While thinking about the dance sector as an ecosystem, one must recognize the inter-dependency of the entities within it – understanding how changes to one of its parts, impact all of the others and therefore the wider ecosystem.
During the Open Forums at Yorkshire Dance, it was clear how the on-going reduction of arts funding and funding for arts subjects and courses within the Education Sector impact the wider sector, particularly artists who rely heavily on arts funding and income from working in Education settings to have enough financial ‘sustainability’ to enable them to continue to develop their artistic work.
Through the generous contributions of independent artists to the discussion, it was clear that the dance ecosystem is partly sustained through the low-paid work of young dance artists having to continuously secure short-term engagements that offer no financial sustainability or prospects of career progression.
Some artists articulated strategies around the above, including decisions as making their income from work in other sectors to allow them to demonetise their artistic practice, recognising the advantages both to their financial sustainability and to the development of their artistic practice with integrity.
Other independent artists underlined how the cost-of-living crisis, the highly competitive arts fundraising landscape and the decline of arts subjects and courses within the Education sector have impacted their lives. It was clear that the challenging landscape artists operate in contributes to the on-going loss of experienced and specialist talent in the dance sector, due to the negative impact on their finances and wellbeing.
Despite following the same structure, the two open forums felt very different. The first open forum included academics, directors from dance organisations, creative producers and administrators and second group was made up of independent artists.
Independent artists responded to the same prompts in a very different way, often referring to their lived experiences of the sector and how those impacted their livelihoods and careers. This meant that the conversation with this group had higher mental and emotional strain and felt more urgent and less of a conceptual exercise in opposition to the previous open forum with a group of academics and creatives in salaried positions.
Independent artists identified how triggering these conversations are, further evidencing on how the changes to the dance ecosystem impact their livelihoods directly and acutely.
The analogy in between the current dance ecosystem in England and the desert kept emerging and it made me wonder: as resources continue to disappear, will artists be the first ‘species’ to go extinct?
João Maio, Artist Development Producer, Yorkshire Dance