Youth Dance Matters
Youth Dance Matters is an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods project combining dance and social science research in a cross-border investigation of the shared value and capacity of youth dance on the island of Ireland.
Drawing on learning gained from our previous research, Youth Dance Matters takes an innovative, mixed methods approach to examining the conditions and value of youth dance as a shared cultural, developmental, and professional endeavour for young people across the island of Ireland.
Youth Dance Matters mixes social science research methods with dance practice-as-research methods.
It brings a team of dance and social science researchers together with youth dancers, aged 12-17, and their facilitators in Ireland and Northern Ireland, who are working in a range of styles, such as ballet, contemporary and street dance. Together, we will explore the following research themes and questions:
(a) Youth Dance as Shared Culture: How do dancers and their facilitators experience and value youth dance? What supports and / or challenges engagement?
(b) Shared Island Capacity Building: What impacts youth dance development on the island? What aspects of cooperation should be prioritised for future action and why? What might enable or hinder shared approaches? How might cooperation reach beyond supporting youth dance?
We will engage participants in addressing these questions through creative dance workshops, youth-led choreographic exchanges, and semi-structured interviews and focus-group style discussions as well as policy review and auditing / mapping youth dance groups. Choreographic material and data generated by these activities will support the co-creation of a documentary film and interactive public website.
In considering dance (policy) development, Youth Dance Matters champions the importance of bringing knowledge generated from within the embodied perspectives and experience of dancing into equal dialogue with the social scientific research methods that are typically privileged in decision-making processes.
Youth Dance Matters is funded through the Higher Education Authority North South Programme 2021. The North-South Research Programme is a collaborative scheme being delivered by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) on behalf of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) and the Shared Island Unit at the Department of the Taoiseach.