MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism

MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism is for students who want to develop a socially engaged dance practice which addresses the urgencies of our times. You will join a global community of artists and researchers working at the intersection of community dance and arts activism. You may have an emerging community, participatory or activist movement practice which you want to develop, or you may be an established maker who wants to interrogate and develop your practice in the light of the shifting discourses and challenges of the moment.

This unique MA, offered full-time or part-time, has an intensive residency model. You engage in two, 2-week live residencies per year based at LCDS in London. All other teaching and learning is online, allowing you to remain embedded in the communities with whom you practice, growing your work as you study. You are not required to relocate to London, indeed the course places the de-centred practice of the individual student in their specific context at its heart. The richness of the curriculum grows from the wide diversity of geographical, cultural and contextual situations of our students and staff.

This MA enables you to:

Develop your artistic approach to dance including its social, ethical, activist, aesthetic and pedagogical dimensions 

Be supported in your development working for the advancement of social justice across the fields of community and participatory dance and activism 

Encounter, interrogate and negotiate systemic contexts, activating dance as a methodology for change 

Locate your practice in historical and contemporary discourses around socially engaged arts practices 

Develop appropriate skills and knowledges to lead safe, creative, accessible, ethical and enquiring dance projects in a variety of settings 

Develop advocacy skills and activist values to influence the contexts in which you work 

Analyse and reflect upon the efficacy of your practice and its relationship with the communities of practice in which it is embedded