Look Ahead's newly appointed Dance Movement Therapist Georgina Caird, will be leading the new sessions.
Look Ahead is delighted to be offering more therapeutic dance workshops to customers from our learning disability and mental health support services through our AnyBody Can Dance (ABCD) project.
The sessions will offer a voice and alternate communication for disabled adults and adults with mental ill health, as well as a being a way to connect to both themselves and others.
Our newly appointed Dance Movement Therapist Georgina Caird, will be leading these activities. Georgina has extensive experience as a professional dancer, and has previously worked at Look Ahead as a support worker for over three years.
This year-long project is funded by Arts Council England, following the growth from our previous ABCD projects (funded by Arts Council England via the East End Community Foundation, Disability Rights UK and Sports England). Our previous sessions reached 96 customers across 13 services over a four-month period.
Georgina plans to hold sessions at 16 locations reaching 21 services in total, as well as offering larger dance workshops throughout with our partner dance companies, encouraging customers to socialise and explore movement with external, professional companies. The project also arranges accessible travel to ensure customers can participate.
Georgina said: “Seeing the people we support grow in confidence, socialising and having fun at our sessions and performances over the last couple of years has been fantastic. So, I’m really excited to get started with this next set of dance workshops, and get to work with more services and customers who I hope will benefit greatly from this.”
There will be performances organised throughout the project both internally and externally, giving customers an opportunity to collaboratively create and ultimately share in front of an audience. We have found from previous projects, that the performance makes customers feel happy and fulfilled, as well as feeling more confident after.
Watch highlights of our last ABCD dance showcase below to learn more about the project and its impact:
