini developed six theory papers for IO1, in addition to four DOOL_models in universities. During IO2, 12 theory papers were developed.
DanceAbility Finland has developed online formats of DOOL Days. In addition to this, MAD (AT) developed and tested the Action Week format, Medarhiv (SI) facilitated collaborative, digital interaction and reflection among the partners on the ROADMAP outputs (our web platform on dool.eu).

In IO3, ArtMan, in consultation with MAD, developed a higher education curriculum for training inclusive dance professionals in school education.

In Flight Case (IO4) we lead up to our project: in Stories for the Web we specifically address politicians, artists, teaching staff, and activists from the Self-determined Living movement.

Furthermore, in addition to our planned outputs, we present an Impact Survey Toolkit – the foundation an an impact assessment by the Institute for Participatory Social Research (AT).

The experience gained from this project demonstrated that possible initial skepticism regarding an encounter with people with disabilities can best be met playfully and creatively, and transformed into an encounter at eye level.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 318793 Eur

Project Coordinator

MAD – Verein zur Förderung von Mixed-Abled Dance & Performance & Country: AT

Project Partners

• CORPOCELESTE
• DanceAbility Finland ry
• KULTURNO IZOBRAZEVALNO DRUSTVO PINA
• ArtMan Mozgásterápiás Müveszeti Közhasznu Egyesület
• Medarhiv IP d.o.o.