This 18-month, international networking project aims to bring together dance educators, researchers, industry stakeholders, and artists from UK, Nordic countries and US, to raise the profile and status of dance education and to exchange ideas on the topic of Critical Dance Pedagogy. Through discourse (four hybrid seminar-workshops) and in practice (Artist Lab), the Critical Dance Pedagogy network seeks to examine taken-for-granted assumptions, dominant stereotypes, educational and studio structures that (re)produce hierarchies of positions and capitals, barriers and exclusions, and social inequalities, Together participants in the network will examine widening access and participation, student-artist-centred learning and democratic practices in dance education, for greater diversity and inclusion. The network will particularly focus on pedagogy within secondary, further and higher education, and will examine complexities and enablers of democratic working. The significant, complex, embodied issues will be at the core of the discussions, debate, artist development at the Artist Lab, and in the academic, industry-facing and public-facing outputs. Through a series of four, hybrid seminar-workshops, the network will establish opportunities for new scholarly discourse and UK and international connections on the topic of Critical Dance Pedagogy. Key themes will be explored from different disciplinary lenses and methodologies (e.g. sociology, gender, queer, race theory, philosophy, learning theories) and international/cultural perspectives. Each of the seminar-workshops will host 50 participants and will take place across the UK and hybrid to enable global and wide UK access. The seminar-workshops are as follows: 1.Intertextualities and Identities to take place at Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) Speakers:Dr Nyama McCarthy-Brown, (Ohio State University, US), Dr Funmi Adewole (De Montford University, UK), Ash Mukherjee (UK). 2.Equality, Diversity and Inclusion to take place at University of Coventry (UoC) Speakers:Dr Ali Duffy (Texas Tech University, US).Sophie Rebecca, (UK), Dr Kathryn Stamp (Co-I, UoC). 3.Pedagogy(ies) and Practices to take place at University of Edinburgh (UoE) Speakers: Professor Eeva Antilla, (University of Arts, Finland), Stuart Waters (UK), Dr Wendy Timmons (UoE). 4.Leadership and futures to take place at Queen's University Belfast (QUB) Speakers: Professor Rosemary Martin (Nord University, Norway), Dr Aoife McCarthy (QMB), Professor Angela Pickard (PI, CCCU). The network will also connect with leading dance industry organisations at the forefront of sector and policy research related to dance education: One Dance UK, People Dancing, Dance HE, South East Dance, Parable Dance, Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (PiPA), Advancing Women's Aspirations in Dance (AWA), Dance Mama, to ensure the benefits of the network and research are beyond academia, and dance sector voices are fully integrated. The network will also explore student-artist-centred learning, pedagogy and practice in an Artist Lab facilitated by Stuart Waters (a teaching artist with multifaceted intertextualities). The range of outputs and dissemination have potential to reach and benefit widely across public, academic, educator, and industry audiences in the UK and internationally. There will be one public-facing: a film for public engagement and response of learnings/practices as student-responsive pedagogy from the Artist Lab, two academic: special issue of a journal and book proposal, and two industry-facing: summary report and infographic, that will support future scholarly research, professional dance education/training, artistic/performance practices, and policy development. The network has potential to impact thinking, policy and practice within dance education contexts to facilitate a diverse, creative student and artistic workforce.

Dance movements are often copied and reworked and legal cases related to such activities are rare. However, the online circulation of dance means that movements and video files are easily reproduced. The open sharing of movement that has often occurred in dance communities is being expanded and tested now that dance occurs online more than ever before and in new and experimental formats. The restrictions put in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in new forms of dance which have raised questions about how online dances are understood, described and exchanged. Moving Online: Ontology and Ownership of Internet Dance addresses these issues, asking 1) What kind of thing is an online dance? 2.) Is dance online a different thing to dance offline? 3) Do different cultural histories result in multiple different online entities? 4) How does dance's ontology shape social practices around ownership online? 5) How can ontological understanding support artists to share their work online? The project will generate conversations within the dance sector about dance ontology and support artists to share and manage their dances online. The research will result in deeper understanding about the kinds of things produced through the making and sharing of dance online and how alterations, adaptations and new versions relate to existing content. These ideas will help choreographers and dancers to recognise and negotiate ownership and exchange. Issues of ownership in an increasingly online world are not exclusive to dance, and the findings will also be relevant to practitioners and scholars working in other art forms. Nevertheless, dance has a particularly uneasy relationship to intellectual property law, perhaps due to its embodied nature and the lack of a universally adopted notation system, meaning that examining practices within the dance sector will offer rich data through which to consider the intersections of ontology and ownership online. I will interview choreographers and dancers, observe making processes and examine examples of dance online. The primary focus of the research is South Asian dance, hip hop and contemporary theatre dance. The research is carried out in partnership with Sadler's Wells Theatre and One Dance UK. These two organisations work closely with dance artists through advocacy, programming and support and have experienced the challenges faced by the dance sector regarding the ownership of dance online. The partners will share their experiences, help with the recruitment of artists and support the development of sector facing publications and dissemination. The project will involve the commission of three choreographers to undertake choreographic processes focused on the making of online dances and the publication of a model for ontological analysis which will be shared online and via introductory workshops. The research will also be disseminated through public talks hosted by One Dance UK and Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University, a seminar series, a magazine article in One and/or Hootfoot (published by One Dance UK), a project blog and website and a public symposium. The findings will also contribute to a monograph on ontology and ownership for dance online, which will be the first of its kind in dance studies.

Future Ecologies: Producing Dance Network (PDN) brings together academics and arts professionals to reimagine an inclusive, extended and sustainable ecosystem for dance. Encompassing dance as a broad and diverse practice and an academic discipline, the network enables dialogue, exchange and strategic developments at a time of significant challenges. PDN will respond to the unprecedented convergence of Brexit and Covid-19, coupled with acute concerns regarding diversity, social justice and climate change that have been exacerbated by war in Europe and surging inflation. This requires a collective and inclusive approach. We will develop new discourses and practices of ecosystems research and of dance ecologies, reflecting the growing need in this time of change to consider connectives between higher education and the cultural and creative sectors in terms of deeply interconnected systems. Producing dance is viewed as central to this ecological project. Producers are mediating catalytic agents, activating the creation and curation of meaningful engagements across a range of contexts that address broader social and cultural issues of equity and inclusion. Over recent decades formal and informal networks of dance producers have placed dance as a leading ambassador for a creative and vibrant global Britain. Yet, despite these contributions, little is known about the practices or specific roles of those involved in producing dance. As such, PDN opens both a new scholarly agenda by focusing on producing as an essential and meaningful area of enquiry for the field of dance studies and proposes ways in which an expanded concept of producing can significantly activate the symbiotic nature of creative and research practices, increasing the visibility and impact of dance research and practice-research in particular. PDN addresses another important absence: there is no road map to renewal, or model for understanding the producing ecosystem. PDN will therefore consider and evaluate emerging developments to promote resilience, renewal and new opportunities for the sector. By encompassing a diverse range of dance cultures and research practices, PDN seeks to expand approaches to future dance research, to cultivate and renew the environment for the professional dance sector, to inform policy-making for dance and to demonstrate an ecosystem that is inclusive and dynamic. To this end, PDN brings together experienced and early-career HE researchers, dance artists and leading dance organisations from across the UK, including members with diverse social, cultural and racial backgrounds to ensure richly informed exchanges. The network is organised through regional hubs in Scotland, North-East England, Yorkshire, the Midlands and London. Each region is represented by leaders in the field including Anita Clark (The Work Room, Glasgow); Anand Bhatt (Artistic Director (AD)/CEO Dance City, Sunderland); Tanya Steinhauser (Yorkshire Dance, Leeds); Paul Russ (AD/CEO Fabric - formerly Dance4/DanceXchange, Nottingham and Birmingham); and Eddie Nixon (The Place, London). In addition, the network will be supported by two leading national partners, OneDance UK and The Cultural Capital Exchange.

Dunham's Data pioneers the use of data analysis in dance history through a project that centres around the case study of Katherine Dunham (1909-2006). The African American choreographer, anthropologist, teacher, curator, and author had a profound influence on dance internationally. As a choreographer and performer, she was involved with Broadway shows, operas, revues, Hollywood films, and modern concert dance. As a cultural operator she worked for and with groups ranging from important African American organizations to the United States Army, and she was also employed by both the writing and theatre arms of the Works Progress Administration. As a scholar, she contributed to the development of participant-observer ethnographic methods, and her work also anticipates the contemporary phenomenon of practice-based research. Her curatorial and administrative work ranges from curating festivals in Dakar, to building multiple cultural institutions, namely the Dunham School in New York and the Katherine Dunham Museum and Children's Workshop in St. Louis. Dunham is an exemplary figure for analysing the ways dance moves across both geographical locations and networks of cultural, artistic, and financial capital. In addition to working across many diverse contexts, she spent over one third of her life on tour. The scale and distribution of datapoints necessary to research the transnational circulation of an artist like Dunham pose a challenge for traditional scholarly approaches. Thus, tracing such global movement requires new scholarly tools. For this project, we construct digital maps that track Dunham's travel undertaken as a touring artist as well as the ways in which her works represented place. We graph the networks Dunham built across people and institutions as she conducted ethnographic research, choreographed dances, created a dance technique, and participated in social justice movements. Using such digital research methods and data visualization in the context of dance history can catalyse a better understanding of how dance movements are shared and circulated among people and continents, and the networks of support and influence that undergird artistic and economic success. In so doing we ultimately ask how dance moves between places, and how the world is imagined in dance. At the same time as we investigate the mobility of this particular historical figure, we also address the scholarly concerns that make collecting, analysing, and visualizing data meaningful for dance historical inquiry. Digital methods have altered the landscape of most humanities and arts disciplines. However, the field of dance studies has not yet realized how it can benefit from these analytic approaches, in particular for historical work, and what it can contribute to interdisciplinary conversations. Therefore, this project is not only devoted to the specific line of research regarding Dunham, but also to the original problems and questions of dance history that can be advanced through an innovative critical mixed methods approach that includes geographical mapping and network analysis. The project scope is extended through knowledge exchange collaborations with international academic partner projects, as well as through UK industry partnerships with the Victoria & Albert Museum and One Dance UK's Dance of the African Diaspora.

The UK's arts & cultural sector is thriving: it contributes 674,000 jobs and £11.8bn per annum to the economy and remains one of its fastest growing sectors (DCMS, 2018). Yet despite this strong economic performance and its world-leading reputation for quality, the sector consistently fails to comprehend, capture and convey its values in a compelling way. This is partly because it suffers from structural problems including a lack of diversity, skills gaps (especially in data analysis & digital engagement), poor research & evaluation skills, and significant under-investment in training and R&D. These issues hinder its innovation and resilience and compromise its ability to make a coherent and compelling case for investment to key stakeholders, including private donors, corporate sponsors and HM Treasury, and to cognate sectors such as health & education. So we will dedicate resources to training/developing sector practitioners and students (FE/HE/PGR) in key areas of need including data analysis, audience/participant research, research-driven evaluation and storytelling. This proposal has been conceived by a genuinely national consortium comprising world-leading universities & sector partners. These partnerships will enable the Centre to quickly tap into existing networks and gain ready access to different types & sizes of arts/cultural organisations from all over the UK. The Centre will be delivered in a collaborative way that draws on the complementary expertise of its core & affiliate members and harnesses this in a strategic way to maximise the potential of its activities. Based partly on the findings of the Cultural Value Project, the Centre's priority themes will comprise: diversity & inequality, public impact, health & wellbeing, place-making, culture-led regeneration, civic engagement, cultural democracy, co-creation & participation. These themes will be prioritized in our calls for £200k seed funding and reflected in our events. The aim of the events is to stimulate fresh thinking on key themes related to cultural value & engagement and communicate this beyond the sector. The Centre will deliver the following 20 knowledge exchange events over 5 years: 1. Scoping Event 1 (Creative workshop, Opera North/DARE, Leeds) 2. Scoping Event 2 (Open Space event, British Library, London) 3. Launch (Leeds Town Hall) 4. Arts impact evaluation (Creative workshop, U. of Liverpool) 5. Cultural & economic value (Symposium, Cardiff University) 6. Arts, wellbeing & health policy (Colloquium, U. of Leeds) 7. Cultures of participation & co-production (Creative workshop, QMU, Edinburgh) 8. Diversity Forum (Coventry 2021) 9. Audience research & empirical aesthetics (Participatory Action Research event, UCL) 10. Cultures of fandom (Symposium, U. of Bristol) 11. Creative industries, innovation & the creative economy (Symposium, U. of York) 12. Place-making, culture-led regeneration & evaluation (Symposium, U. of Hull) 13. Barriers to cultural engagement (Open Space event, U. of Sheffield) 14. Arts & education policy (Creative workshop, National Theatre/British Library, London) 15. Processes of cultural value (Creative workshop, Eden Court/U. of Highlands & Islands, Inverness) 16. Cultural taste & class (Symposium, U. of Warwick) 17. Arts and conflict resolution (Symposium, Queens University Belfast) 18. Festival & storytelling symposium (Opera North/Leeds 2023, Leeds) 19. Conference on Cultural Value and Engagement (UoL) 20. Evaluation & legacy planning roundtable (UoL) These events will be supported by our website, which will encourage and facilitate engagement & debate between and beyond the events. Outcomes will be captured via regular research digests & blogs. In order to remain open to stakeholders' input and responsive to emerging issues, the Centre will earmark additional funding to support & partner fringe events that arise during the scoping events and over the lifecycle of the Centre.