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.

The Choreography of Consent Network brings together practitioners and scholars from dance and law to develop innovative dance/law research methods that explore the movement of consent. The Network addresses the growing emphasis on the embodied dimensions of the law (Smith 2021; Perry-Kerris 2021) and the developing recognition of the refined understanding of movement that dance can bring to legal studies. A key aim is to identify how dance-based research can enrich understandings of consent within legal frameworks; and in turn, how contemporary legal research can enrich dance-embedded understandings of consent. Consent has undergone much legal and cultural change in recent years, linked to the development of diverse and sometimes conflicting conceptualisations. Rather than trying to stabilise consent in this shifting area, the Choreography of Consent Network takes the movements of consent as its catalyst, using dance and law to interrogate how practitioners, participants and researchers move within and through diverse consent processes in areas where consent can now be presumed (tissue donation) or framed as affirmative and enthusiastic (context of sexuality). Dance offers a powerful lens for exploring the impact of these reforms on different users. Contact improvisation methods, for example, can assist in producing tangible knowledge in law's understanding of 'dynamic consent', which demands qualities of responsivity and immediacy (Kaye 2015). Somatic practices may illuminate the affective experience of deemed consent, exemplified by the Organ Donation Act 2019 which now uses stillness (assent) to confirm consent, reversing the familiar pattern of active movement as a way of indicating opting in. Such profound shifts in the choreography of consent require a dance-based analysis of the affective impact of these forms. Led by Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (CSM) with the School of Law at the University of Leeds (UoL) and project partners People Dancing - Foundation for Community Dance, and Independent Dance, London, this network brings together UK and international scholars with specialisms in dance improvisation, choreographic practice, somatic practice, socio-legal study, legal ethnography, anthropology and legal materiality to experiment with innovative interdisciplinary research methods that experiment with the capacity of dance/law collaboration to address concrete world problems. Over four events, the Network will map existing dance/law expertise and methods; exchange and develop new collaborative dance/law methods; test these approaches focusing on the practice of consent; and identify future applications for these innovative methods. A final public event will showcase the Network's outputs and locate them in the arts and humanities research context as well as launching and introducing the project's digital legacy to researchers and practitioners beyond the Network. Each event will involve dance workshops, performances, academic presentations and exchanges. Findings will be shared via a blog and podcast hosted in the Independent Dance Digital Library and People Dancing website, two peer-reviewed journal articles, two conference presentations and an exhibition documenting the Network activities and findings at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London and online hosted by CSM research website.