The Welcome Project: An Evaluation of the First Three Years

e m o c l e w E TH

T C E J O R P

o n o i t a u l a v An E

T t s r i F e h t f

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WHO IS SOUTH EAST DANCE? Based in Brighton & Hove, South East Dance is an arts charity whose vision is a world where every body can create, take part in and enjoy dance in all its forms.

Our mission is to make dance happen for every body. Dance that is bold and diverse. Dance that helps us make sense of the world we live in. Dance that makes a difference. We help people to discover their own relationship with dance, working with them to create the type of activities they want. And we work with artists who are committed to taking creative risks, pushing boundaries and challenging perceptions of what dance is and can be.

We are the driving force behind The Dance Space (TDS), a brand-new home for dance in Brighton & Hove that will open in 2022.

Architects impression of The Dance Space by ShedKM.

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WHAT IS THE WELCOME PROJECT? We launched The Welcome Project in 2017 with the main aim of building relationships with residents and organisations based near The Dance Space; a new three-storey building that will become home to South East Dance when it opens in Tarner in the summer of 2022. Tarner is an under-served area of East Brighton and among the least advantaged in England (IMD, 2019)2.

The Welcome Project is a long-term programme of dance-related activities for the people who live, work and access services in the Tarner area, people who face barriers to accessing the arts, culture or leisure activities, or those who feel that these activities ‘are not for them’. With the project, we intended to address social and financial barriers that had been identified through consultation and previous activity; tackling how the arts are perceived, costed, and targeted, but also challenging negative reputations of neighbourhoods and their residents.

We also wanted The Dance Space and the activities in it to be embraced and owned by our new neighbours; for people in Tarner (and beyond) to feel that The Dance Space belongs to them, and they belong in it, once it opens.

We acknowledge that communities are not homogeneous but full of people with diverse and complex needs as well as barriers. So in 2017, Trust for Developing Communities carried out a consultation with us and on our behalf with service users from each of our four main partner organisations (please see more information about them on pages 6 and 7). Through this consultation and our ongoing conversations with partners and their service users, we knew that there was (and is) a need for opportunities to dance and move regularly, and what the challenges and access needs of local residents were (and continue to be).

While Brighton & Hove as a city is well-known for its arts and culture, there continue to be persistent inequalities when it comes to access to and participation in the arts. Not everyone has the same access to the arts, which means that its proven benefits are not felt equally across communitites. These inequalities have undoubtedly intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic started in the UK in March 2020.

When we launched The Welcome Project, there was dance provision in the city, but this was predominantly offered by private dance schools in more affluent areas and was therefore costprohibitive. In order to remove socio-economic obstacles to taking part in the arts and to build long-term relationships with participants and our partner organisations, all The Welcome Project activities were free of charge. With this approach, we also hoped to encourage residents to be more active, reaping the mental and physical wellbeing benefits of dance.

2. Inspired by Brighton People’s Theatre’s Open Up Arts report, we have chosen not to include any specifics about people’s difficulties in our evaluation report. Open Up Arts clearly emphasises that many residents of East Brighton are fed up that their lives are often reduced to mere statistics and that ‘feed existing negative stereotypes that further blame, stigmatise and marginalize them’ (https://brightonpeoplestheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Open_ Up_Arts_Report.pdf).

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Based on our knowledge and research of local challenges and the local ecology in Brighton and specifically Tarner, the work we have delivered to date and in line with our strategic priorities, we focused our activities on the following groups: • • • •

Children under five; Young people under 25; Long-term unemployed people and their families; Older adults, in particular those living with dementia, suffering social isolation or poverty.

We ran Phase I of The Welcome Project from September 2017 – September 2020 and partnered with local organisations who helped develop year-round activity, recruit participants and host the activities in their buildings: • Puffin Community Nursery • Brighton Youth Centre (BYC) • Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) • Brooke Mead Extra Care Facility (BM), Senior Housing Department, Brighton & Hove City Council Within The Welcome Project Phase I, we drew on these and other partners’ expertise to build a programme of dance and movement activities such as: Pop-up, watch and have-a-go sessions Reminiscent dance for older adults Performance opportunities at Our City Dances Festival Community Steering Group

Regular dance classes Creative dance for kids Social events

Dance styles included Salsa, Street Dance, Bollywood, Contemporary Dance, Capoeira, Tap and Beatboxing, Social Dancing, Foxtrot, Swing, Charleston, South Asian Dance, Tango, Dance and Puppetry, Dance and Comedy, and Parkour.

A key event of The Welcome Project was Our City Dances (OCD); our annual free dance festival in the city of Brighton & Hove. Each festival was co-curated by the Community Steering Group (see page 28) and programmed a mixture of dance performances and workshops for all ages. In 2018 and 2019, Our City Dances events were held at Tarner Festival, in the buildings of The Welcome Project partners and outdoor areas in central Brighton.

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We also set up a Community Steering Group in 2018, which was based on the strong belief that listening to people’s voices in shaping arts provision was crucial in building meaningful, long-term engagement, to avoid ‘imposing’ activities and prevent groups becoming disconnected and the project ineffective.

We intended phase I of The Welcome Project to include a transition phase, where all activities would gradually move into The Dance Space. Due to significant building delays (which resulted from a number of circumstances, including Brexit and Covid-19), this was not possible. This transition will now start in summer 2022, when the building is expected to open.

Within The Welcome Project, we recognised the value of volunteering to combat social exclusion, boost self-esteem and improve employability. This is why we offered various volunteering opportunities for beneficiaries from each of the four partner organisations. In addition to the Community Steering Group volunteers, we developed opportunities for people aged 60+ to become Peer Motivators, supporting artists to deliver dance sessions with vulnerable older people (see more information below). At the Our City Dances Festivals, volunteering opportunities included supporting our team to steward the festival, assisting with the marketing and publicity of the festival, and working with the Welcome Project team to develop the festival schedule.

WHAT WILL THIS REPORT TELL YOU? In this evaluative report, our aim is to give a sense of the overall project, the partners we worked with, the activities we held and how people responded to them. There will be a mixture of figures and facts (e.g. how many people attended our activities) as well quotes from those who took part.

We hope to provide an insight into how the activities developed, and hint at what they might look like in the future. We aim to talk about the great bits, and the not so great bits: to highlight the moments where the project did not achieve what we set out to do, and what we have learned from this. We will also present recommendations for the next phase of our project, using what we have learned from this one. The report is primarily meant as an internal document: it is about evaluating The Welcome Project and about having a tool we can use as an organisation to reflect, learn and develop. However, in the spirit of transparency and honesty, we want to share our findings with you.

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OUR MAIN PARTNERS Puffin Community Nursery is volunteer-led and cares for children aged 2-5 who qualify for free childcare places. 20% of the children attending Puffin have Special Education Needs and the number of children of African or Asian heritage, or who are ethnically diverse, is substantially higher than in the rest of the city.

Brighton Youth Centre (BYC) is open to all young people with a focus on the 13-19 age group.

They work in partnership with many different projects that support a wide range of young people.

They offer a varied programme of events, activities and support; from table tennis to karate, skateboarding to circus skills. BYC has a massive range of activities alongside regular youth clubs for different age groups and a programme of live events. They are part of co-ordinating and delivering B.Fest, the youth arts festival that is run for young people by young people as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival.

Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) provides practical support, education and advice to a very diverse group of service users. They have a whole host of activities and services including free childcare, computer support, regular hot and affordable lunches, drop-in services, language courses and arts & crafts sessions.

Brooke Mead (BM) is a council-run extra care housing complex in Brighton that opened in 2018.

The residents are people with low to medium dementia, or who live with other conditions including Parkinsons, and who can no longer live in the community. There is a garden, a lounge, an activities room and on-site care-staff though the residents live independently in their own flats. The council’s vision is for it to be a community space so that the residents are encouraged to socialise with the local community and external people outside of the home environment.

OTHER PARTNERS Early Childhood Project (ECPUK) works with early years children, their families and workers.

Their work centres on a toy library, equalities play sessions, anti-bias training, and bereavement support. They have supported our activity with Puffin and, in Phase II, we will be working with their Bilingual Families Group to deliver social and cultural dance provision at Tarner Children’s Centre and, eventually, in The Dance Space.

Carlton Hill Primary School is an inclusive school that emphasises that all children are unique individuals. They encourage creativity, risk-taking and thirst for learning, and aspire to meet the needs of children who attend. They teach children from age 5 to 11 years old. Many children from Puffin Community Nursery go on to Carlton Hill Primary School mASCot - In 2019, Brighton Youth Centre introduced us to mASCot (Managing Autism Spectrum Condition Ourselves), a parent-led support network for families who have a child/children with an Autism Spectrum Condition.

Tarner Community Project works to alleviate the effects of poverty and disadvantage locally.

They work with vulnerable children aged 4-19 and their families. They provide an after-school programme, holiday clubs and activities.

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Leach Court is a council-run retirement housing complex in Brighton. There are regular social activities, including group exercise, relaxation sessions and bingo. The residents are involved in running the gardens and there is resident management staff. The Welcome Project Phase I activity commenced at Leach Court before Brooke Mead opened in April 2018. However, we still engaged older volunteers from Leach Court via the Community Steering Group and as Peer Motivators.

MAP OF PARTNER LOCATIONS: Map of Partner Locations:

Brooke Mead

The Dance Space

Queens Park

Early Childhood Project

Puffin Community Nursery

TARNER PARK

Tarner Community Project

Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project Brighton Youth Centre

Leach Court

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Magic Moves Performance and Workshop at Our City Dances Festival, 2019

KEY OUTPUTS From September 2017 – September 2020, people attended more than 7,250 The Welcome Project events and activities. This included: • 1,643 people took part in The Welcome Project activities, including 908 from the target groups we set out to reach • Our The Welcome Project team provided 3,462 opportunities for people to engage in regular dance classes– including 165 young people; 159 children under five; and 28 older people living with dementia • 5,570 people came along to Our City Dances in 2018 and 2019 • During the 2018 and 2019 festivals, 553 opportunities to take part in dance activities were created • 45 volunteers were involved • Dance activities featured 16 different genres from Bollywood to Tango

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OUR METHODOLOGY FOR EVALUATION For the evaluation of The Welcome Project, we used a mixed-methods approach to help us understand more about the people and organisations we worked with, the ways they engaged with us and what impact this has had on them.

These methods included: • Information and data collected from classes, workshops, and Our City Dances Festivals; • Completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring forms (on paper and online); • Interviews with SED leadership and staff; • Interviews with our partner organisations; • Feedback from artists; • Feedback from members of our Community Steering Group; • Participant evaluation; • Audience evaluations.

We describe each of these research activities below.

• Information and data collected from classes, workshops, and Our City Dances Festivals: This is the information required by our funders, such as attendance numbers, how many sessions took place, how many hours an artist was employed, how many artists were employed, how many volunteers were involved, what type of event, length and number of sessions, locations, partners.

• Equal Opportunities Monitoring forms: We have a confidential online or paper monitoring form which we use to gather data to report to our main funders. The data is largely based around the Equalities Act 2010 legislation and protected characteristics. In this form, we asked for the following information: Location, Ethnicity, Gender, Age, Disability, Sexual orientation, Employment status/ Low income. More recently, due to being funded by Brighton & Hove City Council, we have also been asking about religion, career status and if people are a council house tenant.

• Interviews with South East Dance leadership and staff: We used semi-structured interview guidelines to find out their initial expectations and current reflections about The Welcome Project. These interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes, were conducted via Zoom and by collecting written responses, and took place between June and October 2020. All Zoom interviews were recorded and transcribed.

• Interviews with partner organisations: We conducted semi-structured interviews with at least one member of the Senior Leadership Team of all four main partner organisations (Puffin Community Nursery, Brighton Youth Centre, Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project, and Brooke Mead). These interviews lasted approximately 40 minutes, were conducted in person or via Zoom, and took place between March and October 2020. The topics covered in these interviews included the need for access to dance, impact of The Welcome Project on participants, challenges of the project, suggestions for improvement, and wishes or hopes for the future. All Zoom interviews were recorded and transcribed.

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• Feedback from artists: This included feedback forms and/or emails, interviews (in person and via Zoom), online surveys, and anonymous and ‘off the record’ conversations with Janine Fletcher, the freelance lead evaluator of this report. All Zoom interviews were recorded and transcribed; except for one ‘informal’, unrecorded chat where notes were taken by the freelance lead evaluator. The interviews used semi-structured interview guidelines to elicit artists’ views on the need, impact, challenges, and areas of improvement of The Welcome Project. The interviews and conversations lasted between 30 minutes and 1 hour 40 minutes, and took place between March and August 2020. The online surveys were collected via Survey Monkey in June 2020.

• Feedback from the Community Steering Group: This included a Zoom interview with a Steering Group member (which was recorded and transcribed), a self-recorded video by a Steering Group member answering some previously sent questions, and an online survey filled out by four members (via Survey Monkey). All of these were conducted and collected between June and October 2020.

• As part of our participant evaluation, we collected evaluations from participants who took part in the Our City Dances 2019 commission IMPRINT and conducted short ‘vox pop’ style interviews with participants from a pop-up event at Brighton Youth Centre (BYC) in March 2020. We contracted Elise Phillips, a freelance specialist, to evaluate the first cycle of the programme, which completed in July 2018, using dedicated focus group discussions with participants. This comprehensive report of qualitative feedback, impact data and observations directly fed into our planning and delivery of year two. As part of this report, feedback from parents at Puffin Community Nursery and about the parents & toddler sessions at Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) was collected.

• Audience evaluation: This included raw data from the Our City Dances (OCD) Festival audiences for the years 2018 and 2019, and ‘Culture Counts’ data for all OCD 2019 shows at Brighton Youth Centre (BYC).

Data Analysis Our quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out using Excel, which allowed us to summarise and create charts from the data provided, and by coding our qualitative data in Word.

Limitations We have identified several limitations to our data collection and analysis. The main limitation, which we will reflect on repeatedly throughout this report, is that we were unable to gather any baseline data in order to appropriately monitor changes regarding participants’ Social Impact Outcomes (our initial Evaluation Framework included statements such as ‘finds meaning and fulfilment from engaging with dance’; ‘has a sense of purpose, engages in a meaningful and fulfilling activity, and has aspirations for the future’ and ‘feels and is more socially connected’). The number of participant feedback collected is very low overall. To some extent, this issue reflects the difficulty of collecting feedback data in complex settings, and not having a bespoke evaluation approach for each partner, and was partly due to the heavy workloads of our staff.

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This means that the evaluation report does not equally represent all of the people we worked with in the first three years of The Welcome Project. Consequently, while it is both interesting and thought-provoking to reflect on the impact shown in the data, caution should be exercised when interpreting it. We are continuously reflecting on this and have already started outlining a new evaluation approach for phase II of The Welcome Project, which will involve Professor Angela Pickard, an external evaluator who has extensive experience evaulating projects with diverse marginalised groups.

Moreover, there were several changes to the project delivery team throughout the programme – mainly due to personal circumstances. While this had the benefit of bringing different skill sets and a much broader expertise to the project, it also meant allowing for handover, induction and settling in. In addition, these staff changes created challenges for the team evaluating the project and writing this report, as information and knowledge did not always get passed on and was therefore – in some instances – difficult to retrieve.

Dance workshop at Puffin Community Nursery, 2017

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THIS REPORT This report consists of 4 main sections: • Section 1 provides more detailed information on the activities we ran (including the annual Our City Dances Festival), the partner organisations we worked with, and the people we engaged (both as artists and as participants); • Section 2 reflects on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the activities of 2020 and early 2021; • In Section 3, we look ahead and outline our plans for phase II of The Welcome Project and for moving into The Dance Space; • And Section 4 offers a conclusion: have we done what we set out to do? What are our learnings?

Section 1. In-depth reporting on activities with partners Puffin Community Nursery We started The Welcome Project activity by setting up and running regular weekly creative dance ‘taster’ sessions. Between September and December 2017, these were particularly successful with the 2 to 5-year-old children from Puffin Nursery. Tarner Children’s Centre (TCC) has provided a dedicated space for this dance activity since the commencement of The Welcome Project as Puffin’s facilities were too small.

“My expectations have been exceeded at every level. I had the idea of not wanting it to go on for more than a few months, a year. We have done three years and we are still getting more and more out of it. The idea that this would be something that would interest them for a short time. No, it has grown bigger and it is better all the time.”

Tracy Fernley-Jones, Manager, Puffin Nursery We worked with the children using play, games and role-play; regularly welcoming 11 children and their nursery practitioners to the sessions. Over twelve weeks it was clear how much they enjoyed themselves and, in turn, how their confidence grew. Aware of the importance of engaging the children’s parents and carers in order for the children to become active users of The Dance Space later, we invited them to join the final sessions before Christmas, many of whom participated with their children.

“It’s a very participant-led approach. So, it’s really about honing in on what the local community and the participants are interested in. I think it’s about really giving space, just being really responsive and aware of what’s going on in the room and responding to that.”

Amy Toner, Dance Artist working at Puffin Nursery

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From January 2018, we continued to develop weekly activity with Puffin. We collaborated closely with the Nursery Manager and staff to recruit practitioners who worked creatively with the children and responded to the nursery’s chosen topics. This included exploring the Brazilian art form of Capoeira with Amazonas Arts as part of the nursery’s focus on exploring different cultures from around the world.

The positive outcomes with the children at Puffin were remarkable. We saw them adapt with confidence and curiosity to new dance artists, and have continually seen their social skills enhance. From September to December 2017, parents of the children at Puffin Nursery completed a feedback form based on their child’s experience of these sessions; in response to the question ‘Have you noticed any positive changes in your child since beginning the dance sessions?’ we received comments including: ‘She is more confident...she dances often now’ and ‘He loves to show what he has been doing at dance’. As Tracy Fernley-Jones, the Nursery Manager, highlighted in her interview, this enhancement of self-confidence and social skills was also possible because the nursery staff was able to be present during all of our classes and the children were thus supported by people familiar to them.

“I think as far as the dance sessions go they are one of the highest resources that we could have because it delivers on all seven areas of the curriculum. It’s not just about physical development, which obviously is part of it, it is a lot of the social emotional development and the way that they interact with each other. They are meeting new people, they are cooperating. In some of the dances there is waiting, taking turns and learning to be patient. There is communication and listening, so they are having to listen to instructions and pay attention and listening to things like the rhythms and the music. Obviously expressive arts and designs and using dance as ways for them to express their feelings and their emotions. So in terms of what a teacher could want it in delivering the curriculum, it is the perfect resource.”

Tracy Fernley-Jones, Manager, Puffin Nursery We are confident to say that our work with Puffin has had a positive impact on the children and the staff.

“I think the main changes I’ve seen are in terms of the children’s confidence. I think the thing that I notice is that the things they do always exceed my expectations. You go along thinking “They might be able to do this” or “They might do a bit of that” and then some of the things that they are able to achieve and they get so much pleasure out of achieving it that their own confidence grows. They then enjoy the activities even more because they feel that they are getting something out of it.

Seeing them blossom and grow in confidence and realise that this is something that they can do.”

Tracy Fernley-Jones, Manager, Puffin Nursery

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In the three years of working with Puffin, we had 159 unique participants, delivered 87 dance sessions, and had 1094 overall attendances.2 “Particularly at Puffin, the children that we cater for I don’t think would normally have the chance to get involved in these sort of activities. The idea of going off to a dance session and parents financing a dance session is just something that would not be on the agenda, they have far higher priorities than that. So, from the point of view of the children having access to something, it is great that they could do something that they would not normally. Then the opportunities that it has opened up for them are great. It is not just the dance sessions, it has been visiting the dementia centres and working with the people there, doing the dance sessions in the community and being involved in the summer dance festival. It is being involved in the theatre and going to watch the dancers on stage and being a part of that, so it has opened up lots of other opportunities that stemmed from just doing the dance at the beginning. Again, these are children that probably never would have had those sorts of opportunities and in terms of their development and learning and their social emotional wellbeing, it has been absolutely fantastic.”

Tracy Fernley-Jones, Manager, Puffin Nursery Brighton Youth Centre (BYC) We know that dance can boost young people’s mental health and wellbeing. A 2018 study into the impact of sport, exercise and dance on 15-24 year olds has shown that dance can help improve mental health3. Key findings included: • Aerobic and hip-hop dance lead to positive mood enhancement compared to ice-skating and body conditioning; • Dance training is effective in lowering self-reported depression.

Opportunities to perform dance can be particularly effective at improving confidence and selfesteem. Dance is popular with girls*, particularly adolescents, who are at higher risk of inactivity.4 “I’m always particularly interested in the young people that haven’t decided what they’re into.

So the opportunity here, and I think what’s been really nice as a partnership, it’s really well understood by both partners in it; is that we’re trying to get young people that would maybe never even look at dance, let alone dance themselves, just a little bit closer to it.”

Mike Roe, CEO, Brighton Youth Centre

2. Throughout the report, we use ‘unique participants’ to refer to unique individuals who attend over a run of sessions and/or a one-off session. These individuals only get counted once. The term ‘overall attendance’ refers to the total attendance by all participants over all sessions, and the term ‘attendance’ means the number of people in one session.

3. https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/sport-dance-and-young-peoples-wellbeing-what-works 4. https://www.danceinhealthandwellbeing.uk/children-and-young-people-5

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Tap Dance Artist Lee Payne at a Brighton Youth Centre pop-up, 2020

Pop-ups We had a long learning journey with Brighton Youth Centre, testing different approaches to engage young people.

In spite of offering various workshops or contemporary dance classes, we had difficulties to really connect with the young people between September 2017 and July 2018. After several long discussions with Brighton Youth Centre staff, we started trialing different methods of engaging the young people, including delivering five taster sessions (featuring different artists) during their usual youth club café. This resulted in us changing our approach and developing ‘pop-up’ sessions. From July 2018 to September 2019, we continued delivering these ‘pop-ups’.

Between September 2019 and early March 2020, we worked with several artists to deliver seven pop-up workshops that took place as part of Brighton Youth Centre’s weekly Artist Café programme. These short dance demonstrations, lasting between 10 and 20 minutes, were followed by an opportunity for participants to ‘have a go’. Sessions took place in the Centre’s social space and literally ‘popped up’ during their weekly meeting in order to capture as many young people as possible in an environment in which they felt safe and comfortable. This model transformed our partnership with Brighton Youth Centre and enabled us to reach a much larger group of young people.

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Pop-up at Brighton Youth Centre with Ragroof, 2018

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Through these pop-up sessions, we were able to offer the young people at Brighton Youth Centre the opportunity to experience a range of dance styles, including: • Dance and Puppetry • Street Dance • South Asian Dance • Dance and Comedy • Charleston • Tap Dance • Beatboxing “The response from the youth group was actually amazing, it was a lot better than what I was expecting. I was expecting maybe a “uff” but straight away, as soon as I made that first tap sound, straight away they were really intrigued. Even before I started and I was just standing there, they just saw the floor, my shoes, the gadgets, they came over and they started asking me questions. So it was nice to make an impact, whether they start tap dancing or not, that’s by the by. It’s the fact that they’ve come in, they got engaged and hopefully it might inspire one or two to be creative.”

Lee Payne, Tap Dance Artist Sessions were delivered to groups averaging around 30 young people fortnightly, with at least five young people actively participating and dancing in each session and the rest participating as audience members.

B.Fest B.Fest is Brighton Youth Centre’s annual youth arts festival. B.Fest aims to bring arts and culture closer to young people and involves them in every aspect of planning, organising, designing, exhibiting and performing.

Over the three years of Phase I, we provided two parkour workshops held at Brighton Youth Centre, which formed part of the B.fest programme of activity. These workshops invited not just Brighton Youth Centre users but also other young people from the city and surrounding areas to join in.

We also attended some B.fest planning meetings where the young people on the B.fest management committee discussed their ideas and aspirations for dance within the festival programme with us, and we advised them on how we might be able to support this to come to fruition. This collaboration included a flash mob project we delivered with choreographer Jen Irons in 2018, which was a massive undertaking but proved hugely successful, and was not only performed as part of the B.fest launch in May 2018 but also repeated as part of Our City Dances in July 2018. The young people involved worked with us and Jen to plan and choreograph the flash mob as well as working on publicising the opportunity to other young people in the city.

So The Welcome Project was instrumental in providing dance opportunities as part of the B.fest programme of activity.

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mASCot In September 2019, we started running weekly street dance sessions for young people who attend mASCot (https://asc-mascot.com/). mASCot is a parent led peer to peer support network for families who are a parent or carer of a child/children or young person with an Autism Spectrum Condition. Many of these young people would find attending a mainstream dance session challenging. We worked (and continue to do so) closely with mASCot’s directors (many of whom are parents of the children or young people) to carefully and sensitively recruit the most appropriate dance artist and ensure that the sessions met the additional needs that these young people have.

We have been in regular contact with the group teacher and assistant and have received positive feedback about engagement, focus and confidence building – to date we have a core group of 11 young people attending and our ambition is to grow this class and to support them to transition to The Dance Space when we open to the public in summer 2022.

Learnings The journey with Brighton Youth Centre has been valuable learning. At the beginning, we struggled to engage regular attendees for some of the activity. We experienced a number of sessions with no participants attending despite adapting the nature or style of the sessions and timetabling them at more appealing times. After listening to the Brighton Youth Centre team and the young people, however, we adapted our programme to a series of ‘pop-up’ performances and workshops, taking them to the Centre during times in the week where attendance was already high. We already were in the space they were occupying, meaning that we did not have to ask them to move rooms or come to the Centre at another time. The idea with this approach was to remove some of the barriers to taking part in activity, making the sessions more accessible and easier to engage in.

“I think this has worked well, to have meaningful conversations with young people. They know more about… I know more about dance than I did before this started! And I know more young people that dance now, but - really importantly - young people also know more. And that means they can participate in a bit of decision making because they have been given some knowledge.”

Mike Roe, CEO, Brighton Youth Centre In the three years of The Welcome Project Phase I, we had 165 unique participants, delivered 83 dance sessions, and had 640 overall attendance.

“The partnership with South East Dance has allowed Brighton Youth Centre and B.fest to offer such an array of dance forms to a vast number of young people across Brighton. The dance popups in the youth club have played an integral part in transitioning the inclusion of multi dance forms and in dance performance being normalised within the culture for young people at Brighton Youth Centre. South East Dance’s knowledge and expertise in finding a pool of dance practitioners that not only are experts in their field but can also engage and communicate confidently with young people is key to the success.”

Hannah Coxeter, Youth Worker, Brighton Youth Centre

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Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) “Several clients have expressed an interest in dance and movement for health and wellbeing purposes, as well as being interested in the opportunity to perform to improve confidence and develop their CV via volunteering opportunities.”

Ellie Moulton, Participation Worker, Brighton Unemployment Centre Families Project The start of our activity at the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) was challenging because of low attendance. After conversations with the BUCFP team and their service users, we adopted a similar approach to the one at Brighton Youth Centre: offering a series of ‘pop-up’ performances and workshops.

These pop-up sessions were transformative to the project. By removing barriers, taking performances and workshops directly to Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project during peak times of attendance, we were able to reach a larger number of participants. These pop-up sessions included Capoeira, Salsa, Tango, and Charleston.

Due to demand, we also started delivering a regular Salsa class with dance artist Federico Bedoya, which steadily grew in attendance: from 31 in 2017 to 472 by the end of year 3. Twelve of those were regular attendees, with 472 attendances across 70 sessions.

Dance artist Federico Bedoya also delivered a one-off Salsa session to some of the children who attend the playroom at Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project. This was a trial and responded to the requests of the playroom staff but was very well received. We are planning to deliver more of these in the future.

In December 2019, the Salsa group at Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project was invited by Federico to take part in an evening social event in the city. Five of the group attended this annual winter Salsa event, which had 150 guests made up of keen Salsa and Zumba enthusiasts and

Salsa teacher Federico Bedoya during a performance

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professionals. The Salsa group from Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project bravely and confidently performed some choreographed routines that they had been learning in front of the expert audience.

“Often people come out laughing [from the session]. You can see they come in, they are struggling with things, and they go in and do that [the dance class]. There is one woman who has a very young child, a single parent with a child, and she has put the child in the playroom and then gone and done Salsa for an hour. She comes out like “God, I really needed that. Something for myself, it is fun and it is not a chore, there are other people doing it and we all fit in”. I think just being able to do that clearly makes a difference to people.”

Joy Rigby, Families Project Co-ordinator, BUCFP Leach Court Due to a delay in the opening of the Brooke Mead Extra Care facility for people living with dementia, the dance activity for older adults was initially relocated to Leach Court; a sheltered housing scheme run by Brighton & Hove City Council Senior Housing Team. At Leach Court, we worked with older adults, some of whom had symptoms of dementia but not exclusively.

2017 Christmas Tea Party at Leach Court, 2017

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The dance sessions for older adults at Leach Court were particularly successful. The sessions ran in the common room at a time that was identified through consultation with the group as the most popular. We formed a core group of five regular attendees who proved to be remarkably flexible and adaptable in the sessions. The numbers attending these sessions steadily increased over the twelve weeks from the core group of five to eight or nine per week.

In December 2017, we organised a Festive Tea Dance at Leach Court. We invited all participants, partners and friends of The Welcome project, ranging from 2 to 75 years+ for an afternoon of dance, games, tea and cake. It brought everyone together and we saw Puffin Community Nursery children participating in many dances and confidently partnering with the older adults. It was particularly positive for the older adults to interact with other members of their community.

Brooke Mead (BM) For Phase I of The Welcome Project, we partnered with the City Council Senior Housing Department for three years, developing a programme of dance in two of their spaces. We commenced at Leach Court (see above) and moved to the newly built Brooke Mead in 2018: an Extra Care Housing Scheme with 45 flats for older people living with dementia. Brooke Mead’s vision is for the community rooms to be used to tackle isolation by providing activities for residents and local people. We delivered a dance programme that enabled this vision to be realised. Each week, we transported Leach Court residents, who had become Peer Motivator volunteers (see below) helping the artists to deliver the sessions, to Brooke Mead. With trust built, we were able to work with different dance artists/styles, commissioned artists to work with the residents, put on in-house Tea Dances, intergenerational classes (with some of the Puffin Community Nursery children) and took people out to public dance events.

In three years, we had 41 unique participants, delivered 67 dance sessions, and had 659 overall attendances.

“South East Dance has evolved their activities to take into account the difficulties that many people with dementia come up against especially when doing something new and that can be quite daunting. Part of the success is that [they] made it their priority to get to know our residents, and have been able to capitalise on those strengths unique to those individuals.”

Rupert Hensser, Seniors Scheme Manager, Brighton & Hove City Council Peer Motivators Overall, we led 19 dance sessions with an average of eleven participants and two Peer Motivator volunteers each week. In total, four Peer Motivators were recruited via a call-out from our Welcome Project Community Steering Group (see page 28). These Peer Motivators were older people without dementia, who joined in all activities and motivated the group with the movements and dance activity. This was a huge success and will be a model for participation that we will carry through to all other community activities we provide.

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Dance to your own tune Due to our main funding by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation – with match funding from the Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust – we were able to deliver a 20-week programme of dance activity, Dance To Your Own Tune, at Brooke Mead. Reducing isolation through regular social activity was at the heart of this aspect of The Welcome Project, which ran from September 2019 until activities were put on hold in March 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

“So we have one resident, this particular resident when she first came to Brooke Mead was almost sometimes quite catatonic. She wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t get out, probably depressed, but she loves dancing and nobody knew she loves dancing. I wasn’t there but we had some tea dance sessions on a Sunday and she danced for two hours, rock and rolling for two hours. So very often, especially in people’s youth if they have had a good relationship with dance you know going off to the local discos or big bands as it may be in this case, they just go back to that. It offers people a pathway back into something they may well have enjoyed.”

Rupert Hensser, Seniors Scheme Manager, Brighton & Hove City Council We are proud of this work, which saw a significant shift in engagement by collaborating with the same artist over a continual period of time. Residents were engaged and returning to sessions weekly and care staff were supportive and recognised the benefits of the sessions; with staff reporting that one resident in particular was able to get dressed and leave her room (something she had not done for over a week) when she heard the dance session was about to start.

We worked with a dance and reminiscence specialist, Luan Taylor, and a dance assistant, Louisa Petts, to devise a series of themed workshops that would trigger memories, inspire movement and create connections with other residents through shared experience.

“Dance and music and any kind of shared experience activity has a profound effect on people’s wellbeing, including mine actually. With an ageing population, to keep mind and the body active is vitally important. Within each session, there is some kind of warming up of the body and some strengthening exercises to hopefully help with preventing falls. Especially in a setting like this, just because people might be of a similar age or they have the shared experience of living with dementia it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all going to get on and be friends. So I think creating opportunities to build communities within this community, to build friendship groups is also very important.”

Luan Taylor, Dance Artist working at Brooke Mead All weekly dance workshops had a theme, using visual references, tactile objects, props, costume and sound as components in each session. Within each theme, we created dance activities, mini lessons and quizzes, as well as opportunities for story sharing and reminiscing for residents and their families. Each session was planned to build and establish a core of regular attendees and to encourage new participants and their families to join in at any time. At the end of each session, everyone enjoyed a cup of tea and a chat, which proved valuable in terms of building relationships with the participants but also offered the opportunity to reflect on the sessions.

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“May I say thank you on behalf of the seniors housing service for the lovely dance at the Brooke Mead Christmas party. It was heart-warming to see residents, visitors and staff joining in. From the outset I’ve been impressed by the dedication, commitment and passion of South East Dance in delivering activities in our schemes. Thank you so much Luan for leading the session, the praise I heard yesterday was very well deserved. We look forward to the opening of The Dance Space and our future work with you.”

Peter Huntbach, Housing Manager, Brighton & Hove City Council Some of the weekly dance workshop themes included: • A Day at Work - Discussing what jobs everybody had in their lives and then creating movements and choreography based on that work; • My Dancing Days - Reminiscing about the dance hall era and different dance styles through the ages; • Make Do and Mend - A wartime themed activity including discussions about rationing, wartime hair and fashion, and the dance halls; • Around the World in 80 Minutes - The group looked at world maps and discussed the places they have been to. They listened to music from those countries and films of world dance styles.

Brooke Mead Tea Dance trip, 2019

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We had an overall target of 50 people over the age of 60, but the various Covid lockdowns reduced our reach to 41 unique participants. In addition to the live sessions mentioned above, we also delivered 16 dance themed care packages for nine residents from when the first Covid lockdown started in March 2020 to when Phase I of The Welcome Project ended in September 2020 (please see more information in section 2 of this report).

“The positive impact is clear from the involvement of our residents and staff in all the activities, and the feedback we’ve received. We knew that dance could be a valuable asset in bringing people together, but could not have imagined just how beneficial this would be. Residents come alive at events, even those with complex needs. I recall seeing carers dancing together at an event, laughing and smiling; given how tough care roles can be, the benefit clearly extended beyond service users and has enhanced staff wellbeing. South East Dance have removed any sense of dance being elitist or exclusive. They actively helped break down the barriers as to what activities people living with dementia would enjoy, and the value of dance as a means of personal expression for everyone whatever their background.”

Peter Huntbach, Manager, Seniors Housing, Brighton & Hove City Council Our City Dances Festival Our City Dances is our free annual dance festival designed to inspire people of all ages and abilities to enjoy and have a go at dance, as we prepare to open The Dance Space in 2022. The festival takes place in and around The Dance Space, and is co-curated with the Community Steering Group.

“You made me feel so very welcome and looked after. I had a great experience volunteering with you and would happily do it again.”

Our City Dances volunteer In the three years of The Welcome Project Phase I, we nurtured some valuable relationships in the Tarner area via people who attend the Community Steering Group (see info below). This included four members of FanDance, who are an integrated theatre / dance company based in and around Tarner and who support our relationships with people with disabilities who are interested in the arts; a local dance enthusiast, Sue Meecham, who runs two local dance groups for young people in a particularly marginalised area of Tarner; and the owner of Tarner Community Café based at Tarner Children’s Centre who is in contact with families from all over Tarner and is continually advocating for our work.

We also had regular meetings with Tarner Community Project – a local organisation that works with the community on various projects, particularly with young people, including an after school club. They deliver Tarner Festival in their grounds, Tarner Park. In 2018 and 2019, we partnered with them and Audio Active, a local music organisation working with young people, to deliver Our City Dances at Tarner Festival. Via this, we were able to reach more members of the community to engage them with dance and advocate for The Dance Space. These festivals were well attended with 5,570 audience members over two festivals, from many different walks of life and different ages, many of whom had never heard of South East Dance or The Dance Space previously.

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“Feeling so lucky to have this dance festival so close to where we live. Introduced us to new dance styles – would like more events like this.”

Our City Dances audience member We will continue to work together with Tarner Community Project to deliver rich dance activity as part of Tarner Festival in September 2021.

We want to highlight that various events in Our City Dances 2018 and 2019 programmes were British Sign Language interpreted. We have a commitment to making all the activity we present as accessible as possible, to as many people as possible. Through the festivals, we were keen to engage our D/deaf community as part of our audience development plan.

We visited and organised (BSL interpreted) talks at a local school for D/deaf young people to encourage them to attend the festivals. We also focused our social media output on local D/deaf groups.

In 2018 and 2019, approximately one third of Our City Dances events were BSL interpreted. And for the 2019 festival, we increased our visibility by captioning and BSL interpreting a filmed version of someone reading the brochure.

“Very inclusive and friendly.”

Our City Dances audience member We also worked directly with BSL interpreters who interpreted the MC’s onstage as well as performances, workshops and talks.

Our City Dances at Tarner Festival, 2018

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Below are some examples of the work shown at the two festivals: Our City Dances 2018 (18 events over two days): • Wild Rumpus was a workshop, facilitated by Four Hands (George Fellows and Nick Lawson), and delivered at Tarner Children’s Centre. It was aimed at preschool children and their parents/carers and encouraged them to move together. The workshop, funded by The Goodall Foundation, was the final event of a project over six weeks with families from East Brighton.

• For the You’re Welcome commission, dance artist and choreographer Antonia Grove worked with two service users (Ken and Richard) from the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project. Antonia, Ken and Richard worked together for eight weeks, making a piece about ‘feeling welcome’, ‘finding your place’, and ‘supporting each other’. This was then performed at Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project.

“Certainly I’m far more confident, even with talking to people. It’s incredible. If you’d have told me two years ago I’d have been doing something [like this], I’d have said “no way”, I’d have shrivelled up and died! I don’t mind, I’d do just about anything now.”

Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project Performance Participant • Dance artist and choreographer Ceyda Tanc, together with Three Score Dance Company (a Brighton based company of dancers aged over 65), held a basketball court performance of KUSAK at Tarner Park. The work was an exciting outdoor, intergenerational performance challenging audience perceptions of dance and age. Performed by a combination of young people and older adults, the work was a joyous and beautiful celebration of community integration.

• Ragroof Players brought together the residents of Brooke Mead Extra Care Facility, residents of Leach Court Sheltered Housing and the children from Puffin Community Nursery for a multigenerational afternoon full of dancing, vintage music, creative play and cake. It saw people from all walks of life come together for an informal and fun social dance.

• At Brighton Youth Centre, TRIBE// presented Still I Rise - a raw and physically challenging piece performed by two dancers based on an empowering poem by Maya Angelou. The performance was opened by students of The Place Partnership Programme, supported by The Place CAT scheme and managed by South East Dance. The nine young people age 11-17 worked with dance artists Victoria Fox and Nick Lawson to showcase their introductory piece Rise drawing on TRIBE//’s symbolic strong female theme.

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Our City Dances 2019 (28 events over two days): • In May and June 2019, dance artist and choreographer Olivia Kerr delivered eight weekly dance and creative movement sessions for the children at Puffin Community Nursery. Based on the creative process during these weeks, Olivia then delivered a ‘creative play workshop’ as part of Our City Dances 2019, particularly encouraging the children from Puffin to join in.

• For the Romeo & Juliet commission, dance artist Anna Alvarez worked with a small group of young people at Brighton Youth Centre to create a live performance. As part of this, Anna delivered an introductory pop-up and six additional movement sessions at BYC, and the piece was performed outdoors to a large audience.

• IMPRINT was a collaboration between professional dancers and non-trained dancers from Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project. The project, led by choreographer and dance artist Anne Colvin, resulted in a film and live performance, and explored people’s experiences of being in a wild and natural site. Two Screenings and one performance of IMPRINT were part of Our City Dances 2019.

• In the run-up to Our City Dances 2019, dance artist Anna Pearce delivered eight movement sessions at Brooke Mead and chatted to participants to collect their stories or memories.

These were turned into an installation which painted a picture of each individual and their experiences that happened inside Brooke Mead, and encouraged audience members to engage with beautiful images, calm and considered movement and content led by the residents.

“Well done – dance to parts of the city that don’t get it.”

Our City Dances audience member

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Community Steering Group A valuable outcome of The Welcome Project is our Community Steering Group, who are now embedded within South East Dance and a growing authentic voice within our programme. We currently have an inclusive group of 12 committed members from different backgrounds. Many of them have been members since the beginning. In total, 21 people aged 8-80 have been members of the Steering Group; attending 21 meetings throughout the programme.

“It’s really inclusive but at the same time, we’re all learning, listening, contributing, finding out new things and being interested in each other. I don’t think it’s a token, it’s not ticked a box to say “we’ve asked that person what they think, we’re going to move on”. But actually South East Dance really listen to and take onboard comments that people have been making.”

Steering Group Member During Phase I of The Welcome Project, the Community Steering Group met monthly to shape and plan the Our City Dances Festivals that took place in 2018 and 2019. At our first meeting in January 2018, we welcomed 17 people from the community including three older adults from Leach Court. The group ranged in age from 9 to 72 years and also included other participants, artists and partners. The group members were very enthusiastic at the prospect of taking some ownership over the curation of the festivals, fundraising, contributing ideas from their own past experiences, and publicising the festivals. With some guidance and support, they were responsible for selecting a wide range of artists from across the UK, including professional and local community groups. They were also key in delivering the festivals, with many of the Steering Group members acting as volunteer stewards, supporting audiences, artists and the South East Dance team.

Towards the end of year two, we realised that the structure of the monthly meetings was not as accessible as we had hoped. We therefore re-evaluated our approach with the group and implemented some new elements to the monthly meetings: we focused on developing the Steering Group’s skill set and knowledge of dance by welcoming artists to our monthly meetings to talk about their practice and lead movement sessions, which was well received. The Steering Group members also attended several professional dance performances and saw a lot of dance on film.

Finally, inviting different members of our staff to each meeting to share information about their role was beneficial to the group as they built a greater understanding of our wider work, and it was positive for our staff in terms of building relationships with group members, understanding the important role they play in the success of The Welcome Project.

As a result of these changes, members of the group were more engaged in each meeting and more informed about our wider work. This investment gave them a sense of greater ownership and empowerment. We also noticed that the connection between members grew, the group flourished and is now a huge enrichment for South East Dance; especially as we transition to becoming a building-based organisation.

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“When I saw the advert in a Tarner newsletter for the Steering Group at the end of 2017, I thought it would be a really fun thing to do once a month on a Saturday morning. It has been so much more than that though. I have learned a lot about different styles of dance and met a lot of like-minded people. The Welcome Project staff at South East Dance have been so amazingly passionate and really kept everyone engaged in the process. In committee meetings, we get a chance to share our experiences in dance, learn from one another, and move together with different artists joining us to lead warm up sessions. I always leave the sessions feeling energised and like I have achieved something great. The meetings have inspired me to set up my own committee - connecting disabled and non-disabled people with a passion for dance. Brighton has gained so much from The Welcome Project. Many community groups have benefited from the input of South East Dance, and Our City Dances brings residents together through movement and new experiences.”

Steering Group Member

Members of The Welcome Project Steering Group having a dance at a meeting, 2019

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Section 2. Effects of Covid-19 on the activities of 2020 Until mid-March 2020, The Welcome Project was running the third cycle of its regular planned activity and was thriving. We were in the early planning stages of presenting a flagship community engagement performance by Hagit Yakira with a community cast comprising beneficiaries from our partner groups.

Due to the pandemic, all activity came to a halt in March 2020. From March 2020 until September 2020 (when Phase I of The Welcome Project ended), we were actively engaging with our key Welcome Project partners and looking at ways to support them remotely. We also extended our reach to other community organisations, recommencing activity in different ways. However, we had to postpone Our City Dances Festival until 2021. The cancellation of Our City Dances in 2020 – combined with the delay in opening The Dance Space – had a big effect on our overall Welcome Project volunteer programme, as both of these areas would have been key points for us to engage a wider volunteer group.

Puffin Community Nursery Puffin Nursery was closed on and off, so our dance artists created bespoke, pre-recorded weekly dance sessions for children aged 2-5 and their families. We commissioned online Salsa classes with dance artist Federico Bedoya, which were shared with Puffin, 300+ families who access Tarner Children’s Centre, and 200+ families receiving emergency food bank parcels via the Black & Minority Ethnic Community Partnership (BMECP) and Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP). We had 263 sessions views from March to September 2020.

Brighton Youth Centre (BYC) Sadly, following the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown we made the difficult but necessary decision to suspend all weekly activity at Brighton Youth Centre. This subsequently meant that our artist in residence programme was also postponed, as was our planned large-scale commission with artist Hagit Yakira. Hagit was due to work with a group of young people from Brighton Youth Centre who would become part of her community cast, performing alongside five professional dancers to a live audience of up to 500 people.

Brighton Unemplyed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) Since the first lockdown in March 2020, Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project has had an increased membership via their emergency foodbank. We connected with these new service users via bespoke online classes. A new partner, Black & Minority Ethnic Community Partnership (BMECP), has also been referring their 100+ foodbank users to our online classes. We plan to develop this relationship further in Phase II.

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Brooke Mead Extra Care Facility Brooke Mead residents had to self-isolate in their apartments most months between March and September 2020. Luan Taylor, our Creative Communities Manager and the freelance dance artist who ran the regular movement sessions at Brooke Mead, quickly came up with creative solutions to stay in touch with the residents and not lose connection with her group of participants. We were in regular contact with them, making weekly dance-themed care packages for each participant.

These packages contained things like handmade cards, dance articles and knitted hearts, or little hand-drawn booklets with suggested movements, and were delivered to Brooke Mead every week.

We delivered 16 of these packages for nine residents between March and September 2020.

“I don’t want to lose that connection with the group, I’m very fond of them all and I know they need to feel a part of something now more than ever. So I’m creating a dance-themed weekly care package. The first week I made everybody a handmade card with a picture of me on the inside, so they would recognise who it was from. I also added some magazine articles about dance, and poems that I thought they may be interested to read. The following week I made more cards, this time including photographs of us dancing together at previous sessions, smiling, laughing and moving as group. And I knitted a little heart for each resident to keep. My ambition now is to inspire some safe movement and gentle chair-based exercises to help the group keep moving.”

Luan Taylor, Creative Communities Manager at South East Dance, freelance Dance Artist at Brooke Mead After seeking emergency funding to continue engaging Brooke Mead residents, we were awarded a grant from the NET CoronaVirus Fund at Sussex Community Foundation in June 2020 to buy tablets and other technical equipment. We also received a donation of ten laptops from Brandwatch. Our intention was to stay connected to as many participants as possible – particularly the ones at Brooke Mead, who faced the highest risk of social isolation – through this equipment.

After an intense period of risk assessment, we delivered the tablets, mobile WiFi units and detailed information packs to Brooke Mead in July 2020. The tablets included pre-recorded classes by Luan Taylor and Louisa Petts (a freelance dance assistant), who had been running the live dance/movement sessions at Brooke Mead for 18 months prior to the pandemic. Eventually, Luan checked in with the Seniors Scheme Manager at Brighton & Hove City Council in September 2020. Their feedback was that, unfortunately, the tablets had not yet been used. This was primarily due to staff shortage and the low capacity of staff to facilitate the operation during such a high-risk, high-pressure time. There was also a certain degree of insecurity regarding the use of technical equipment. This news was disappointing, but also understandable given the very difficult situation at Brooke Mead.

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Due to our personal connection with one resident’s daughter, however, we were able to provide this resident with a tablet and she has been watching the bespoke video sessions in her room since.

“This had an amazingly positive impact! I really wasn’t sure she would engage with the activities being on her own rather than in the group, or even understand what to do, but she totally did. This is such a fantastic idea, along with many other things that South East Dance have produced for the residents of Brooke Mead.”

Brooke Mead resident’s daughter For Phase II of The Welcome Project, we managed to distribute most of the donated technical equipment among some of our other Welcome Project partners and their service users.

Online socials To bring all of our partners and participants together in these challenging times, we commissioned Murmuration Arts to create an online Social Dance Club, which had 22 participants attending.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the event with Murmuration Arts. I don’t think I quite recognised the great absence of dance and physical movement has had. Nevertheless, the afternoon completely lifted my mood, so thank you again to you all. Three words I would use to describe the event: Uplifting, Connecting, Brightness.”

Louisa Petts, Dance Assistant for The Welcome Project at Brooke Mead

Section 3. Moving Forward Moving The Welcome Project into The Dance Space Initially, The Welcome Project activity took place in partner organisations’ venues or centres, where service users felt safe, comfortable and at home. We realised that this was an important consideration in order to undertake activity that was less familiar and delivered by an external organisation.

Having an ongoing relationship with all the partners was key to building trust and continuity so that we are ready for the partial transition of activity into The Dance Space.

When it opens to the public in 2022, The Dance Space will be the South East’s new home for dance.

Located in the heart of Brighton & Hove, The Dance Space will not only be a major new regional centre for professional dance, it will be a thriving community hub, offering an extensive year-round programme of classes, workshops and performances.

Once possible, we will continue to offer dance activities in our partner venues in order to encourage new people to dance and to – gradually – discover The Dance Space. We are also planning to expand this programme by working with new partner organisations, such as the Black & Minority Ethnic Community Partnership (BMECP).

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We will introduce the participants from our partner organisations into The Dance Space gradually through invitation to one-off special events and performances, with a gentle transition into weekly workshops in The Dance Space.

Phase II of The Welcome Project will also see us developing and establishing the partnership we started with mASCot (a parent-led support network for families who have a child/children with an Autism Spectrum Condition) at Brighton Youth Centre, supporting them to transition to classes in The Dance Space and reaching out further to other groups from across the city.

In Phase I of The Welcome Project, the Community Steering Group meetings took place in a variety of settings including, The Millwood Community Centre, Tarner, and once it opens in 2022, the group will meet at The Dance Space, which has been designed to be accessible and inclusive and can provide more support for volunteers, staff, artists and participants with additional needs.

We will also introduce a new bursary scheme and access strand to the project to encourage beneficiaries to access our public dance classes and other activities, events and performances at The Dance Space and across the city. This will include free or sponsored places in classes at The Dance Space, offering an ongoing legacy and outcome of the project and long-term health improvements for the beneficiaries.

We are committed to developing our volunteer programme, and will continue to review the opportunities on offer, especially once we move into The Dance Space.

Plans beyond The Dance Space Beyond our activities in The Dance Space, we aim to support the development of elements of the Our City Dances Festival in other towns and cities in the South East.

Regarding the Community Steering Group, we have gradually embedded its influence across our wider programme since Phase I of The Welcome Project ended in September 2020. From September-December 2020, they contributed to the curation of our 20/20 Vision online screen festival. They are featured as part of the South East Dance team on our new website (which launched in September 2020), and they not only contributed to its development but also to the new South East Dance branding process. We are excited about them having a deeper involvement in the fabric and culture of South East Dance and our governance as we look ahead.

Going forward, we want to recruit a more diverse group of service users from across the partnerships to join this Community Steering Group to guide and shape overall project activity, much as we have done in our pilot programme over the past three years.

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Section 4. Conclusion As mentioned at the beginning, our intention with this report was to give an overview of the various project activities but also to reflect on the initial project aims and those areas where we did not achieve what we set out to do. This is particularly important because The Welcome Project is now in Phase II (as of September 2020) and we wanted to incorporate our recommendations and learnings from Phase I for this next phase.

At the beginning of the three-year project, our three key outcomes were that 1. Participants from the main partner organisations are successfully engaging with the programme. The target indicators for this outcome was that 1,212 marginalised people would engage in The Welcome Project over three years, and that an average of 65% of all respondents would report positive outcomes (‘finds meaning and fulfilment from engaging with dance’; ‘has a sense of purpose, engages in meaningful and fulfilling activity, and has aspirations for the future’ and ‘feels and is more socially connected’); 2. Participants from the main partner organisations are integrated as mainstream users of The Dance Space (with a target of 33% of the overall The Dance Spaces users being from these partner organisations, including wider local residents of the Queen’s Park area); 3. A network of sustainable community partnerships is in place (with a target of four active/longterm partnerships in place and managed effectively by the our core team at the end of the three-year period).

With respect to the first key outcome, we engaged 908 unique participants from marginalised communities over the course of the three years. We did not reach the 1,212 we had initially hoped for; however, this was primarily due to the last six months of the project coinciding with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. Up to March 2020, we were on track to reach these target numbers.

In addition, this is what we had intended at the beginning and what we had done at the end of Phase I: • We wanted The Welcome Project Phase I to benefit 2,250 wider audiences through the Our City Dances Festivals. We have, in fact, exceeded this target and engaged 5,570 audience members in two Our City Dances festivals (with the third being cancelled due to the pandemic).

• Over three years, we wanted to engage 12,000 local people from all backgrounds. After three years of The Welcome Project, we have engaged 7,213 people. This figure is significantly lower than our initial aim, primarily because we had to cancel Our City Dances in 2020 and our program activity either came to a halt or was drastically reduced in March 2020, when the pandemic first hit.

• We wanted to offer approximately 7,200 opportunities to participate. Over three years, we have offered 3,462 opportunities; with the number also being lower due to the cancellation of Our City Dances and some other live events in 2020.

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Our aim was to focus on engaging the following four groups, in particular: • • • •

Children under five; Young people under 25; Long-term unemployed people; Older people, in particular those suffering social exclusion and/or poverty.

As was highlighted in the detailed section about our four main partner organisations and the activities we held there (section 1), we are confident in concluding that we successfully engaged children under 5 through our activities at Puffin Community Nursery, and older people through our activities with Brooke Mead Extra Care Facility. The engagement of young people under 25 (via our partnership with Brighton Youth Centre) and long-term unemployed people (via our partnership with Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project) proved to be more challenging. After in-depth conversations with the partner organisations, however, we developed a successful ‘pop-up’ model, which was working well with these groups until the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

“In terms of my expectations, I think I got what I expected in the sense that at the beginning, when we work with new activities in new places and with new people, it takes longer to encourage people to come and feel confident enough to participate. And I think there’s real value in understanding that that’s what is needed, and if it means there are only two people there for three weeks, then there are only two people there for three weeks. It’s not a failure. But what it means is that we need to spend more time building those relationships and helping people to understand what it is that they can expect and that actually, they’re part of that decision making as well. That was important, and that’s what happened.”

Anne Colvin, Dance Artist Many participants attended sessions regularly and were fully engaged; some of them also volunteered at Our City Dances and/or were/are part of the Community Steering Group. With respect to the second key outcome, we still anticipate reaching the target of engaging 33% in regular dance activity once The Dance Space opens. However, throughout Phase I of The Welcome Project and related to the building delays, we considered it a more important outcome to have participants engaging regularly with dance and reaping the physical and social benefits, rather than focusing on their participation in The Dance Space. Once it opens, we will continue working with our partners to deliver dance activity in their settings as well as in The Dance Space.

And concerning the third key outcome, we can confidently say that we firmly established longterm partnerships with each of the four core partners, which we expect to continue for many years. Looking back, we now know that offering dance activities in a familiar setting was the most effective way of building trust and engagement.

Each partner is invested in the programme. Together with them, we discussed how to continue to develop the programme once The Dance Space opens and they have agreed to be partners in a second phase. With us as lead, all partners (except for Brooke Mead, as they are funded by Brighton & Hove City Council) successfully submitted a tender bid to Brighton & Hove City Council Third Sector Commissioning Fund to work together on Phase II of The Welcome Project.

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At the beginning of this three-year project, we budgeted for a freelance Volunteer Coordinator but realised that there was a need for a more embedded year-round support to help deliver the project, so we changed this to a PAYE 0.6 Assistant Producer which had additional budget implications. Luan Taylor was recruited thanks to her expertise in volunteer management in August 2018. Her appointment positively impacted the whole project and the volunteer programme, in particular: volunteers overwhelmingly reported they felt well supported, cared for, listened to and gained valuable experience.

Key learnings Project evaluation Initially, we thought of ways to mitigate the risk of an ineffective project evaluation. Due to the nature of the programme, we knew there was a chance that evaluation would be hampered by fluctuating attendance. We therefore planned to consistently track progress for a number of individuals who attended regularly in order to establish a picture of the impact of the programme.

Alongside this, we wanted to trial alternative evaluation methods such as case studies, video diaries and social media posts to capture beneficiaries’ individual stories.

Indeed, evaluation of Phase I of The Welcome Project proved challenging – evidencing an average of 65% of all respondents would report positive outcomes in particular (please see key outcome 1. on page 34) – due to the diverse and complex nature of the partners and settings that we worked with, as well as the heavy workloads of our staff. It also became apparent that we should have considered a bespoke, tailored evaluation approach for each individual partner and sought advice and consultancy on this from specialists in each field from the very beginning.

In a bid to address this challenge at Brooke Mead, we started collaborating with Louisa Petts, an experienced evaluator (who has expertise in working with and evaluating impact of movement on older adults living with dementia). In July 2020, we contracted her to work with us over a 10-week period; attending weekly sessions and working closely with our lead artist to implement some gentle approaches that would enable us to demonstrate trackable impact – tailored specifically to the needs of the group. We considered this bespoke approach to be fundamental and so have - with the support of experts, among other things - significantly reviewed our whole evaluation approach for Phase II of The Welcome Project.

As part of Little Big Dance – a different South East Dance project – we also started working with Professor Angela Pickard (Canterbury Christ Church University) in 2019. For this other project, Professor Pickard has been conducting research for an Early Years creative impact report with Puffin Community Nursery (and 15 other nurseries across the UK) and professional artists. This collaboration is a related strand of our work as part of a national Early Years programme, which supports the development of new performance work for Early Years and their families. Professor Pickard will lead on the evaluation of Phase II of The Welcome Project.

Our weakness in terms of project evaluation is particularly unfortunate as one of the key principles of The Welcome Project Phase I was to listen and be flexible and responsive to the participants’ suggestions and needs. We said that we wanted to avoid ‘imposing’ activities and to prevent beneficiaries from becoming disconnected. We planned to have a user-led approach as this would

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be key to ensuring that those who felt like the arts had nothing to offer them had ownership over what the activity looked like, thereby removing a significant initial barrier. While we listened, adapted, and learned – for example by modifying our approach and offering ‘pop-up’ sessions, or by implementing a Community Steering Group – the impact of these changes was difficult to track with hardly any baseline data and very little evaluation responses from participants themselves.

Financial support Another key learning from Phase I of the project is that we should have offered financial support to our partners. Not doing this hindered the initial progress due to our partners’ capacity and need to generate income. We included a financial contribution to the partners for Phase II of The Welcome Project within our grant from Brighton & Hove City Council. Due to Covid-19, this financial contribution is even more vital. In Phase II of The Welcome Project, we are also supporting our partners with fundraising advice and helping to promote their campaigns.

Further recommendations As part of this report and as a result of the many conversations we have had with artists and partners, as well as from the feedback of some participants and members of the Community Steering Group, the evaluation team also want to take this opportunity to point out some further recommendations to our wider team. While it would go beyond the scope of this report to list every individual suggestion, we have taken the time to carefully consider each contribution. Based on this, we want to offer the following recommendations for phase II of The Welcome Project: • For staff members at Brighton Youth Centre, it is important that young people are being involved in the decision making. This has to go beyond mere tokenism or fancy titles and include true participation.

• It would be great if the children from Puffin Community Nursery could get involved with more of the other community groups in the area, particularly from other age groups. This could potentially show them that dance is something that they can carry on doing after they leave nursery, and thereby give them something to aspire to.

• One of the challenges with Puffin was to engage the parents but we need to keep working with the nursery and the artists to build relationships with the parents in order to gradually bring them into the activity delivery (in the long term).

• Create opportunities for artists to meet, connect and share their experiences / challenges / learnings with each other. As part of this, we could organise an ‘end of the year’ artist gathering, where artists meet each other but are also informed about our planning for the following year.

• If funding is available, paying artists to help plan a programme that involves community delivery could really benefit, especially when that skillset might not exist in our own team.

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• Give artists more lead time and more time to do outreach. This includes spending more time at the venues of partner organisations to find out what people want, in order to engage the community they are going to be working with. This would also help to get all the different staff members of our partner organisations behind the activity. In order to establish these relationships and feelings of trust, artists should also be commissioned for longer periods of time (after initial ‘taster’ sessions).

• Some artists were disappointed with the level of support during Our City Dances. Therefore, we recommend that when applying to Our City Dances, artists should be told upfront what we will support them with and what they will have to do on their own. Of course, we should bear in mind that artists are not a homogeneous group and that the groups they work with might also require different levels of support.

• Have a clear communication with artists. Some partner organisations want to work with an artist for an extended period of time, while others prefer to change to a different artist every term. It is our responsibility to communicate with the wider artist community and explain our rationale as to how we select artists, why we choose them etc.

• Make phone calls alongside the use of emails when communicating with artists. The length and detail of emails can be overwhelming. Phone calls enable quicker answering, clarifying any confusion, and a format of discussion that an email cannot.

• Have more public events before and/or after Our City Dances so that people across Brighton & Hove can learn about The Welcome Project. One such event could, for example, be hosted by the Community Steering Group.

• Once The Dance Space is open, involve residents more in planning activities there. Because many have lived in Tarner for a long time, they have a wealth of experience and knowledge to bring to the table about what might work and what might not, and why (not), when it comes to arts engagement. We need to ask how people will feel welcome in The Dance Space. Opening our doors and advertising sessions will not be enough.

• Once The Dance Space opens, it is important to have stepping stones in place for people. We should not have the expectation for The Dance Space to be a place of dance expertise, as this could create a sense of elitism. To avoid that might mean doing more commercial things to help people feel confident (and not intimidated) when walking through our doors.

• Once The Dance Space opens, it will be very difficult for the older people living at Brooke Mead to attend any classes or events there. The transition into The Dance Space will also be difficult for Puffin Community Nursery, both in terms of staff capacity and because they have several children with special educational needs. This has to be kept in mind.

• If funding allows for it, have opportunities for paid internships; thereby addressing socioeconomic vulnerabilities and creating awareness of work that exists within the arts sector.

• Sometimes less is more: Make sure there is time for learning, (re)thinking, (re)evaluating, and listening. It is easy to get bogged down by delivery and by thinking we have to offer as much as possible for as many people as possible.

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CREDITS Janine Fletcher – lead researcher Louisa Petts – co-researcher Hanna Stepanik – evaluation assistant and lead author Daniel Falvey – research assistant and graphic design ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank everyone who took part in interviews, filled out evaluation or monitoring forms, and online surveys over the last three years. We would also like to thank anyone who has provided data that has contributed to this report, who supported others to complete monitoring forms and who continue to provide key monitoring information regularly. This report would not have been possible without your hard work and dedication.

Thank you to the Community Steering Group for their commitment, enthusiasm and ongoing support of The Welcome Project, Our City Dances and South East Dance. We could not do it without you.

Thank you to the report’s co-researcher, Louisa Petts, for her work analysing data, artist interviews and online surveys, as well as creating a guide for consent, ethics and research materials for people living with dementia.

And thank you to our partner organisations and funders – Esmée Fairbairn Foundation as our main funder and also American Express, Brandwatch, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, Hyde Foundation, St. James’s Place Charitable Foundation, Sussex Community Foundation, and Postcode Community Trust – for supporting The Welcome Project from 20172020.