Dance Mapping - Arts Council England

• primary research through online surveys of the dance workforce, venues and
audiences and local authority engagement with dance
• primary research through interviews, data gathering and literature to create
illustrations that enable us to better understand emerging themes and issues
• further in-depth research into the existing regularly funded organisations and Grants
for the arts data including the 2007/08 annual regularly funded organisations returns
• further research on the private sector carried out in partnership with CDET
• attendance at key events
• further analysis of reports and data provided by other agencies, organisations and
individuals including analysis carried out by the Rural Touring Network, postgraduate
dissertations and published articles.
Stage three included consultation with key representatives from the dance field in four
venues across England. It was after these events that the final report and executive
summary were produced.
2. Limitations of the methodology
Data gathering and desk research
In stage one the researchers were limited by the available of data and, although attempts
were made to gather as much data as possible and analyse it through emails, searches on
Arts Council England’s website and through public meetings and presentations, ultimately the
research was limited by the scope of the data provided or readily accessible. The researchers
are grateful to the many people who provided data and forwarded research.
Arts Council England data
The limitations of the availability of accurate up-to-date data about Arts Council England
funding programmes and regularly funded organisations annual returns was a major
constraint throughout the whole period of the research.
• The data is inconsistent over the period in question
• The format of annual returns has inevitably changed throughout the period so data
sets were not consistent
• Surveys were not always completed by all regularly funded organisations and thus
some key data may have been missing for particular years, thus possibly skewing the
overall data results
• The data was not readily available to the consultants
There are however internal Arts Council England plans to address this as a result of the
research process.
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