Dance Mapping - Arts Council England

Leadership
• Dance appears to lack the key ‘leaders’ and ‘influencers’ that are evident in other
sectors.
• Most dance ‘stars’ are from the ballet sector, with one or two notable exceptions.
• Whilst there are many mature artists and managers within the field, in general their
perceived status appears to remain low.
• There are no mechanisms for supporting ‘mature statespeople’ and this appears to
affect the field’s ability to advocate for dance and achieve more impact.
The workforce survey and other research carried out during stage two sought to test these
hypotheses.
4. The market place
The pattern of production and set of processes outlined in Table 1 are supported and made
possible by a diverse workforce of skilled practitioners, whose collaborative effort generates
the product. In turn these processes are carried out within organisations which form the
employment market place for the workforce.
Thus, the market place for the dance workforce is comprised of the production and touring
companies, commercial producers, the network of agencies, the local authorities and
community dance agencies that provide regular informal provision, the informal and formal
education sectors including the private sector, schools and further/higher education, the
health sector, criminal justice system and other public bodies that engage dance as part of
their work and the commercial sector including broadcast, film and television, music industry,
fashion and games development. Furthermore, digitisation is adding further demands and
new digital media forms that add a new dimension to the market place are emerging.
The data collated by Arts Council England on its regularly funded organisations portfolio
shows a shifting employment pattern within the regularly funded companies. Employment
appears to have grown over the three years in question, but this is not always the case as the
number of organisations in the portfolio has increased.
What has happened is that the permanent core has decreased and more people are being
employed on a temporary contractual basis. In 2006/07 on average organisations employed
7.5 permanent artistic staff as opposed to 8.4 in 2004/05. In 2006/07 on average
organisations employed 3.4 permanent managers as opposed to 3.8 in 2004/05.
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