Dance United – an award-winning dance development organisation with an international reputation for combining artistic excellence with social concern. It’s collaborations across sectors open up opportunities for participants and develop new ways of thinking in uniting for advocacy. The passion, talent and commitment of its work is quite clearly transforming lives.
Established 14 years ago, Dance United has since worked successfully with marginalised groups using contemporary dance training and performances in order to engage and ignite change. The company’s mission is to be a catalyst for radical and lasting change, working with communities to inspire and unlock potential.
Dance United has been described as one of the most original and successful youth engagement programmes in the UK, aiming to get young people dancing and encourage them to continue, dance bringing positive effect to their lives. As a whole dance-based intervention schemes have increased within the social and health sectors due to the proven physical and psychological benefits of dance and participation.
For Dance United, the higher the artistic quality of the work, the greater the engagement, and therefore the more likely the person in question will take on the challenge and succeed. As a result, the organisation employs professional choreographers and artists to work with the participants in order to create original dance pieces. The work of Dance United has had positive benefits for these artists too: they have all reported great benefits to their personal artistic development as a result of the work with Dance United.
The organisation is striving to continue this work and extend it further, increasing the reach of projects and making sure they are fully embraced by participants. Dance United is now developing dance-based intervention of mental health settings following a successful trial last year, and will continue to promote the use of dance in the youth justice sector.