Empowering Dance - Developing Soft Skills is a European project that aims to research if and how the practice of contemporary dance helps people of all ages to acquire and develop soft skills.
The creative body is central to contemporary dance practice, often implying collaboration with others. What soft skills do people of all ages develop by practicing dance? Empowering Dance aims to maps informal learnings and best practices
The project adheres to the World Economic Forum’s statement about the importance of developing soft skills as the most important skills in contemporary society and the labour market today.
The contemporary dance practice, in which the creative body is central and which is often practiced in collaboration with others, seems to be an excellent example of a practice that helps people of all ages develop soft skills. To validate this, the initiators of Empowering Dance; developing soft skills zoom in on three examples taken from their own contemporary dance practice. What soft skills do we develop in the practice of contemporary dance? What are the learning effects of contemporary dance, how do we validate this and how can we make the effects accessible to a wider audience?
Over the course of 18 months (2018-2020), the project offers a series of good-practice sharing meetings with the staff of five European dance houses, dance practitioners with diverse practices and their local communities. The outcome of the project will be a mapping of the potential of soft skill learning through contemporary dance practices.
Learn more about the project here: empowering.communicatingdance.eu
Empowering Dance; developing soft skills is a collaboration of Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik K3 – Zentrum für Choreographie, Tanzplan (DE); Centro per la Scena Contemporanea, Bassano Del Grappa (IT); Dansateliers (NL); Hrvatski institut za pokret i ples (HR) and La Briqueterie – Center de développement chorégraphique du Val-de-Marne (FR).
The project is supported by the Lifelong Learning program / Leonardo Da Vinci partnerships, from the European Union.