Health, Wellbeing & Engagement Update | Autumn 2024
About Health, Wellbeing & Engagement at Dance Base
At Dance Base, we’re on a mission to help dance flourish and change lives.
Dance Base’s Health, Wellbeing and Engagement (HWE) Programme utilises dance’s potential to support people’s health and wellbeing and sense of belonging. Projects focus on engaging people with neurological conditions, mental health conditions, other long-term illnesses and people from socially excluded or protected groups. We partner with local health and social care organisations to reach the people who need our work the most.
Dance for Health and Wellbeing
Our long-running and much-loved Dance for Parkinson’s Scotland class here at Dance Base continues every Wednesday throughout term time. During the Autumn term, artists Jen Cunningham and Bridie Gane have been dancing around the theme of games, which has led us to explore ideas inspired by Las Vegas and Highland Games through seated movements, vocal exercises, and creative tasks. The dancers have been creating their own choreographic phrases to begin building a bigger piece together.
Behind the scenes at Dance for Parkinson’s, we’ve been busy working on the early stages of a new research project, Methods in Movement, supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), with partners at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of St. Andrews, University of Roehampton, and Scottish Ballet. We’re working together to explore research methods in dance research and to contribute to understanding wider dance for health research networks in Scotland. Some of our Dance for Parkinson’s community will begin working with researchers in January 2025 to contribute their experiences and perspectives to the project.
We were also delighted to see another research project we contributed to published last month in Arts and Health Journal. What are the research priorities in dance for dementia? A co-created agenda to support equitable research was a collaboration between the Edinburgh Centre for Research on the Experience of Dementia (ECRED), Dance Base, Scottish Ballet, and Capital Theatres, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Interested in learning more about the project? Our Head of Health, Wellbeing and Engagement, Emma Smith featured on a podcast with the team exploring Accessibility in Dance and Dementia. Listen on Spotify.
The Autumn term saw our mental wellbeing project Lifelines establish and grow. Initially a collaboration in 2023-24 between the Grassmarket Community Project and Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust aiming to establish a new community dance group for adults, we quickly learned how integral both the dance class and the social aspect was for the wellbeing of our new community. One member described it as a ‘lifeline’ — a beautiful title which we have adopted this year. We’re now working more formally with three strategic referral partners, adding City of Edinburgh Council’s Outlook to the fold, and delivering weekly dance classes and social cafes for adults experiencing isolation and poor mental health in Edinburgh. If you’d like to learn more about how to make referrals to our projects, please get in touch.
This time of year, we are always busy finding opportunities for students to get involved with our programmes. Our Health, Wellbeing and Engagement programmes give students unique opportunities to meet a wide variety of people engaging with dance interventions in community settings, and we always have more placement requests than we can accommodate! Between November and January, we’ll be initiating placements to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Edinburgh through both the School of Medicine and the Dance Science and Education MSc programmes, as well as hosting undergraduate dance students from Performing Arts Studio Scotland. Our placement students work alongside our generous team of volunteers and specialist teachers to learn more about delivering dance for health and how to work with different people.
We’re delighted to share a new exhibition with you all this month — Dancing On. This project means a lot to us, allowing us to delve into our archives and showcase so many wonderful older people we’ve had the pleasure of dancing with over the years. This photographic exhibition features many dancers who are no longer with us, and is giving us a space to come together with our community and remember those we’ve lost. Dance Base’s work with older adults long pre–dates many of our current team’s time working here, and we’re honoured to be the custodians of it now. This project aims to create a moment to celebrate the legacies of those we have danced with, championing accessible dance for older people, and carrying the legacies of our dancers with us into the future.
Engagement
This Autumn, we introduced two new classes to the public programme, aiming to get more people to move into dance. We’re delighted to say that Move into Dance (Vintage) for over 60s, and Move into Street Dance for 12-17 year olds, will continue for another term of completely free classes in January! The Vintage class will work with three more Dance Base teachers and explore new styles from across our programme. Move into Street Dance will continue to work with specialist teachers Ashley Jack and Iona Turnbull.
Lothian Youth Dance Company recently finished making their first piece as our 2024/25 cohort, working with acclaimed choreographer Abby Warrilow during the October holidays. Their new piece will premiere at Dance Base’s Christmas Show in December, before heading to Glasgow’s Theatre Royal for ‘Go Dance’ later in January 2025.