Pavilion Dance South West have joined forces with DanceEast (Ipswich), People Dancing (UK wide), South East Dance (Brighton), TandemWorks (South East England), The Place (London), The Work Room (Glasgow) and Yorkshire Dance (Leeds) to present Children & Their Grownups, providing the opportunity to find and develop new work for children and families.
The showcase will form this year’s PDSW Summit – an annual event to shine a light on the industry and look at what is needed in the world of dance. This industry focussed showcase offers a programme of discussions, live and livestreamed work and pitches, allowing programmers the opportunity to get to know the artists and companies who are creating and touring work. The showcase aims to spark the creation and programming of more dance work for children and their grown-ups.
Although this is primarily industry facing, the four-day event will also offer opportunities for the public to watch never before seen shows aimed at 0–15-year-olds. The presented works will be a mix of live and digital with an emphasis on using dance to experience different feelings or stories. Through an open call for artists, a selection of digital and live work has been chosen to showcase work that will be available for touring.
The programme will include 5 new live shows, 40 discussion and panel sessions, 20 virtual ‘Windows On Your Work’ sessions where artists and companies can pitch to an audience of industry professionals, 4 facilitated networking events, a welcome event and a closing event. Both the Live and Virtual events will enable companies to share new work for children that is available for touring, both live and digitally, and will give artists, companies, producers and 2 programmers a chance to consider how to co-create work with children and how to adapt work for different touring formats.
All of the discussions will be virtual and hosted on the PDSW website, offering an opportunity for anyone to tune in from wherever they are in the world. Sessions will include looking at the creation of child centred work, designing work with children, adapting work for different formats and adapting live work for digital broadcast. In addition, artists and programmers will be able to arrange 1-1 appointments to talk more about how to collaborate.
Children & Their Grownups is a new way of collaborating to showcase work from across the UK and the dance industry with a mixture of live work taking place in different locations as well as a shared digital portal. Most of the programme, including discussions, will be accessible online including the livestreamed shows and pitches, allowing audiences around the world to attend and see what work is available for international touring. The event builds on PDSW’s experience of running the UK-wide Surf The Wave programme to find new ways to showcase and tour work, making more dance available to more people.
