Empowering Dance - Developing Soft Skills aims to encourage professional dance practitioners (dancers, choreographers, dance teachers) to value themselves beyond performance and to empower them to recognise their specific skills and their transferability to other work sectors, ultimately broadening their employability opportunities. In light of the rapid changes in technology and the effect it has on the future of jobs, it has become clear that noncognitive skills, also known as soft skills, have become more important than cognitive skills for employees to have. Soft skills include (among others) problem solving, communication and innovation; the ideal employee of the future is equipped with creativity, resilience, perseverance and self-control. Professional dance practitioners implicitly apply soft skills but may not be fully aware of them and their positive transferable impact. While a variety of soft skills are inherently part of dance practices, there has never been any research or analysis to prove if and what kind of soft skills are more readily developed through dance. Empowering Dance is an answer to the need to evaluate and measure the qualitative impact of dance practices by defining the soft skills developed by dance professionals and their beneficial impact on the creative industry and society at large. By raising awareness amongst dance practitioners and the inherent use and application of soft skills, the project aims at training, developing and exchanging professional skills and ultimately transfer them onto other sectors. Methodologies of research will be the installation of focus groups, in depth interviews and participatory observation: Starting from the analysis of three participatory dance practices (focus groups), identified in each local context, this project aims to assess firstly the soft skills that dance professionals develop and apply in their practices and secondly their benefits on the dance professionals, the participants taking part in these dance practices and the staff of the organisations involved. These practices will be analysed using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, a form of action research in which professional social researchers operate as full collaborators with members of organisations. PAR is about jointly producing knowledge with others to generate critical interpretations and readings of the world. Through transnational meetings, the partner organisations will share and exchange on the ongoing research, with the core group of participants, consisting of about 10 staff members of the project partners’ organisation, 5 dance professionals (teachers, choreographers, dancers), the local participants of the the focus groups and experts and dance professionals invited to the work session from the local context for additional input. The first meeting in September 2018 in Rotterdam is planned as kick-off meeting. The aim of the kick-off meeting is to ensure the partners have a common view of the project from the outset, to present in more detail the individual plans for each partner’s activities, and to clarify and set the details of each partner’s specific role and responsibilities to the project for its duration. Furthermore, the research methodology will be introduced by the Italian partner Comune di Bassano and agreed by all partners. The main activities will take place throughout 2019 with three transnational project meetings in different cities of the partnership. The first research meeting will take place in Hamburg in January 2019, the second will take place in Vitry in May 2019. Those meetings are intermediate research and exchange of experiences and expertise meetings based on the research predefined by the partnership. These meetings serve also to monitor the research process and development and to meet members of the local focus groups and local experts and to discuss and exchange their knowledge on the chosen topic over two-day work sessions. The third meeting will take place in Bassano del Grappa in August 2018 marking the end of the focus group research period. The main focus of this meeting is the analysis of the collected research result to date. Each of these three work session will result in an intermediate research report. The evaluation meeting in Zagreb in January 2020 will finalise the analysis and research reports and results. Through both the best practice research phase, collecting data and analysing them in order to, at the conclusion of the research, publicize the results onto an already existing online platform created by the partners in a former project (communicatingdance.eu), the project aims to provide a learning tool for the use and application of soft skills through dance and the transferability thereof. The project's' long-term objective is to strengthen the contemporary dance sector in Europe and to raise its visibility among other segments of the European creative industry market.
Empowering Dance - Developing Soft Skills is a project carried out in the frame of Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships supporting cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. This good practice exchange included an action research on 5 case studies assembled by 5 European dance houses as partner organisations: Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik GmbH / K3 – Tanzplan | Zentrum fϋr Choreographie (DE) as the coordinator and the partners Centro per la Scena Contemporanea Bassano Del Grappa (IT), Dansateliers (NL), Hrvatski institut za pokret i ples (HR) and La Briqueterie – Centre de développement chorégraphique national du Val-de-Marne (FR). The research revolved around the question of how the practices of contemporary dance offered within the partners’ organizations helps people of all ages to acquire and develop soft skills. According to The World Economic Forum - Future of Jobs report (2016), soft skills are personal attributes that can affect relationships, communication and interaction with others. Complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, intercultural skills and teamwork are regarded as the most important skills required in our contemporary society and in the workplace of the future. Knowledge that is specific to dance is often implied or “silent” knowledge, operating in the background and rarely named for its unique impact and potential in diverse settings. Empowering Dance has identified, collected and articulated the implicit skills developed through dance practice by focusing on five examples of contemporary dance practices involving communities of non-professionals. Staff Members of the 5 partner institutions, in total 21 participants including 7 dance practitioners, were involved in the project. In each partner house one artist led group with non-professionals (varying between 10-20 participants per group from local communities) was studied as a focus group for the process of soft skill learning effects in dance. These 5 best practice focus groups do not provide an analysis of the whole dance sector but focus on 5 contemporary dance practices led by artists who are specifically interested and experienced in working with non-professionals. The practices vary in being an ongoing activity (a weekly class), a project-based activity (for a certain amount of time) and an artistically led activity with an outcome (performance) at the end. All dance practices investigated are mainly task and/or improvisation based. Over the course of the project, 9 transnational project meetings brought together team members and dance artists of the five organizations. The gatherings were focused on sharing tools, analyzing the dance classes of the participating artists and to look at one’s practices anew through the lens of soft skill development. In addition to participatory observation sessions, conducted interviews with artists, staff members and non-professional participants of the dance practices brought new language and awareness to all participants. What emerged from the exchanges and analysis was the identification of several ways in which contemporary dance could support the development of quite a large variety of soft skills, such as: the ability to reflect upon oneself; effectively manage time and information; to work with others in a constructive way; remain resilient; manage one’s own learning; the ability to cope with uncertainty and complexity; learning to learn; support for one’s own physical and emotional well-being; maintaining physical and mental health; the ability to lead a health-conscious, future-oriented life; empathizing and managing conflict in an inclusive and supportive context. Overall, the project underlined how the practice of contemporary dance could be helpful to boost resilience and resist increasing levels of uncertainty and stress, helping to develop strong personal, social and learning skills in order to successfully navigate personal lives, social encounters and careers. During the TPMs, the exchange of practices encouraged the dance artists to value themselves beyond performance and empowered them to recognize their skills and its transferability to other people. It became clear that a continuous contemporary dance practice helps people deal with change, build resilience and gain confidence. In peer learning sessions artists and staff members went through a mutual learning process for how teaching practices can support and develop learning approaches that foster soft skill development amongst participants. Furthermore, the dance artists felt strengthened in their ability to apply their professional skills to other fields of learning and work beyond dance, thus opening up new career opportunities. The project website presents the findings of the good practice exchange in detail and aims at encouraging dance professionals all over Europe to become more aware of their own competences and how they can use them in a more targeted way across sectors.