Dance Mapping - Arts Council England

• Unlimited – a world celebration of disability arts, culture and sport
• World Shakespeare Festival – including major collaborations between leading UK
and international theatre companies as well as non-professional theatres in the UK
• Festival of Carnivals – creating a chance to welcome the world in spectacular style in
outdoor spaces, culminating in five major carnivals in London and around the UK in
2012.
Given the physical nature of dance and its traditional links with sport, the omission of dance
within this list was strange but as Ken Bartlett stated in the recent edition of Animated (spring
2009): ‘ ... in the past six months representatives from across the wider dance sector have
been meeting to develop proposals to change that. Our early thinking has been received
positively.’
Campaigning and lobbying and a consolidated approach from the dance field along with allies
from movement and dance and sport has now created a proposal for a further activity strand
to ensure that the potential of dance within the mix is not lost. What is interesting about this
campaign is that it highlighted the potential for collaborative approaches across the dance
field.
5. Internationalism
Increasing internationalism in the dance field has created a flow of labour both into and out of
the workforce as well as a flow of work into England and touring internationally out of
England. As we have seen in Part Four the touring economy of many production and touring
companies is sustained through international touring.
Research carried out for British Dance Edition (BDE) 2008 and 2010 highlights the economic
value of international touring to the companies that attend. The evaluation of BDE 2008
stated:
‘...this evaluation suggests that as a result of BDE 2008, the dance companies attending the
event could generate upwards of £1,355,400 in additional earnings. This would also represent
a total of 540 weeks of employment for dancers. This is of major significance to the viability of
the sector and, without BDE, it is arguable that the already fragile dance economy would be
severely damaged.’ (Burns, 2008)
In January 2009, Merseyside Dance Initiative (MDI) contacted companies attending BDE
2008 to assess, one year on, how attending BDE had impacted on company earnings. The
table below sets out the unattributed responses of the 17 companies responding (47% of the
total attending). It also lists the estimated number of performances and estimated income for
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