We always love to hear from our participants about how DanceSyndrome workshops help them to improve their lives.
Here are two case studies from our Accrington workshop, which takes place every Thursday morning 10:30am -12pm at the New Era Centre. The workshop started in November 2015 and you can see from the case studies that it has already had a huge impact on some of the regular participants.
Donna McCallum
Donna is aged 39 and lives in Accrington. She first found out about DanceSyndrome’s workshop in Accrington through the Bridge Centre North West. Donna enjoys coming to the dance workshops because she enjoys dancing and meeting new people. She also enjoys working in teams and her favourite part of the session is the name and action game. Donna often helps with this part of the session and she finds that helping Dance Artist Sue makes her feel relaxed and happy.
In the future, Donna would love the chance to further her abilities at dance leading. Since coming to DanceSyndrome, her confidence has greatly increased when taking part in the exercise. Donna feels this is because exercises are repeated each week along with some new ones, so if they seem confusing to start with once she has done them a few times they are no longer confusing.
Donna said that since coming to DanceSyndrome she feels a lot healthier and stronger and because of this she is making sure she eats healthier at home. Before coming to DanceSyndrome she had done some line dancing but DanceSyndrome has given her the confidence to start other activities such as football, swimming, bowling and kick boxing. Donna believes that she has learnt lots of new dances at the dance workshops and she loves dancing and says she will never give it up.
Matthew Poole
Matthew is 25 and lives in Clayton-le-Moors, near Accrington. He found out about the dance workshops through Bridge Centre North West. Matthew enjoys every aspect of the dance sessions but particularly likes meeting new people and getting to know everyone. He feels much more confident now when joining in the dance workshops than when he first started coming to the DanceSyndrome sessions. While Matthew still feels too shy to take the lead at the moment, he loves to help Sue and Lizzie in some activities.
Matthew enjoys coming to the dance workshops and he said he feels upset when he is unable to come. He believes that he has learnt a number of new things since first coming to the DanceSyndrome workshop, including learning how to be himself and let go of his inhibitions. Matthew has learnt how to make new friends and interact with a wide range of different people.
Before starting the dance workshops, Matthew said he would just go to the restaurant where he works and didn’t really do anything else, but thanks to DanceSyndrome he has now started to join in with a lot more activities. He now goes swimming, plays football and golf, goes bowling, meets up with his friends and goes to Preston to attend games workshops. Matthew said that 5 years ago he wouldn’t have been able to imagine himself dancing and doing all the activities he does now.
