Live Well & Dance with Parkinson’s is the first major project within People Dancing’s new strategic programme for dance and wellbeing, Live Well & Dance. It will bring teaching dance artists and the community of individuals with lived experience of Parkinson’s together to dance - to be creative and curious, to have fun and even some frivolity, to celebrate equality and inclusion.
Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, Live Well & Dance with Parkinson’s, will take place in locations across England from 2020 – 2024: Birmingham, Bristol, Carlisle, Leicester, Manchester and Newcastle.
We’ll be working with a broad range of partners including English National Ballet, Fresh Arts at North Bristol NHS Trust, Original Spinners, Susie Tate Projects, University Hospitals Leicester, Attenborough Arts Centre, Universities of Carlisle, Durham and Manchester, Parkinson’s EQUIP and Parkinson’s UK.
As well as acting as a catalyst for expanded opportunities in dance with people living with Parkinson’s, this project will aim to expand the national network of artists and dancers leading and taking part, acting as an advocate for the value and impact dance can have on living well with Parkinson’s.
We are delighted that Paul Mayhew-Archer has agreed to be our patron for this new project. Paul says:
“I’ve never been able to dance. Then I got Parkinson’s and discovered that dancing is a terrific treatment.
At my first class our teacher, Kate said something wonderful. She said 'and starting off on the left foot... or the right, it doesn’t really matter.' I tell you, for someone who cannot tell which is which those words filled me with relief. With this new project more people with Parkinson’s will experience the benefits of music and dance, so I am thrilled to be a patron of this wonderful cause.”
We would like to thank the Baring Foundation, whose generous funding of the Dance for Parkinson’s Partnership at People Dancing in 2015-2019, played a key role in resourcing and encouraging us to develop this specialist area of dance practice, enabling us to develop our ambition and commitment to the power and value of living well with dance.