The initial idea for my contribution came from my assessment in the Producing and Curating module on the course. I created a hypothetical festival which focused on giving young people from low-income backgrounds the opportunity to access dance without the costs. As part of this festival, I also had to produce and choreograph a piece of work related to the ethos and theme of the festival, which is where the brainstorming of my idea began.

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"Children in state-funded schools in England are entitled to receive free school meals if a parent or carer is in receipt of any of a range of benefits" (North East Evidence Hub, 2023). Within Newcastle alone 16,847 school pupils are eligible for the free school meal metric, meaning the financial commitment in accessing dance poses as an active barrier. 

Therefore, the initial idea for my contribution was to explore how social class and status can act as a barrier to aaccessing dance, focusing on the financial, environmental and emotional elements of this. I have my own experiences with this subject, and from this I know that these specific barriers are not always seen, through a live dance performance I wanted to explore and experiment with ways of making them visible.

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Bibliography:

North East Evidence Hub (2023) Free School Meal Eligibility. Available at: Report: Free school meal eligibility - North East Evidence Hub (northeast-ca.gov.uk) (Accessed: 1 March 2024).