HEALTHIER DANCER PROGRAMME (HDP) AND NATIONAL INSTITUE OF DANCE MEDICINE AND SCIENCE (NIDMS)

• HDP delivered 42 educational workshops on physical and mental health to 1,204 dance students and professionals with 2 talks on One Dance UK and the support we offer, 8 on Nutrition, 22 talks on topics of aspects of mental health, 4 talks on injury, 3 talks on fitness, and 1 talk each on finance, physiotherapy and sports massage.

• Our Healthcare Practitioner and Dance Scientist memberships rose to 76 members, from 62 in April 2018.

• Membership with the Performance Optimisation Package, which includes a health cash plan from BHSF, was at 87 members at the end of the financial year.

The NIDMS partnership experienced positive achievements:

• We have been successful in the ESRC Collaborative Doctoral Training Partnership bid to research Self-Harm Among Dancers with Dr Jennifer Cumming from NIDMS partner University of Birmingham

• NIDMS has been successful in securing a loan from the University of Wolverhampton to fund a Smartabase license for a partnership of dance companies and schools, allowing them to track and more effectively manage the health and wellbeing of their dancers and create a large pool of data to look at injury trends in different dance contexts. This is the first step in undertaking the NIDMS epidemiological research study, which has been in planning for a long period

• 2 proposals were submitted and successful to present at the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science 2020 Annual Meeting (which has subsequently been transferred to an iConference) about safeguarding in dance, and implementing psychotherapeutic techniques to the artistic process in dance

Advocacy

Brexit had been a key focus of our work right up until the pandemic struck in March 2020. We continue to work constructively with Government to ensure that the right conditions will be put in place for the UK dance sector to thrive after the end of the Transition Period, as well as reporting on the impact of COVID-19 on the sector, and its needs for recovery. We used the Dance Sector Brexit Working Group, set up by One Dance UK in 2018, and repurposed the same group to gather data on the impact of COVID-19. We have regular meetings and calls with a range of Government departments, provide case studies, evidence, feed into scenario planning and connect Government officials with UK dance artists and companies, to help build an understanding of the unique challenges our sector faces.

One Dance UK held several meetings in Parliament, including those of the Dance All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), and a joint drop-in session together with the Association of British Orchestras, UK Theatre and Society of London Theatre for parliamentarians to learn first-hand about the current issues in the performing arts. We co-hosted politicians and policy makers at a range of dance performances across the UK until theatres closed in March 2020.

We continue to feed into relevant consultations, such as Parliament’s Culture Select Committee report on the impact of COVID-19. We have developed positive connections with DfE, feeding into their guidance around COVID-19 for both school and out-of-school settings and we continue to feed into Ofqual consultations around proposed changes to exams and assessments in light of the pandemic. We continue to provide the secretariat for the Programme Board: Children and Young People's Dance, which brings together a wide range of organisations with a strategic remit for CYP Dance in and out of school in England.

One Dance UK works hard to ensure that the dance sector is recognised and celebrated in managing the One Dance UK Honours Advisory Group and liaising with Government with regard to Her Majesty The Queen’s Birthday and News Years Honours, which in the past year have recognised Sir Robert Cohan KBE; Sir David Bintley KBE; Shobana Jeyasingh CBE; Stpehen Mear CBE; David Toole OBE; Kate Flatt OBE; Mirella Bartrip OBE; Kate Prince MBE; Samuel Stopford MBE; Judith Palmer MBE; June Boyne BEM; Eileen Lindsay BEM; Maurice Stone BEM; and Jacqueline Logan BEM. These awards acknowledge the strong contribution that dance – in all its diverse forms – makes to cultural landscape of the nation.

To mobilise and inform our members, we produce Monthly Advocacy Updates and have created helpful resources on our website including our Brexit guide web page, and COVID-19 resources.

Sector Research

Our report on the role and impact of freelancers in UK dance has been delayed due to the impact of COVID-19, particularly on freelancers.

Freelancers constitute an estimated 70% of the dance workforce. Together with other stakeholders, we originally set the scope to determine the current state, mental wellbeing and needs of freelancers for future, sector-wide actions to empower freelancers. These findings have significantly changed at the time of writing these accounts ,and we are exploring how to best update this in light of COVID-19.

This research is funded by Arts Council England, Dance Professionals Fund and One Dance UK.

Dance On

Dance On sessions provide physical activity for people 55+ years expressed as fun, social dance activity to reduce barriers to entry. The sessions are open to all and are adapted to welcome people with limited mobility or who may be living with health conditions. Dance Development Artists build links to communities and work with Health and Social Care partners to reach out and engage older people who may be socially isolated or inactive.

The programme established community dance groups across Bradford, Leeds and Doncaster, engaging 701 older people in regular fun social dance activity. The average age of attendees is 74 years and 86% were women. 270 of the participants were doing less than 30 minutes moderate intensity physical activity a week so the dance class made a significant difference. Research findings by University of Leeds show significant improvements in balance and mobility, increased physical activity levels and enhanced wellbeing over a 3, 6 and 12 month period.

Dance On is funded by Sport England, Leeds City Council and City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.

Magazines

Our magazines provide platforms for discussion and critical debate through reviews, interviews, and feature articles. One is our industry facing magazine. HOTFOOT aims to redress the limited coverage of Dance of the African Diaspora (DAD) to increase the awareness and understanding 3,600 copies of One were circulated to members. There were 2,347 downloads of HOTFOOT for the year.

Members

Our members add strength to One Dance UK’s prominence as the lead voice for dance. Members inform our training, advocacy, health and networking activities. We value our members and personally respond to enquiries and provide information on sector developments and opportunities. We also give significant discounts to One Dance UK activities and low-cost or free access to our website and social media channels to promote members’ activities.

Our membership is made up of individuals (including students with concessionary rates), organisations, teachers and healthcare practitioners. At the time of publication membership figures were as follows:

Fundraising activities

One of our principle aims was ensuring partnership contributions of £50,000 to Re:Generations 2019 conference by assisting in the writing of grant applications particularly with IRIE! dance theatre who were successful in securing grant funding.

We continued to meet the filing requirements of our large grants from Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Backbone fund and Sport England for the Dance On programme and are happy to work together.

Against a tightened economic landscape for Trusts and Foundations investment in the arts, we set a target of £10,000 for new grants and did not achieve this. Our fundraising target was 6% below expectations as a result.

We engaged a freelance fundraiser with contracted obligation and company monitoring of compliance with the Charities Act 2016 and guidance from the Fundraising Regulator's voluntary regulation scheme. We required and monitored protection of vulnerable people and members of the public from unreasonable intrusion on a person’s privacy, unreasonably persistent approaches for the purpose of soliciting or otherwise procuring money or other property on behalf of the charity or placing undue pressure on a person to give money or other property. These fit with our safeguarding policy on all activities.

There were no complaints received by One Dance UK or our freelance fundraiser for our fundraising activities.