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School of Modern Languages & Cultures
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Towards a Dance Commons: Exploring Inclusion and Community through Movement

29 October 2025
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Poster Towards a Dance Commons: Exploring Inclusion and Community through Movement

Towards a Dance Commons (12–13 November) brings together artists, scholars, and community groups to explore how dance can build inclusion, empathy, and connection. Taking place at Dance City (Newcastle) and Durham University, the event invites everyone to move, reflect, and imagine new forms of community through dance.

A Durham University and Dance City, Newcastle event
Co-organised by Professor Andy Byford (MLAC)

“Dance promotes inclusion and offers new models of what a community can be.”

Community is as much an ideal people strive towards as it is an actual fact. Community making is a vital part of democratic life: it helps to prevent conflict, repair inequalities, and foster social connection. Dance, with its unique combination of openness and protection — what can be called both a ‘brave’ and a ‘safe’ space — holds a special place in community building. Projects developed through community dance can challenge marginalisation, inequality, and exclusion, while also supporting healing and social engagement.


Towards a Dance Commons will provide a forum for scholars, practitioners, and community dancers from across the North East to exchange knowledge and experience about community making through dance.

Grounded in interdisciplinary research on embodiment and cognition, affect and trauma, dance and performance, this two-day event invites participants to explore how communities connect and share through movement, gesture, and touch.

📅 12–13 November 2025
📍 Dance City, Newcastle & St Aidan’s College, Durham University

Programme

12 November – Dance City, Newcastle
• Lecture and Workshop Event (from 1:30pm)  → Free registration 
• An Evening of Dance Film and Performance (from 6pm) → Free registration

13 November – St Aidan’s College, Durham University
• A Forum for Cross-Community Sharing (9:30am–3:30pm) → Free registration

All are warmly invited to take part in this celebration of movement, creativity, and connection.

All events are free to attend, but registration is required.

View the full programme → Programme Towards a Dance Commons: Exploring Inclusion and Community through Movement