iDance – support innovative practices in inclusive dance education Erasmus Project

Project Title

iDance – support innovative practices in inclusive dance education

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Disabilities – special needs; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

iDance was a strategic partnership co-funded by the European programme Erasmus+ which aimed to bolster skills and to facilitate the development, transfer and implementation of innovative practices relating to the opening up of culture through dance.

The project brought together four European partners, the Onassis Stegi (Greece), Holland Dance Festival (Netherlands), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden), and Stopgap Dance Company (UK) aiming to review current practices and barriers in dance training for disabled people and to put forward practical recommendations for overcoming these challenges by proposing a framework for development and training.

From September 2016 to December 2018, the iDance project introduced innovative approaches for addressing disabled and non-disabled people and the dance community, by providing more attractive education and training programmes, in line with individual needs and expectations.

The project supported a training-based collaboration between cultural organisations, professional dance schools, dance companies, conservatoires, academics, NGOs, access workers, artists and disabled and non-disabled adults to develop, test and implement innovative course packages, enriching inclusive dance participation focusing on:

i) Disabled and non-disabled people without a prior involvement in dance.

ii) Dance teachers, choreographers and emerging professional dancers, both disabled and non-disabled.

Each partner organisation hosted a series of inclusive dance workshops addressing the needs of participants with and without disabilities as well as their local dance community using, developing and testing training methodologies. In addition, participants from each country had the opportunity to attend international learning & teaching activities and improved their knowledge, dance techniques and methodologies of inclusive dance training.

Alongside with the range of educational activities, the project generated a research paper on inclusive dance as practiced principally in the four countries of the partner institutions (Greece, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom), outlining and comparing core cultural and educational policies, aiming to map current conditions and to articulate possible future strategies. Moreover, all partners contributed to the development of teaching and training material, tools and approaches focusing on mixed groups of people with different kind of impairments. The 23 Empowerment Training and the 12 Professional Development courses along with the 17 video tutorials which were created to empower disabled people to get involved in contemporary dance and enable the participants to lead dance workshops themselves, are available on the iDance e-learning platform platform so people could refer to in their teaching in inclusive settings.

Overall, the iDance project enabled the partners to come together, share knowledge, exchange best practices and co-develop an innovative set of resources to promote access to inclusive dance education in Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 196884,7 Eur

Project Coordinator

ARIONA HELLAS AE & Country: EL

Project Partners

• STICHTING HOLLAND DANCE FESTIVAL
• Stopgap Dance Company
• SKANES DANSTEATER AB