In response to the lockdown triggered by COVID-19, many arts organisations have taken their work online, sharing content for audiences to view for free. However, creating participatory engagement online is much more challenging and, as a sector used to being face to face with people in their practice, it’s clear that the current restrictions change the nature of participatory arts based activity substantially.

Following a vital conversation on social media led by Guy O’Donnell, Learning and Participation Producer, National Dance Company Wales which opened a discussion on how we can deliver participatory arts effectively, a range of partners are collaborating to lead Zoom discussions for the sector where we can talk about the impact of the lockdown on our work and work creatively together to think beyond the lockdown.

In partnership with ArtWorks Cymru a series of free Zoom meetings have been set up to discuss and share current working practices in participatory delivery.

Thinking Beyond the Lockdown

These Zoom meetings will explore how we think beyond the lockdown. We’ll explore what the future might hold, what we might keep from our online experiences, and how we live with an uncertain future.

Tracey Brown, Mentoring, Training, Development Leader and Kathryn Williams, Director, Rubicon Dance Dance are presenting at the Dance focused Zoom meeting on Wednesday the 10th of June 3-5pm. 

Kathryn Williams, Director, Rubicon Dance is presenting at the Community Arts meeting organised by Tanio on Thu, 11 June, 2-3.30pm

The meetings are free to attend but numbers are limited. Kathryn and Tracey share their biographies below and some information on of areas they will discuss at the meetings below.

Kathryn Williams

Rubicon’s Director since 2014, I studied Dance at Roehampton. My career has spanned IT, Finance as well as the Third Sector and the Arts. I have an MSc in Entrepreneurship, I’m a Lead Wales graduate and I’m also Wales’ first Pilotlighter.

I think that access to the arts is a democratic right and this very much spaces my approach to what I do. I’m also a School Governor, childcare campaigner, advocate for the arts and committed martial artist. I live in the former mining community of the Rhondda in South Wales with my husband and teenage sons.

Tracey Brown

Tracey has worked at Rubicon since September 1996 and her very first role was Dance Development Worker, leading dance sessions for a wide range of ages, abilities and backgrounds and contexts whilst setting up Rubicon’s development programme across Cardiff which initially targeted five key areas of the city.

Tracey now manages Rubicon CPD programmes, an annual summer programme for community dance practitioners from across Wales, an individual learning programme for Rubicon’s dance practitioners, the community dance apprentice training programme, mentor development as well as the Wales Wide Training Programme (WWTP).

Highlight’s for Tracey’s time at Rubicon includes the success and reach of the development programme, the Rubicon to Romania programme working with deaf children in Craiova, the community dance apprentice programme and the Wales Wide Training Programme! In 2017 Tracey won a Creative and Cultural Skills Council UK Award for her work with community dance apprentices.

Wales Wide Training Programme (WWTP)

At the Dance meeting Tracey will talk about the Wales Wide Training Programme (WWTP) which is an initiative that exists to support the development of community dance practice and provision across Wales. WWTP was established in 2013 with seven partners, all of whom were community dance/arts organisations. There are now seventeen partners from across Wales and these include venues and theatres, universities, national companies, colleges as well as the initial community dance and arts organisations. WWTP is steered by the partners who work together to design and organise training and professional development programmes that respond to sector-need.

The database is currently at 250 (it started with 40 in 2013) and includes a range of people from practitioners, apprentices, venue managers, health boards, arts organisations, freelancers and directors.

Challenges and solutions

WWTP is a programme that enables people who work in the dance sector to come together regularly and this takes place across Wales. There are currently twelve strands to WWTP and it was important to keep all of this work happening, especially as many of these strands take place more than once eg CPD days three per year across Wales. Initially when COVID-19 and lockdown began we were coming out of one year of funding and into another so the challenge was how the whole programme would be adapted in the new climate especially as both programmes overlapped. However we have adapted well and have re ordered the programme (May 2020-April 2021) and have met with partners and also practitioners from the database regularly via Zoom.

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An Evaluation Forum that was scheduled for March 2020 (pre lockdown) and due to be led by Dr Susanne Burns was initially open to twelve people as this training is very tailored.

We have adapted this to have three Evaluation Forums on Zoom and they are open to eight people per session so our reach is higher, albeit online. The first two forums have already sold very quickly.

Another big challenge was thinking about the work force and that people will have less money than ever so it was important to offer a “pay what you can” approach. People have great trust and loyalty to WWTP and we feel that being fair to all is really important right now. WWTP is a training programme and no one should not sign up for events and CPD due to lack of finance or these people could de skill or lose confidence in a professional capacity quickly.

Further links

Wales Wide Training Programme Facebook Page
kathryn@rubicondance.co.uk
tracey@rubicondance.co.uk
www.rubicondance.co.uk

Meeting Minutes, Beyond The Lockdown
Wednesday 10th June 2020

44 Participants

Catherine Young – Dawns i Bawb –

http://dawnsibawb.org/eng/index.html

Community dance organisation for North West Wales – all ages and abilities

Lockdown started early for them as much of their work is in care homes. Three weeks later all our programs were cancelled and the office was shut. We set up homeworking.

They put support in place straightway for the freelance team we work for, and honoured all the work they were contracted for.
Catherine’s been working on a contingency plan in place looking at financial scenarios for how the organisation can emerge from lockdown. The final scenario is beginning again in January – although if this is the case it will be very serious for the organisation.

They’ve had to consider all the programs we run and how they would adapt our work. Catherine created an online policy for staff. This was an important basis for their work.

They launched an after school program for schools and have launched a package which is paid for. The package includes a live session, a recorded session and a creative task. The first live session was a really successful event

Care home project / dementia project – they created online versions of the workshops we delivered. Talking to care home staff it was clear that participants couldn’t even leave their rooms. They looked at one to one sessions and got a grant to buy tablets that could enable this. They will be linking with Coleg Menai to create a buddy scheme with students and trying to link with families.

Catherine will look at fitness programs and schools work next. There still needs to be discussion about how these programs are shaped.

Catherine is keen to make their Christmas performance happen in some way as it’s a highlight for all their participants.
The lockdown has thrown up a lot of questions. We need to question what we take with us and what we leave behind.
This is an opportunity to make dance accessible to people who can’t attend in person, or aren’t confident to attend. DIB will definitely keep some online sessions.
But online is not accessible to some people – so they need to be mindful of this and keep exploring how they reach these people.

Freelancers – this crisis has shown how vulnerable they are but also how much we depend on them. We need to address more solid terms and conditions and contracts for them.
It’s difficult to see how DiB will come out of the lockdown. It’s going to be really hard to finance a model whilst ensuring social distancing. “There are lots of hurdles and I don’t know all the answers.”

DiB needs to remain relevant – bringing people together, creating together is what they do. They have to discover new ways of doing this

Rachel Pedley – Avant Cymru –

https://www.avant.cymru/

Rachel is from Rhondda valleys and from a working class background. She is dyslexic and also has antiphospholipid syndrome, which means she needs to move around to prevent clots and joint pain otherwise she is in pain and suffered a stroke which led to frontal lobe damage and epilepsy. So engaging online can be very hard for her.

Rachel started dancing at aged 2 – she loved it and embraced it all. She got a paper round at 12 to help pay for all her classes. Dance was where she was able to express herself. She trained at London Studio centre and got into Hip Hop.She went into commercial dancing, worked on the West End, and then on to New York training young people. She came back to the UK and made her way back to Wales. She trained as an RAD teacher and a IDTA teacher. She also taught GCSE and A-Level. When she came back to Wales she set up Avant.

Avant focuses on hip hop dance theatre and drama theatre and supporting events and workshops. She talked to YPs in the Rhondda about what they wanted. They all wanted to leave Wales to be successful. So Avant have been looking at how they can bring people to Wales to create opportunities.

Avant is not core funded. They are project funded. They had a project fund in progress when lockdown started. They have been linking to partners in UK, like Breakin Convention, who can offer Q&As and talks.

They have been doing online hip hop for young people and Ballroom for older people.

Because of Rachel’s disabilities, she always starts with an evaluation of what’s possible. So this is what she did when looking at their online activities.

Story Sharing – hyper local – people have been sending Rachel stories and then local children have been posting them to older people.

Another project has been collecting stories from local people in the Rhondda so a graffiti artist they are working with has put some of the characters they discovered on local walls.

They are linking up with other organisations who deliver hip hop and having a joint competition. There is now a UK national governing body for break dance. It will go into the 2021 Youth Olympics. So Avant is working with partners to start structuring the sector.

Tracey Brown & Kathryn Williams – Rubicon Dance –

https://www.rubicondance.co.uk/

Rubicon Dance is a social arts organisation. They exist to connect people and they do that through dance. Dance can change people’s lives. It’s a way that we can all express our shared cultural identity. But now they can’t bring people together.

Rubicon created a pandemic policy in February after seeing what was happening in Wuhan. They also created a framework for business resumption. This explored finance, communication and operations. This was signed off in early March. One week later, they invoked this policy. At the heart of this, was keeping staff and freelancers safe. They have honoured all freelance contracts for the spring and the summer. They haven’t furloughed anyone.

Insight 1 – It’s important to scan the horizon and assess what is needed in the future.

When they closed, it triggered a massive communication exercise. They work with a wide range of people. They contacted all participants. Staying connected to people was the important part. They used phone, postcards, texting and using zoom.
They tried to stick to the timetable that they normally have – first everyone needed to talk but as the weeks have gone on, participants have wanted to dance and they’ve been able to facilitate this. They’ve been focusing on our existing participants.
Our courses for young people have moved online successfully.
Now they are looking at new partners. Menter Caerdydd – they are now delivering interactive zoom sessions with them in Welsh. It’s been a great learning experience and they’ve had to learn about cameras, lighting , microphones, digital rights.

Insight 2 – focus on the participants

Workforce – staff and freelancers – Kathryn’s priority has been to keep them safe and employable. They have offered tailored CPD – 3 days per person. Rubicon is part of a wider ecology and the Wales Wide Training Program has also adapted and its become a vehicle for keeping in touch with people.

Wales Wide Training Platform – started in 2013 and had 7 partners. Now we have 17 partners and very contracting organisations – from Artis Community, Cardiff Met, wales Millennium Centre and Theatre Felinfach.

Lockdown has led to rearranging six events. Evaluation session is being run online again – so now it can reach wider. Policy forum – about partners and database coming together – moved this online and ran it on the same day. Best practice forum – also took place online – they had good number attending.

They usually shift across the country and don’t expect all partners to attend every meeting. Now people can attend each meeting, and they have had 3 partner meetings already since lockdown.
Tracey has also set up micro zoom sessions where people can meet to just talk about what has happened. There are never more than 4 in each meeting. This is vital support.
Practice Exchange – it will now happen online.
Bursary Award – allow people to apply for money to spend time with someone who inspires them

Challenge – Apprenticeship Training programme – they have an apprentice at the moment but her final term, which would usually be the time she would be out and involved in everything, can’t happen as usual. So Tracey is trying to find ways for her to engage in work. She is leading Menter Caerdydd sessions and has had her time with Rubicon extended.

Tracey is looking ahead to the autumn and what the CPD would look like. Cai Tomos will bring them together to dance together.

Suzy West, Impelo offered a response to what she had heard:

How do we find the time to look at big change that we want to take into the future? How do we sustain our organisations and practice at all?

Place and connection with people is so important. What stays face to face and what might continue online?

Given that the UK wide picture of accessing any online activity (schools, support for differently abled, cultural etc) has so starkly highlighted existing inequalities what does this mean for a prolonged alternative delivery model for those at continued risk and sheltering (older and vulnerable)?

For Impelo in a rural area this has been an incredible opportunity for us and our participants to access some really amazing online work and to actually able to attend things without 6 hour round trips! How can we hold on to this?

How do we work with freelancers and big venues?
What will be the impact of lower family incomes?

However when we look at the transformative power of the participatory process for health (mental and physical) as well as reaching into communities that don’t access or see themselves as cultural consumers (the figures were bad enough before this) online has just not cut it. So what to keep and what to throw out?

What are we not sure of? What’s doing our head in?

Discussion

What about the practical things for live sessions?

Catherine – I’m reading as much as I can. I’m looking at how we might get people in and out, how we might use the toilets, how people register. It’s a military operation.
Citrus Arts – we create work outdoors and are happy to share ideas about how to do this.
https://www.eventsafetyalliance.org/esa-reopening-guide – published a guide to re-opening. There are some things that apply and others which don’t. For instance – you might want to appoint an infection officer. You need to speak to your insurance company and look at duty of care and liability.
Guy suggested a zoom to explore the practicalities.
Diane Hebb – there are several different guidelines that have been published. Schools and childcare centres guidance has been published today by Welsh Government. We are also looking at attitudes of audiences and we are designing a survey to put out to the public to find out how people feel. This will be a survey that people can revisit so we can keep testing the attitude. Please send us any specific questions that should be included in this survey.
Suzy West – Impelo are going to do a pilot in their dance space and are happy to feed back on this
Rachel Pedley – Avant are using a thermometer to take the temperature of staff and participants throughout the day. Anyone with an elevated temperature will be sent home. They have a residency at Pavilion Dance in August and that will go ahead. So they are putting things in place. They have created a detailed Code of Practice for their staff.
Tracey Brown – Rubicon are thinking about how our participants will feel about using public transport to get to our session. We already have to clean when we work in the Children’s Hospital so we have some systems in place already that we can share.

Music Rights
Catherine – DiB have found a good site where you can use music for free which she can share. This is a difficult area to navigate.

Freelance Support
Angharad Harrop – I’m a freelancer and the amount of work that it might be to put health and safety needs in place is huge. This feels very scary. Please get in touch and support any freelancers you are working with.
Catherine – please come to us – we don’t know everyone who is out there. Please know that doors are open and come to us.
Rachel – Avant are a collective of freelancers. We managed to pool funding. So look for funding and try and work together.
Community Musicians – Sound Sense – highlighting that there is a lot more planning and set up involved away from the actual delivery. When people employ freelance artists this needs to be factored in. Hopefully that will improve.
Heidi – Dance degree exploring whether they can meet their learning objectives through blended learning – there are lots of questions.

Technique and Quality
Uma – how are people managing this? When you do this live, you can show people and move people. But how do you do this online?
Gerladine passed on advice from Gwyn Emberton – he works with students online and gets them to watch first, talks them through and then gets them to repeat and observes / gives feedback. In my Chi Gong class, the teacher watches carefully and will ask people to change positions. Zosa also suggested asking people to think about using the space around them, so they are not always looking into the camera. Julie Hobday asks participants to go away from the camera and
Guy O’Donnell – we should start to shape a document together that we can share together and co-author.

Preparation
Helen Woods – today we shared some of the experience of preparation and what happens when you work on zoom working with the Rubicon apprentice. NDC Wales are paying us for four sessions so we can prepare and this will be needed.

In response to the lockdown triggered by COVID-19, many arts organisations have taken their work online, sharing content for audiences to view for free. However, creating participatory engagement online is much more challenging and, as a sector used to being face to face with people in their practice, it’s clear that the current restrictions change the nature of participatory arts based activity substantially.

Following a vital conversation on social media led by Guy O’Donnell, Learning and Participation Producer, National Dance Company Wales which opened a discussion on how we can deliver participatory arts effectively, a range of partners are collaborating to lead Zoom discussions for the sector where we can talk about the impact of the lockdown on our work and work creatively together to think beyond the lockdown.

In partnership with ArtWorks Cymru a series of free Zoom meetings have been set up to discuss and share current working practices in participatory delivery.

Thinking Beyond the Lockdown

These Zoom meetings will explore how we think beyond the lockdown. We’ll explore what the future might hold, what we might keep from our online experiences, and how we live with an uncertain future.

Director of Dawns i Bawb, Catherine Young is presenting at the second Zoom meeting on Wednesday the 10th of June 3-5pm. The meetings are free to attend but numbers are limited. Catherine gives a personal response below to the challenges and solutions she has created to support participatory dance delivery in the current climate.

Hi can you tell me a little about yourself and your practice?

Hi my name is Catherine Young and I am Artistic Director for Dawns i Bawb – the Community Dance Organisation for North West Wales.

I have worked in the Community Dance sector for over 20 years. I graduated with a BA Contemporary Dance from De Montfort University, did a 2 year Community Dance apprenticeship before working as a Community Dance Practitioner in Ceredigion for 18 years before coming to Dawns i Bawb 4 years ago. I have also worked as an independent choreographer, creating professional work within community contexts. The values connected to Community Dance have always been a passion of mine and I love creating work with people of all walks of life. I am also very passionate about the Welsh language and this is always reflected in every creative thing I do. I believe that Dawns i Bawb is the only Welsh language dance organisation in Wales and I am very proud of this fact.

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What challenges did lockdown present to delivery of your participatory practice?

This has been the biggest challenge that we as a Community Dance organisation and the sector as a whole, has ever faced. Community Dance is about a connected and shared experience – bringing people and communities together through dance. These important factors have not disappeared and in fact, are more important than ever. But our old way of working has gone. Our challenge now is to maintain our purpose but find a new way of doing so. We have to respond and adapt to our current way of life. For me personally, the lockdown has caused me to question a lot of our current way of working – from how accessible we really are to how our relationships with freelance dance artists. I’ve been having many of these conversations with Arts Council Wales recently and I think that this situation is going to raise many conversations. We need to be brave and have these conversations. I think our future dance sector might look very different after this. And perhaps it should.

What systems did you put in place to ensure delivery?

It took about 6 weeks in lockdown before we started focussing on delivery. In less than a week we lost our entire dance programme, had to leave our office and were then placed in lockdown and like with everyone, it was a huge shock. Myself and my staff needed time to come to terms with everything so we took small steps at the start. I then began looking at what our short term future might look like and worked with my Board and Arts Council Wales Officer to put a 6 month Contingency Plan in place. I thought at the start that it would just be a matter of waiting for the storm to pass but after a few weeks began to change my attitude to our situation.

I’ve always felt it important that we as artists, respond to the world around us and really, this situation is no different. There is nothing in the arts that is impossible and I have always believed this. Once I changed my way of thinking, the creative juices started to flow! I looked carefully at our programme and all our different participants and began to put plans into place of how we can keep connected to them. Our programme is very varied and we work with some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. We are now about to dive into the world of online working starting with our after school clubs for children and young people. We almost have a different plan for each one of our groups as they all have very different needs.

Did you have any particulate challenges or success that you would like to share?

As we venture into online working, the most important thing for me is that our ethos remains as strong as ever. It is crucial that we hold on to our values. I know some find out odd when I say this as a Director of a dance organisation, but dance is not the main focus of what we do. Our focus is on people, on communties, on connection, relationships and the shared experience. Dance is the medium through which we enable this to happen. I want to ensure that even though our way of working has changed, that all these important elements remain.

This will be the biggest challenge that we face, not just Dawns i Bawb but the sector as a whole. Being able to carry on with our programme has certainly challenged me to think outside the box! As we take work on line, one of the challenges has been how we keep connected to the most vulnerable people that we work with. One example is our Care Home Programme. We were working regularly with around 20 care homes before lockdown, mostly with people who are living with Dementia. We contacted staff to discuss whether online sessions might work to be told that the majority were ‘shielding’ and unable to leave their rooms or be in contact with other residents. We therefore needed another way to be able to communicate with the residents.

I successfully applied for a small grant from Community Foundation Wales and received permission to adapt a grant that we had received previously from Peoples Health Lottery to enable us to buy around 25 electronic tablets to loan to care homes that would enable people to receive 1:1 dance activity in their rooms – either live or already pre-recorded into the tablet. Tackling social isolation is a big part of our work and this is more crucial than ever. Therefore, I want to ensure that the tablets can be used for more than DiB activity – they can be used for people to keep in contact with loved ones and to receive creative activity from our partner organisations. For example, I have been talking with Conwy Culture Centre about the idea that people can access their archives through our tablets.

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What are your plans for future delivery?

I think we have to face the reality that we will be working like this for a while and that online working might not just be a temporary measure. Even if we can start back some kind of activity in September, strict social distancing will still be in place so our sessions are going to look very different for quite a while. Everything is still so uncertain so every plan I make has about 3 back up plans attached to it! Dawns i Bawb does an annual Christmas production every year. It is our highlight with 100+ performers and 500+ audience. I am currently planning 3 different scenarios to enable the performance to happen in December. It might have to be a whole different experience, but it will happen.

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A range of organisations have worked to continue delivery of their art form during lockdown are there any that you would like to mention that you found either professionally or personally useful?

The way that the Arts sector in Wales has responded to all of this is amazing. I would like to mention ACW for the way that they have supported and taken leadership of the situation and for the way they have supported me and Dawns i Bawb. They have tons of useful resources on their website. Also People Dancing for the support they have offered the Community Dance sector and the useful resources they have put together which are on their website.

Below is the presentation that Catherine gave to those attending the Zoom Dance Participation Meeting on Wednesday the 10th June. Thanks to Catherine for supporting us to share this.

Hello everyone. I am Catherine and I’m Artistic Director for Dawns i Bawb which is the community dance organisation for North West Wales, developing dance provision to people of all ages and abilities throughout Gwynedd, Conwy and Ynys-Môn.

We are now halfway through our 11th week of lockdown and I wanted to take this opportunity to share our experiences and responses to the situation with you.

Due to the nature of our work I think that we began to experience the effects of the situation about 3 weeks before the official lockdown. We work with some of the most vulnerable people in our communities including those living with Dementia and those that are care home residents. In early March we began to receive phone calls from our care homes stating that they were putting their home under precautionary lockdown. I remember it coming as a shock – it didn’t feel at that time that we needed to be worrying about the virus yet. Within three weeks everything had changed.

On Tuesday 17th March we lost our entire programme in one day. By Friday 20th March we had to leave our office with immediate effect. Everything had happened very brutally and very quickly.

We therefore had to put plans in place very quickly. My first response was to my staff – to support them and set them all up on a homeworking system. This was challenging in itself as we didnt have enough warning to really plan this but we found our way through it and are fortunate that we have been able to keep the Company ticking over 11 weeks on.

I also put support in place straight away for our freelance dance artists. We have a fantastic team of 6 freelancers and they all lost their work in one day. I think one of the hardest things I’ve had to do was to phone each of them to tell them that their work was stopping immidiately. Two of them as new graduates, had only been freelancing for 2 months. I am pleased that we have been able to support them. I ensured that we honoured all the contractual work that they had lost and have been fortunate to have been able to adapt a few project led grants that has enabled me to carry on giving them all paid work during the lockdown.

I also put a 6 month Contingency Plan in place to establish our financial and strategic situation. I have based this on different scenarios of when we might come out of lockdown – the impact on DiB if this happens in July, September or even January. Things are changing so quickly and on an almost daily basis that I feel that I’m updating this Contingency Plan almost every week! We have already passed scenario number 1 – which would have seen us returning to work after Easter. As we move further and further through the scenarios the situation gets more concerning. If we end up reaching our final scenario of getting to January and still not being able to deliver work, the consequences will be serious to our future.

It took around 6 weeks to establish some kind of routine and to really, accept our situation and begin dealing with the shock of it all. Within this time, it started to become clear that this was no longer a matter of waiting for the storm to pass and then getting back to normal. We were having to begin to consider new ways of working – a new way of running our Company and a new way of delivering dance activity and engaging with our participants again.

Dawns i Bawb works with a vast range of people. With all of our programme planning, it was necessary to consider each group seperately – their needs, accessibility, priorities, objectives – and the consideration of online activity was no different. It has been fantastic to see the amount of arts based activity that had gone online and I learned alot from many of our colleagues. As we began considering taking our work online, I began to support our tutors in preparing for this and created an online working policy for staff. I had very little resources to work from with this as it is of course a new way of working for us all but I have managed to create a way of working that I have confidence in and that I feel is safe and maintains our professional standards to the best of our ability.

At the start of June, we launched our online dance package for our after school clubs of children and young people. This one has been the most straightforward one to set up. We have created an online monthly dance package which people sign up to beforehand for the entire month. We have put a small cost on the package which will enable us to cover tutor costs. We have had a good response to this and have exceeded what was the minimum intake needed to be able to cover costs. The package includes a live session each week, a recorded session each week and a creative task for participants to do in their own time and then show their work in the next live session. All participants have received a safeguarding policy and disclaimer to ensure everyone’s safety. We did our first live session to around 20 participants. It was a happy and emotional experience. Our young people are so resilient – working virtually did not phase them one bit.

Just before lockdown, we were halfway through two project grants. Both were for our care home programme and for people living with Dementia. As we could no longer carry on running the projects in their usual format, we received permission to adapt the project conditions to create online sessions for the care homes. This also included creating an online version of our interactive performance ‘Dancing the Decades,’ which was created last year specifically for care homes and people living with Dementia. We were due to tour the performance around Conwy during the Easter holidays.

I knew this would be much more challenging to develop than our after school clubs online package.  We contacted care home staff about the idea and almost all told me that they wanted sessions but that all residents are sheilding and not able to leave their bedroom, let alone be able to go to their lounge and dance with others. Conversations with care staff made it clear to me just how serious the situation was in care homes and the effect this isloation could have on residents and our participants.

An important element of all our work is connecting with people and tackling social isolation and this felt more important than ever. I therefore started to explore the idea of 1:1 sessions and applied for, and got, a grant from Community Foundation Wales to enable us to buy around 20 electronic tablets that we can loan to care homes that will enable us to offer 1:1 dance sessions to those that are sheilding. While dance is an important element of this work, connection and communication with others is the most important factor. Therefore, these tablets will not just be limited to DiB activity. We will be linking up with other partners to create a kind of ‘buddy scheme’ where people can participate in a session together, can be in contact with one another even perhaps, where families of the residents can participate or just have a chat together. We will also enable our partner organisations to engage with residents through the tablets. For example, we are discussing how Conwy Culture Centre can make online versions of their achives that people can access.

Within time I will begin looking at other aspects of our work and what their near futures might look like including our fitness programmes and our schools work. I am carefully following reports by our First Minister and Education Minister everyday hoping these ongoing announcements will help me to shape this. DiB creates an annual Christmas production every year which is our biggest event of the year involving over one hundred performers and over 500 audience. I know it is an event that our participants and communities look forward to and I will ensure that the performance will happen in December. I dont know what our situation will be at that time or if our theatres will be open once again. Therefore I am creating a contingency plan for the performance with 4 sceanrios. Even if we find ourselves still in lockdown, the performance will happen!

The lockdown has been quite an astonishing time. Its caused me to question so many things from the purpose of what we do to our relationship with our freelance dance artists. What is obvious to me is that I shouldn’t be looking towards getting back to normal, but looking at our way forward. As someone said to us in one of our network meetings recently – to question what do we take with us but also what do we leave behind?

Working online has raised the question of accessibility to dance activity from both angles. On the one hand, I feel it has the potential to open dance to those that for whatever reason do not attend dance sessions – whether its because of transport issues or health issues making someone unable to leave their home including social anxiety. We all know of the health benefits for dance and therefore have this opportunity to make dance more readily acaibale and accessible. We know that there are still people in our communities that want to attend a dance class but do not believe that they can be a dancer and the idea of walking in to a dance studio is too overwhelming. Online sessions can help tackle this and with this in mind, I think that I will keep some aspects of online activity when we come out of lockdown and when we can get back together.

There is the other issue of course of the inaccessbility online working can cause. Do the more vulnerable of our communities, or those living in poverty have access to wifi and equipment? Is it safe for everyone and how do we know? What about our participants with physical or learning difficulties? Can we offer the same experience that we did before the lockdown? Are we losing some very important features of our work by not being in the same room? And how do we overcome this?

I also want to come out on the other side of this having had many conversations about our relationships with our freelancers. This isn’t a new issue and is in fact one I have been questioning since being with DiB and is one I was planning to tackle in our Investment Review application. Our freelancers are at the heart of our Company and are the ones who have professionally been hit the hardest in all of this. It has hit home just how vulnerable they are professionally but also how much we depend on them. I have noted with ACW that we as a sector need to seriously tackle this and consider setting a pay-scale and more solid working conditions.

What has become very clear over the past couple of weeks is that the biggest challenge for us is not the lockdown but the after-effect – the getting back on our feet. We can make socially-distanced dance sessions happen on a practical level but they are no way financially sustainable. Income from sessions cover the costs of those sessions including tutor fee and expenses and studio hire. Some of our sessions have up to 25 participants. If we had to create smaller groups of say, 5 participants, it means that our costs for that session will be 5 times more than usual but the income will remain the same. And thats just for one session. We can run up to 15 groups a week usually. If we had to add extra sessions on to all of those 15 groups the costs would be beyond anything we could manage. Additionally, we probably wont see our more vulnerable groups until next year which means we will be without a large chunk of our programme for quite a while. We have a lot of hurdles in front of us and at the moment, I do not know what the answers are. 

However, as we keep going through this and start planning our way forward, my biggest question to myself is how do we remain relevant? How do we develop online activity and plan for our next steps while maintaining our purpose and ethos as a community dance organisation? Everything that we do is centered around connection, bringing people together, creating together and being with one another. We know live in a time where these things, all these things that are so important to Community Dance, are no longer possible in its original form. We need to create new ways of being together and not forget what is the purpose of our art form. We still have many challenges ahead but also now have the opportunity to really look at what we do and what we want to take forward?

In response to the lockdown triggered by COVID-19, many arts organisations have taken their work online, sharing content for audiences to view for free. However, creating participatory engagement online is much more challenging and, as a sector used to being face to face with people in their practice, it’s clear that the current restrictions change the nature of participatory arts based activity substantially.

Following a vital conversation on social media led by Guy O’Donnell, Learning and Participation Producer, National Dance Company Wales which opened a discussion on how we can deliver participatory arts effectively, a range of partners are collaborating to lead Zoom discussions for the sector where we can talk about the impact of the lockdown on our work and work creatively together to think beyond the lockdown.

In partnership with ArtWorks Cymru a series of free Zoom meetings have been set up to discuss and share current working practices in participatory delivery.

Capturing the Learning

These Zoom meetings will explore how we capture the learning from organisations and artists who are currently delivering projects. We’ll explore what methods are working well, what are we learning through this experience, and how we are adapting  our working practices.

Director of Ardour Academy, Sara Sirati is presenting at the first Zoom Dance meeting on Wednesday 3rd June 3-5pm The meetings are free to attend but numbers are limited. Sara gives a personal response below to the challenges and solutions she has created to support participatory dance delivery in the current climate.

Hi can you tell me a little about yourself and your practice?

Hi I’m Sara… a therapist, dancer and choreographer. I’m also the director of a Cardiff-based dance and well-being, not for profit organisation called ‘Ardour Academy’.

What challenges did lockdown present to delivery of your participatory practice?

I think mainly wrapping our heads around the sudden change and making decisions that would benefit all our staff and participants, were emotional and practical challenges for us. We wanted to ensure we continued to run our services, when people need it the most and find effective ways of moving our services online. The Arts can struggle regardless of the COVID-19 crisis, and of course even more so recently, due to the crisis.

 What systems did you put in place to ensure delivery?

We made sure that we piloted a few workshops, using a variety of systems such as Ζoom, Microsoft Τeams and Facebook Live. We collected data from our participants regarding clarity of picture, sound, genres and duration of classes. Following government guidelines, we set up our studio with required equipment to ensure smooth and professional delivery of sessions, whilst keeping our instructors safe during lone working.We were very lucky to have local artists and practitioners that could walk to the studio and deliver sessions, whilst strictly following government guidelines.  

We also moved all our therapeutic practices to telephone and videocall services.

Did you have any particular challenges or success that you would like to share?

I guess funding was a major challenge for us. We were shocked to realise that all the small business funds released by the Welsh Government did not include not-for-profit organisation. We noticed a lot of “loopholes” in the information released, which discriminated against businesses like ours.  Although at the time feeling incredibly disappointed and defeated, we have instead made the decision to focus on Third Sector and Arts Sector funding. Politically this was a tough decision to wrap our heads around and accept that community projects would suffer, due to the nature of funding schemes passed by the Welsh Government.

On a more positive note, I would recommend connecting with others that are doing similar projects. I was positively surprised by the number of people that offered to help when I put a post out or sent an email. I would also recommend taking into consideration the fatigue caused by virtual learning and delivery. It’s important to manage your expectations and accept that it is not the same as what we may have been used to and our experience as result may feel different. Piloting projects and going in with an open mind has been very helpful for us.

What are your plans for future delivery?

We aim to have a virtual and varied timetable of dance, mindfulness and fitness by the end of June. It has been important to us to take our time with this, and try things out whilst holding a curious stance. Going forward, we see ourselves offering online classes for a minimum of six months. Our studio offers a lot of partner dances, including Salsa, Swing Dance and Tango which are intimate in nature, and contact based. We are not prepared to deliver those classes, even if government guidelines relax as we want to ensure our practice is as safe as possible. Hence, getting our online timetable right, and utilising the expertise of our instructors is key to us. We will also continue to run our therapeutic services online for the upcoming months. I would like to add here that we offer affordable counselling, and currently have the capacity to offer free counselling to a small number of individuals experiencing financial difficulties. We also issue hardship passes for our classes, which would allow a number of individuals to engage with weekly classes, they otherwise may not be able to afford.

Thanks for your time Sara