Do you love running, jogging or walking?
Do you want raise money for DanceSyndrome?
Then we need you!
The Wigan 10K is happening on Sunday 3rd September and we are looking for individuals or small groups to take part on behalf of DanceSyndrome.
If you have always wanted to take part in a large sporting event now is your chance, you can walk or run the 10 km (6.2 mile) course and raise money for a great cause while you are doing it.
DanceSyndrome will cover the cost of entry and provide a t-shirt to run in for anyone who can commit to raising money for the charity.
If you are interested or would like more information, please email admin@dancesyndrome.co.uk before 28th August 2017.
To sign up as a fundraiser for DanceSyndrome, for this or any other activity, please visit https://www.justgiving.com/dance-syndrome
The DanceSyndrome team are incredibly grateful for having the opportunity to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017. It has been the trip of a lifetime for our dancers who have enjoyed every minute of their time at the festival. You can see the photos from the performance on the gallery page of the website and some videos are on YouTube.
It has been a dream come true for our dancers to make this trip, but we never could have dreamed of achieving this without the help of many dedicated supporters. We would like to express our thanks to the following people:
Our sponsors StormMeister Flood Protection, we are incredibly grateful for also being chosen as their charity of the year!
All donors who contributed to our 2017 fundraising campaign, which has covered all costs of the trip.
Our wonderful fundraising volunteers who have helped our fundraising campaign to be so much more of a success than we ever hoped it could be! Thank you to Olinda Auty, Malcolm Blackwell, Sue Blackwell, David Chambers, Rebecca Crompton, Mike Eccleston, Sean Eccleston, Steve Eccleston, Grace Endley, Sarah Evans, Noel Fagan, Tony Hardy, Claire Heron, James Hughes, Sarah Kennedy, Colin Mather, Kevin McKenna, Dan Redfearn, Louise Redfearn, Simon Rich, Claire Rich, Phillip Warburton Graham Wood and Victoria Woolcock. Special thanks must go to Kuits Solicitors for their support.
Special thanks to Razamataz Merchandise for providing DanceSyndrome’s branded clothing.
Thank you to Arts Council England for the funding to develop this performance in 2016.
Additional thanks to everyone who has worked on Orbit since it’s beginnings in 2016…, Rachel Liggitt, Natalie Kennedy, Jen Smith, Mel Paget, Aya Kobayashi, Adam Tickle, Robert John Baldwin, Tin Arts, Sarah Calderbank, Dawn Vickers, GS Pro Audio, Craig, Bernie and all the team at Plungington Community Centre and Caritas Care.
Finally, thank you to our audience members, families and friends whose continued support makes it possible for us to follow our dreams!
We are looking forward to our next challenge! Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages to find out what that will be!
DanceSyndrome are celebrating after a video about their work won a Mencap Journalism Award.
Preston based student Jennifer Smith contacted DanceSyndrome in March asking if the charity would be interested in featuring in a short video documentary to be entered into the awards competition. She became aware of the charity as a result of the Red Rose Awards, where DanceSyndrome was awarded Not-for-profit of the Year. Jennifer was inspired by the charity’s “ability not disability” ethos and thought that the dancers would be the perfect subject for her competition entry.
Mencap, a leading charity focussed on supporting people with learning disabilities, launched the awards to celebrate their 70th anniversary. The awards aimed to encourage discussion and raise awareness of issues surrounding learning disability and to enable people with learning disabilities to have more of a voice in the media. The awards were a fantastic opportunity for aspiring journalists aged 26 or under to have their work reviewed by some experienced journalists on the judging panel.
Jennifer created an emotive piece of videography which addressed the issue that there are 1.4 million people in the UK with a learning disability and 50% of those people experience chronic loneliness. DanceSyndrome have had impressive results at counteracting this trend, with participants regularly reporting improvements in health, confidence, social skills and, ultimately, happiness.
Jennifer interviewed DanceSyndrome Managing Director Dawn Vickers for the video. She said “We are about shouting about the talents, the abilities and the skills of our Dance Leaders who have learning disabilities. Friendships are made. People have a great time. New skills are learned. But the joy and happiness factor is there all the time and is essential to everything that we do. ”
Speaking about the process of making the video, Jennifer said “I loved every single minute I spent with DanceSyndrome, they are an incredibly inspiring charity and to win the award is testament to the wonderful work they do.”
The award judges commented that part of the reason why the video won was because “Jennifer put people with a learning disability right at the centre of her piece, a style which we know is the most effective at helping to challenge misconceptions and improve attitudes towards learning disability.”
One of those people was DanceSyndrome Founder Jen Blackwell, who started the charity after spending 10 years unsuccessfully searching for dance opportunities that could accommodate her disability.
In her video interview, Jen said “I do have Down’s syndrome but that’s nothing to hold me back. All I can say is go for your dreams. Dream. Believe. Achieve. My dream is to travel the world with my dance.”
Jen’s dreams continue to become reality. Since the documentary was made, it has been confirmed that on 14th and 15th August, DanceSyndrome’s team of dancers are performing in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival. A successful fundraising campaign has enabled the charity to take their most recent performance piece “Orbit” to the festival, which is a huge opportunity for the dancers to demonstrate their ability on an international stage and to continue to prove that disability should never be a barrier to following your dreams.
You can see Jennifer’s award winning documentary here:
If you’re inspired by Jennifer’s video and would like to get involved with DanceSyndrome, please visit the Support Us page on our website.
Helen Shepherd co-leads the Clitheroe workshop with Peter Pamphlett. The workshop has been running since early 2016 and was set up in conjunction with Spring into Phab, a local group which is run by young people with learning disabilities. The workshop aims to not only include every member of the group but also to give them opportunities to develop their skills, become involved in decision making and have joint ownership of the work that they produce. The group is truly inclusive and the members of the group are all committed, conscientious and creative! A great example of inclusive dance at work!
Here, Helen gives some insight into how these inclusive workshops are planned:
In December 2016 we had a dance leaders meeting. We decided as a team we would have a theme running through all the dance workshops that we run and the theme would be dance through the decades.
Peter and I run the Clitheroe workshop on a Saturday morning and we were both very excited by the new theme!
We did some research and came up with some steps from the 1920, 30s & 40s, then we introduced the project to the group. I was a little apprehensive about this but I know the group well and I knew they would embrace the idea, and I’m pleased to say they did!
We showed the group some inspirational videos showing examples of dancing through the decades, it felt a bit scary for everyone as some of the dance moves were beyond what the group are used to. We explained the group didn’t have to copy the videos exactly and we would just use them for reference and take the bits that we liked and come up with our own adaptations of them.
We introduced the first three steps that Peter and I had learned these were the Box Step, Aspects from the Black bottom Dance and aspects of the Charleston. The group picked these up very quickly.
From there we went onto learn some moves inspired from the film Grease representing the 1950’s this was a popular decision with the group we added kicks to the bottom and the hand jive. We then added some disco moves from Saturday night fever representing the 1970’s. Up to now I and Peter had come up with the steps and moves inspired by the videos and what the group like.
Next we looked at the 1980’s this was the start of us giving ownership of the routine to the group. We looked at music from Michael Jackson and members of the group added some of his signature moves. These were the moonwalk, knee flip and the knee swivel.
At this point the dance routine was really starting to take shape we added in Tragedy by Steps and Gangham style by Sy these are both popular songs with the group and they have their own dance routines so we added parts of them in, from there we moved right up to the modern day and the group really came into their own at this point. We added Black Magic by Little Mix and Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson as these songs are popular at the moment the group loved thinking about moves and adding them into the routine.
A popular exercise with the group is a dance circle, for this exercise we stand in a circle and put some music on, someone starts the dance circle dancing/moving however they want and the rest of the group copies their moves. When the person who is dancing has finished they high five the person next to them and they start dancing we carry this on around the circle until everyone has had a turn.
We used the dance circle to come up with moves for Black magic and uptown funk. This worked really well and at this point we focused on members of the group who hadn’t yet added a move. This routine is definitely the groups work and we have strived for this all the way through as we feel it is important for them to have ownership of it and everyone has had some fantastic input into the routine.
One of the things that made this project more ambitious and exciting is the music, we have music from each chosen era and dance style this was quite a challenge for the group as the tempo of the music changes for each section of the dance! The group embraced this as they do everything else they are fantastic. Peter did a brilliant job of piecing all the music together to create a fantastic track for our routine.
The project started in January 2017 and by June we had our interpretation of dancing through the decades. The routine is brilliant and the group have smashed it! We run through the routine each week to keep it fresh in our minds and we look at polishing the bits that need it. Over all the entire project has been a fantastic success. We have possible opportunities to perform it later in the year. So watch this space………
If you would like more information about any of our workshops, please visit the Events page on our website.
DanceSyndrome is taking its latest performance piece to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival thanks to financial support from Preston based business StormMeister Flood Protection.
In 2016, DanceSyndrome secured Arts Council England funding to develop a performance piece called “Orbit” which was so well received it was decided to raise funds to take the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We have been running a fundraising campaign since March to raise enough money to cover the costs of taking 13 dancers and their support to Edinburgh to perform at the festival.
In April, DanceSyndrome Managing Director Dawn Vickers met with StormMeister Flood Protection’s Head of Sales, Kait Leeming at a local networking event and the company was so impressed by DanceSyndrome’s determination and ambition that they wanted to find ways for the two organisations to work together.
StromMeister Flood Protection, who are the world’s only supplier of wheelchair friendly flood doors, felt that the two organisations’ core ideas were a perfect match; both focus on equality for people with disabilities and believe that disability should not present barriers to living a full life. They wanted to support DanceSyndrome to take those core values to a new and bigger audience on an international stage, so they decided to sponsor the trip to Edinburgh and make DanceSyndrome their charity of the year.
As a result of the sponsorship and other fundraising efforts, we have been able to confirm a slot at the Fringe Festival and will be performing “Orbit” on Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th August at The Space at Surgeons Hall. A performance at such a well respected and well attended event is a great opportunity for DanceSyndrome; performance is a vital way for the dancers to communicate key messages about inclusion, teamwork and achievement, as well as challenging audience perceptions about people with learning disabilities.
DanceSyndrome Managing Director, Dawn Vickers, said “We are thrilled to have found an inclusive organisation like StormMeister Flood Protection to support our trip to Edinburgh and really appreciate this type of support from local businesses. We are so excited at the prospect of taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe and we really hope that this new audience will be surprised and delighted at the passion, energy and ability of this incredible group of dancers who have overcome many personal barriers to achieve their potential.”
For more information about DanceSyndrome’s trip to Edinburgh, please visit the news page on our website.
For more information about StormMeister Flood Protection, please visit www.StormMeister.com
DanceSyndrome is asking for your support to help us win a National Lottery Award, with a £5,000 prize and an appearance on The One Show!
Our recent successes have been recognised by the National Lottery Awards and we have been shortlisted as a finalist in the Arts category! The project with the most votes from the public will get the chance to shine on national television with an appearance on The One Show, as well as a cash prize of £5000.
Please vote for DanceSyndrome to win a National Lottery Award!
Please vote for DanceSyndrome to win at the National Lottery Awards!http://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards/arts
Posted by DanceSyndrome on Monday, 3 July 2017
Jen said: “It is a real honour to be up for this award, and it would mean so much to us to win. Appearing on national television would be a dream come true. We want to show people our ability and stop people from just seeing a disability. It takes just 30 seconds to vote – please show us your support.”
To vote, simply visit http://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards/arts and vote for DanceSyndrome!
You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter and share our posts to help us win more votes.
Thanks so much for your support!
DanceSyndrome is celebrating after receiving almost £160,000 of National Lottery funding.
The new grant from the Big Lottery Fund will support a new social franchising model that will give DanceSyndrome greater sustainability for the future. The project will enable the charity to work with chosen partners in other areas of the UK to deliver the charity’s unique dance leadership training course.
By the end of the project, DanceSyndrome hope to have a training package that can be used by other groups across the UK to train people with and without disabilities to be Dance Leaders, focusing on ability rather than disability and challenging existing perceptions about people with disabilities.
Dawn Vickers, Managing Director at DanceSyndrome, said “Receiving this funding is a huge boost for DanceSyndrome! It means that we can reach out to even more people and show them not only that dance is a powerful tool for building confidence, life skills and happiness, but also that everyone can be a leader in all activities in our society, regardless of whether they have a disability or not. The funding secures a future for our small local charity and gives us real potential to take the work we do to a national level!”
James Harcourt, England Grant Making Director, Big Lottery Fund said “We are proud to celebrate projects that make a difference to people and the communities they live in. It is great to think that National Lottery players have now raised £36 billion for Good Causes and it’s when you hear about projects like Everybody Dance that you realise the incredible impact that funding has had across England. Whether the grant is for £500, or £500,000, our funding is used to run amazing projects led by local people. It really is life changing.”
The Big Lottery are the biggest community funder in the UK. They are responsible for distributing 40 per cent of all the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery. Every year they fund 12,000 community groups and charitable projects using money raised by National Lottery players.
If you would like more information, please contact the team via email at info@dancesyndrome.co.uk
Top image: Members of our Chorley workshop receive the Big Lottery cheque with DanceSyndrome Founder Jen Blackwell and Dance Artist Donna Harrison.
Dan
ce Leader Becky Rich has been involved with DanceSyndrome since 2014. She completed our Dance By Example leadership training which has enabled her to deliver her own independent weekly workshop as well as co-leading many DanceSyndrome activities at community events.
As part of Volunteering Week, we want to celebrate the amazing work that Becky does as a DanceSyndrome volunteer.
The last 6 months have been incredibly busy for Becky Rich, age 26 from Fulwood, Lancashire!
In November 2016 Becky was chosen as the winner of the Volunteer of the Year award at the Lancashire County Council Pride awards as a result of a dance workshop that she runs in one of their days centres. The award celebrates volunteers who have made a marked difference to the life of an individual or community and consistently deliver outstanding service.
Speaking about Becky, Garry Dawson ( Manager at Gerrard Street Day Centre, Preston) said “She is an exuberant and vibrant volunteer delivering sessions that continuously grow and develop…. She has provided people with disabilities the opportunity to learn and develop skills, confidence and enjoy meaningful activity and has been a role model to the group…. Ultimately, each person involved is always excited to see Becky and fully participate and engage in something of great worth and positivity.”
Winning the Pride award led to Becky being signed up as a representative for Lancashire Volunteering Partnership, which requires her to attend and speak at special events, as well as appearing on billboards and in promotional videos promoting the work that they do with volunteers.
Here is the Lancashire Volunteering Partnership video which Becky features in:
Here is a video of Becky speaking live at the recent launch of the Lancashire Volunteering Partnership:
Next up is another of our fabulous volunteers
Posted by Lancashire Volunteer Partnership on Friday, 12 May 2017
In 2017, Becky has increased the amount of volunteering that she does with DanceSyndrome. She has been performing at special events encouraging members of the public to join in with inclusive dance routines, she has been co-leading workshops in care homes for the elderly, school settings and social groups, and she has been a valuable advocate for the work that DanceSyndrome do at every opportunity!
In February this year, Becky gave an impassioned speech about the need to end discrimination against people with learning disabilities at City Hall in London:
Becky is a valued member of the DanceSyndrome team and we feel incredibly lucky to have her volunteering with us!
DanceSyndrome Managing Director Dawn Vickers said “We are so incredibly proud of Becky! She has gone from strength to strength since joining us. She really excels in leadership, she’s a fantastic spokesperson and she’s a young woman on a mission to make society take notice of the assets of people with learning disabilities. We have always known Becky has a lot of skills and talent to offer, and it is wonderful to see other people recognising that outside of her work with DanceSyndrome!”
Of course, volunteering is a two way relationship and Becky has seen the many benefits of volunteering. Becky’s confidence is continually growing, she is benefitting from new experiences, constantly learning and having brilliant ideas for future work, some of which have come to fruition already, a good example being a workshop with children at Spectrum and Me, a group for children with autism. Becky is happy because she loves her work, she is healthier because she is so physically and mentally active. Perhaps the greatest benefit though is that she has formed a wonderful bond with DanceSyndrome founder Jen Blackwell. Their friendship is a touching story that highlights the importance of being part of the community and making friends (you can read the story here).
Talking about her role as a volunteer, Becky said ” I am really happy and very confident that I am in good health to carry out my dream job, to work with my dancing family in my role as a dance leader in Dance Syndrome. In Dance Syndrome we are changing perceptions about people with disabilities and special needs and raising awareness. I also feel very involved and accepted.
“I am enjoying the various visits to care homes for residents to join in with my dancing, and to deliver workshops in schools and to perform in great places. In my volunteering position I hand out leaflets and help Dawn and Jen at our Dance Syndrome information stand and I have the great honour and pleasure to speak to the people.
” Volunteering has made a real difference to my life and I want to get people to support us to hopefully get others meaningfully involved in Dance Syndrome.”
If you would like to know more about Becky, you can read her case study in the Case Studies section of our website.
If you would like to know more about how you can volunteer with DanceSyndrome, please visit the Become a Volunteer page.
The cost of supporting our team of 13 dancers to get to Edinburgh is significant, so we are looking for businesses to sponsor the team in return for an advertisement in our event programme and promotion on our social media channels.
DanceSyndrome is a multi-award winning inclusive dance charity based in Lancashire with a special focus on including people with learning disabilities.
In 2016, our dedicated team of performers, with and without disabilities, worked incredibly hard to produce a performance piece called “Orbit”. Members of the performance team overcame many personal barriers to create a professional performance piece and we are incredibly proud of their achievement!
We believe that this piece is special and that our dancers deserve a bigger platform to share their “Dancer led, disability inspired” ethos with a wider audience. To enable them to follow this dream, we have decided to take “Orbit” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2017.
To make this a success we need your help!
We are producing an A5 programme which will be given out free of charge to audience members at our Fringe Festival shows.
The programme will feature dancer profiles and information about the performance pieces alongside details of our sponsors.
200 copies will be printed and we will also post a message of thanks to each sponsor on our social media pages (1,300+ followers on Twitter and 850+ on Facebook) and an additional news story listing sponsors in the run up to the events.
Full page ad – 210mm x 148mm – £500
Half page ad – 105mm x 148mm – £250
Quarter page ad – 105mm x 74mm – £150
Social media and online only – £100
For more information please call us on 07597 942494 or email info@dancesyndrome.co.uk
If you would like more information about our Fringe Festival fundraising campaign, please view our Just Giving page.
DanceSyndrome are delighted to announce that Steve Elias, star of recent BBC2 show Our Dancing Town, has become a Patron to the charity.
Steve joins us on our mission to get everybody dancing hot off the heels of his BBC2 show, which saw Steve work with a range of local people, from cleaners to rugby players, to create one-off dance spectaculars in three Yorkshire towns.
As a former rugby player turned professional dancer, Steve made his name in the West End where he performed in the original cast of the stage version of Billy Elliot.
Steve said: “I am so excited to be supporting the wonderful work of DanceSyndrome. The team are truly showing how dancing can bring people together and prove people don’t need to be defined by their age or ability. I look forward to supporting the charity to help more and more people find their dancing feet.”
Steve is supporting DanceSyndrome and our current Edinburgh Fringe fundraising appeal – raising vital funds to enable the team to perform at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Find out more about the fundraising appeal here.
