"conchances" is a project for the exchange of good practices between five organisations involved in cultural education through contemporary dance. Between August 2019 and August 2021, "Fokus Tanz /Tanz und Schule e.V." from Germany and the partners "Stichting De Dansers" with "contweedancecollective” from the Netherlands, the young collective "Les schini's" from France, "Curious Seed" from Great Britain and "AppArt/ArtMan" from Hungary want to share, learn and advance their methods and strategies for working with increasingly diverse groups of young people between the ages of 13 and 30. All partners have vast experience in participative dance projects. The focus lies on supporting young people through contemporary dance in their personal development, self-esteem and their integration into society and not so much on teaching dance styles. Sharing, improvising and experiencing become important in the creative process. The changes in today's societies, however, affect the dance projects of the partners. Diversity within youth groups is growing fast and methods functioning well with homogeneous groups are no longer applicable. The partners see the need to adapt their working methods and strategies accordingly. They want to achieve this through the exchange of experiences and the practical peer-learning between their dance educators. The objective is to improve the quality of youth work by enhancing the professional qualification of the partners‘ staff. The new and advanced methods will be used in local dance projects with heterogeneous groups of young people so that the methods can be tried out and the adolescents are to benefit from them immediately. In addition, the partnership is to create a sustainable international network of organisations active in dance/cultural education as the partners want to bring new knowledge from other European countries into their work and benefit from transnational contacts. The exchange and peer learning will take place in five transnational meetings spread over the duration of the project and involve three to five dance educators from each partner (19 in total). In parallel, each partner will conduct local dance projects as best practice. Each partner will organise and host one meeting to present his/her methods whereby each meeting will have a different focus: “Make”, “Common Choreography”, “Somatic Self”, “Contact and Improvisation” and “Bring it together”. The on-site visit will give the participants the opportunity for a hands-on experience with structured feedback using the DasArts method. The dance educators play a major role, as they will not only learn, but also actively bring their expert knowledge to the project. At home, they will align the exchanged methods and strategies to their dance projects. Approximately 10 - 15 young people from different backgrounds – refugees and non-refugees, second and third generation migrants, people of mixed ability and people from the different neighbourhoods of the partners' cities – will be involved in the local dance project, in total around 75 persons. The project will be implemented and monitored by all partners. Fokus Tanz will coordinate the project, while the partners will be in charge of the activities in their own country. The project activities will result in a collection of exchanged, improved and tested practices and methods for the work with heterogeneous groups of young people. The partners’ dance educators will thus be better equipped professsionally for the work with adolescents from diverse backgrounds. The partner organisations’ level of quality and excellence will be raised. The intense collaboration in “conchances” will reinforce the international partnership and make the partners more attractive for new partners and projects. Regarding the target group of young people, the result of the project should be a visible increase in self-esteem. Factors like the promotion of multiple intelligences, value education and social behaviour will make them not only more sensitive to the needs of others, but also to their own needs, strengths and weaknesses. All partners together will disseminate the project results. The symposium in Munich will bring all methods together and present them in particular to the professional community and students. The partners’ websites and social media channels will be used to publish the information also to young persons and the public. Video clips documenting the methods and strategies will serve as inspiring material. In the long run, the methods and strategies developed within the project will trigger modernisation for the project partners and encourage them in their professional capacity building. A wide professional audience and students should profit from the results of the project and “conchances” should promote cultural education, in particular contemporary dance, and its impact on young people so that it will be more acknowledged on a national and international level.
The key aims of Conchances were to exchange good practices and share resources internationally, furthermore, to improve the quality of youth work by increasing the professional qualification of the partners’ staff, i.e. the dance educators and choreographers. The focus is on international practical learning, on sharing different experiences and expertises at eye-level between the participants, developping participatory methods that can be directly translated into the work with a heterogeneous group of young people in contemporary dance. During the project duration, the participants should have had the opportunity for an exchange and further development of the mediation methods and strategies in contemporary dance in 6 transnational meetings. The different approaches should have been tested and incorporated into the local dance projects of Conchances. The head organiser, Fokus Tanz | Tanz und Schule e.V. and its partners have been facilitating new inputs for each other, and collectively researched ways to adapt this new knowledge of other European countries to their local contexts. As project completion the participants summarized their strategies, issues and reflections in a catalogue.
As the changes in today's societies affect a lot the dance projects of the partners, they had the intention to learn, adapt and even invent new methods for their emerging homogeneous dance groups. The diversity of the participants does not anymore allow the partner organisations to rely on creative devices that were designed before the migration crisis, so for instance those that are based on complex spoken instructions and on colonial perspectives on one’s body. To address the needs of the partners, the objectives of Conchances as strategic partnership for good exchange and peer learning were: - to learn about the mediation methods of each partner - to build capacity and to improve the quality of youth work by increasing the professional qualification of the partner’s staff - to establish an international network for organisations active in dance mediation and facilitation: Fokus Tanz | Tanz und Schule and its partners have had new experiences from other European countries enriching their local work with young people. - to apply the inclusive and participative methods to the local (non-formal) dance projects with young people, so that young people can benefit from these new methods and learn more about the European project.