Established in the early 1980s, Yorkshire Dance is based in Leeds but works across the region. It has 15 FTE staff led since 2007 by artistic director and chief executive Wieke Eringa; in addition it employs part-time front of house staff, and works with approximately 15 artists on a weekly basis. Its turnover sits between £8-900,000, depending on projects, of which 40% is core funding received from Arts Council England and Leeds City Council, and approximately 10% is raised through trusts and foundations, and corporate donations.

Mission: to champion the value and the development of dance in Yorkshire

Yorkshire Dance’s core mission, “the commitment to everyone dancing”, has been the same for 35 years, says Wieke Eringa, Although that mission has been refined, it’s still “about creating connectivity between every body, literally, as well as everybody, and questioning who can dance, where they dance and what dance actually is”. The catch is that Yorkshire is “a very big place, with five major cities, and 5.5m people living over a massive geographical area. We haven’t got the resources to have an equal spread over all of that. So we’ve had to take an honest look at the resources and make it more focused on where we need to show up most.” And what it wants to show up for is “work that has a distinctive impact on people’s lives”.

Activities

Yorkshire Dance seeks to “raise standards, foster innovation and creativity, and increase knowledge and understanding” through three key strands of activity:

1: Sector development

Yorkshire Dance stages large-scale events, including a regional conference and a youth dance showcase, to support its regional dance development network and create spaces in which people can gather “to develop their networks, their thinking and their enthusiasm and inspiration and ambition”. It also works in a focused way with four dance development hubs, in North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Hull and East Riding, and North & North East Lincolnshire, encouraging strategic collaboration within those regions, so that independent artists, local authorities and other service providers are working together “to have a positive impact”. Those hubs are important in terms of “ownership” of projects: in each region, Eringa argues, “there needs to be somebody that’s willing to administer it and take responsibility for the success of it. It’s about empowerment, raising standards, and developing their ability to reflect on what they do”.

2: Dance opportunities for marginalised groups

This strand focuses on three particular social groups: “older adults, young people in deprived areas and learning disabled people. Dance has a real answer to some of the biggest problems around health and equalities, because unlike other art forms it really uses the body, and it reaches the people that sport fails to reach.” Projects include working with four groups of learning disabled people  on a weekly basis in Leeds, in partnership with adult social care services; a project for teenage boys as well as an intergenerational care home project in Sheffield; and falls-prevention work which has been “very successful. So it’s very varied, and what’s interesting is that a lot of this work is funded by funders who are interested in social impact, so it’s our job to keep integrating that with the other part of our work, which is funded by Arts Council England.”

3: Investment in artists and artistic practice

Yorkshire Dance works with roughly 100 artists, “broadly speaking in two ways: by investing in artists who we think have a real talent and drive to impact on the UK dance sector; and by working with regional catalysts, people who make things happen in an area where there is very little dance provision. At the same time we are quite responsive to a much wider group of people who just need advice, guidance, or studio space.”

None of these strands is prioritised over the other, says Eringa, and that makes Yorkshire Dance “unusual  compared with the other dance development organisations. In the past few years we’ve been integrating the work by the artistic team and the youth and community team, trying to wipe away the distinction, and think about how the engagement work can have the highest artistic quality, while at the same time asking how the artistic work can always concern the context and the people that it’s working with and for. We’re trying to get rid of these old categories of youth work and professional work, and be much more fluid about who’s asking what questions, and what the presentations are of that work.”

“We’re trying to get rid of these old categories of youth work and professional work, and be much more fluid about who’s asking what questions, and what the presentations are of that work.”

Challenges

Yorkshire Dance’s challenges begin with money, says Eringa, but “it’s beyond money: it’s visibility, reputation, staff team and resources”. For instance, capacity is “not just about money: it’s also to do with exhaustion and stress levels and career progression and keeping good people who are smart and who want to develop”.

Similarly, she feels it’s much more difficult for a small organisation “to get recognition for the kind of work that we do. We’re not foregrounding one area of work over the other, so what we are and who we are to whom is always a little bit of a communications issue.” It’s made harder still by the fact that community events don’t lend themselves naturally to those networking moments “with business and philanthropists where you can stand around with a glass of wine in a nice venue watching something really swanky. Those moments are hard to organise when you’re working in a church hall on a Friday morning with a group of learning disabled people.”

What next?

Eringa is particularly interested in developing ambassador schemes: “We have very different audience groups that know and like us for different things. Parents and children know us because we’re safe and fun, and artists know us because we’re radical and dangerous, and digital users like us because we provide information about classes and courses, and sector-support people like us because we are knowledgeable and well-connected. I think it would be very exciting if we could continue to develop across the board a group of people who can percolate and be ambassadors and be the touchstone by which we develop what we do.” This would help with legacy, but also help Yorkshire Dance to “do less and better. Part of that is to be able to work with people who are not working professionally in the arts, to continue that journey of authorship and curation.”

“It’s really taking the next step to where you’re working with your participants who are telling you what they want to do, and engaging people in that process of making dance in a different way.”

Changes at Yorkshire Dance are symbiotic with Eringa’s sense of change in the general cultural discussion: “At the moment different models of co-authorship and co-curation are really pertinent, but we wouldn’t have been talking about co-authorship 10 years ago. We have a massive project on at the moment around social isolation in which we’re the lead project partner for a whole bunch of organisations, and that has a steering group and an ambassadors group of participants who plan and curate events. It’s really taking the next step to where you’re working with your participants who are telling you what they want to do, and engaging people in that process of making dance in a different way.” Other strands see Yorkshire Dance “beginning to work with artists to curate works here, getting them to think about the events that they want to put on, which brings a completely different artistic framework”. Eringa sees Yorkshire Dance’s future moving more and more in this direction: “Maybe my whole ambition is around eroding hierarchies – while still getting paid.”