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• Projects
This is our exciting project to get boys and young men dancing. Males between the ages of 8 – 22 years of age can visit Laban on a weekly basis to take part in dance classes in contemporary and hip hop, leading to performance opportunities. We aim to shatter the stereotypes surrounding men in dance, enabling it to be the fun accessible activity that it is. We will also run yearly projects, working with groups who may not be able to access a weekly class. In the summer term of 2005 we worked with Lewisham Secondary boys school – Forest Hill – and dance artist Kwesi Johnson. If interested in attending the weekly classes or finding out more, register here.
St Stephen’s is a local Lewisham school. Over the last two terms Laban has delivered dance to the children and worked with class teachers there, following a similar model to the one used at Brockley primary school (see entry under past projects). An added benefit to this is that all classes have also had the opportunity to visit Laban and do one of their dance classes in our dance studios.
In February 2006, Laban re-launched its youth dance platform in partnership with Youth Dance England and London Youth Dance. We hosted the Regional Dance Festival with companies from across London taking part. All groups took part in dance classes throughout the day. They then performed their pieces to each other in a dress rehearsal, before a full performance to friends and family in the evening. All the young people who took part thoroughly enjoyed the day, and were completely exhausted by the end! New friendships and partnerships were forged – two of the groups have now combined. We were very fortunate in the smooth running of the day due to the support of the Laban community students.
This annual project run jointly with Greenwich Dance Agency, and a professional dance company (in 2005, we worked with Union), brings together 50 young people from Greenwich and Lewisham to work intensively for a week, coming together at the end to perform at Laban’s Bonnie Bird Theatre.
In the summers of 2004 + 2005, Laban held 2 new summer schools, one, The Aim Higher Dance Summer School, funded by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE), and the other in partnership with other organisations on Creekside for the young people of Lewisham and Greenwich. The Creekside Summer College provides summer activities that are accessible to local young people. Linking up with two other organisations on Creekside – Creekside Education Centre and APT (art gallery), week long courses in art, design photography and dance, relating to the local environment take place. The different art forms interact, supporting each other. For information on adult summer school that Laban will be running, please visit the Summer School 2006 section under Education and Community.
We have been lucky enough to have been invited by schools funded by the government initiative: www.creative-partnerships.com to facilitate dance projects. Schools that we have worked with under this umbrella have included Tuke School, and Dog Kennel Hill, and this year saw a partnership with Marvel’s Lane in Lewisham.
At Laban, we run a Postgraduate Certificate: Dance in the Community. Every year the Education and Community Programme supports a group from the course in running a project that they must create and manage.
Since April 2008, members of the Laban Education and Community Programme have been collaborating with staff from the University of Exeter in the AHRC funded Dance Partners for Creativity Research Project. The research is investigating the kinds of creative partnerships that are developed between dance-artists and dance teachers, and how these facilitate the creativity of 11 to 14 year olds (at Key Stage 3). The team is particularly interested in addressing current concerns in secondary level dance education that creative partnerships and the ensuing student creativity are being stifled by the focus on testing and measuring attainment. The team also aims to demonstrate how practice and partnership models from the dance education/professional dance sectors can offer examples to the wider secondary education community regarding teaching and learning approaches suited to the needs of 21st century education.
The core Exeter/Laban research team are currently recruiting up to six KS3 dance-artist / dance-teacher partnerships to work collaboratively with them to analyse dance teaching and learning in context, to understand and develop practice and partnership models.
If you would like further information about this research, please contact Kerry Chappell or read more on the Exeter University website.
Our ongoing relationship with Creating Success Excellence in Cities Action Zone (now sadly ended), helped us to develop a project in this Lewisham primary school with the main aim of supporting the class teachers development of dance delivery. The confidence grew dramatically among the teachers we worked with, and in turn they have rolled out their skills to other class teachers in the school. Following an INSET in the summer term, with the class teachers support, the whole school came on board, and are keen to deliver dance classes to all the pupils with confidence! This model has been so successful that we hope we can use it in other primary schools, encouraging best practice delivery of dance.
Thanks to funding from Community Education Lewisham, we were able to bring Bare Bones Dance Company to Laban to present their double bill of new dance work especially created for children aged 6 – 11. 3 workshops took place in the morning, 1 for Deaf children their siblings and friends, and 2 for families. All workshop participants then watched the performance. A British Sign Language Interpreter supported the workshop for Deaf children and the performance. This project was part of our continuing aim to link further with Laban's Theatre programme, which has included Tilted Dance Company’s abridged version of their latest show More Grim[m] Desires, and Transitions Dance Company.
Participants came from across the country to take part in this residential summer school in 2004 and 2005. The 15/16 year olds took dance classes, created a dance piece in the week, and were offered career advice within the dance profession.
The network was supported by New Opportunities Fund and Excellence in Cities (EiC) – Secondary for just over three years, and it offered young people in Lewisham a chance to be part of weekly after school dance classes, based in four schools in the borough. As part of the project each club got to perform and come to Laban for dance days to meet each other.
In Autumn 2003, we were lucky enough to receive funding from Arts and Kids and Lewisham Education Business Partnership to enable us to host dance performances for children aged 8 – 12 yrs old. Bare Bones, Gandini Juggling Project and RJC performed to full audiences of primary schools on Friday 7 November, and the local community on Saturday 8 November. The dance companies also provided free workshops to the schools that attended.
Funded by the new Partners for Study Support (DfES) the project ran September 2000 - July 2001, and was a partnership between Sedgehill Secondary School, Laban, and Greenwich and Lewisham Young People's Theatre. Young people in years 7, 8 and 9, explored and expressed ideas through dance and drama. The project also set out to develop a combined arts approach encouraging students to take part in arts based out of school activity. A performance was created which toured to three feeder primary schools, a local secondary school, year 7 pupils at Sedgehill, Laban's and GYPT's theatres.
For further information on any of the above projects please contact Emma McFarland e.mcfarland@laban.org, Projects Co-ordinator n.lavithis@laban.org.
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