Barriers to Progression & Employment in Dance for Disabled People | Full Research Findings
Candoco Dance Company, Corali, People Dancing, Stopgap Dance Company and TIN Arts (collectively known as The Working Group) are urging the dance sector to commit to change based on outcomes from new research ‘Barriers to Progression & Employment in Dance for Disabled People’ – published in full on the 20 June 2025.
Funded by Arts Council England the research identified 7 themes, each encompassing specific barriers to progression and employment, covering competition, chance, cost, community, care, confidence and culture.
The Working Group recommend that the dance-sector address cost, chance and culture as the immediate priority. Addressing these will have a positive impact for disabled people in dance.
Urging the dance-sector to review the findings and commit to change, the Working Group have stated their intentions going forward:
Discuss, reflect, interrogate and listen.
“We will take time to reflect and interrogate the learnings from this research. We will do this through discussions together and also within our organisations listening to our teams and communities. We will discuss what are the quick wins we can achieve within our resources and what are the longer-term strategies we need to implement, and who do we need to bring with us in this endeavour. We ask you all to join us in initiating your own discussions and period of listening. To be brave and bold in what we can imagine together.”
Share the research.
“Keep talking to the sector, our partners and organisations who haven’t yet engaged with the research. Make sure it cannot be missed by anyone who is working in our dance sector especially those with gatekeeping powers or influence for change.”
The research was undertaken by disabled led independent research team including Dr Imogen Aujla, Dr Louisa Petts and Dr Kate Marsh, commissioned by The Working Group and managed by People Dancing.
To view the reports and for more information on the work please visit the Beyond Barriers in Dance website.
Who was involved in the research?
Disabled dance artists, leaders, and students were invited to be interviewed about their experiences of training and working in dance. Disabled and non-disabled people who worked for National Portfolio Organisations and disabled-led companies were also invited to take part.
In total, 56 people took part in an interview or focus group. Participants identified as male, female, agender, genderqueer, and/or non-binary, and represented most areas of the UK. Over a quarter (27%) of participants were from Global Majority backgrounds.
Current dance roles in the sector included 4 participants who were students or recent graduates, 28 were disabled dance artists with varying forms of experience including leaders, 13 were from disabled-led dance organisations and 11 were from NPO organisations.
Participants were able to choose whether they wanted to take part in an individual interview or a focus group (group interview), and whether this was in-person or online. They were invited to share their access needs with the research team in advance. Support workers, BSL interpreters, parents and caregivers were present during some of the interviews. All documentation was sent in a variety of accessible ways: easy-read, BSL, SSE Interpretation, slow timed, audio-described and closed question versions.
During the focus groups and interviews, participants were asked a series of questions about their experiences in the dance sector.
An online survey was then sent to National Portfolio Organisations to find out about how they supported disabled dance artists and leaders, the barriers that they encountered when trying to do so, and the types of support the organisations themselves needed. Out of 75 dance NPOs in England, 45 responses were received.
Following data analysis, participants’ experiences were synthesised into the 7Cs: competition, chance, cost, community, care, confidence and culture. Each C encompasses specific barriers to progression and employment, as well as mitigating factors.
- Competition
Funding and opportunities are so scarce in dance that small and large organisations, and disabled and non-disabled dancers, are in unfair competition with each other. Inaccessible auditions can create further barriers for emerging dance artists. There is a hierarchy of disability, whereby dance artists and leaders with learning disabilities often face more barriers.
- Chance
Disabled dance artists’ career development is affected by chance meetings with champions and mentors. Whilst these relationships are crucial, supportive and inspiring, dance artists and leaders without mentors and champions struggle to find clear pathways into the sector. Geographical location also dictates training and development; most opportunity is found in London and the South of England. These factors are outside of the individual artists’ control but often dictate career pathways.
- Cost
Disabled dance professionals experience health, time, financial and emotional costs during their careers. Disabled dance leaders are at particular risk of burnout. The dance industry does not understand the ways in which some disabled people experience time, rarely factoring in rest and recovery time, processing time, travel time, and time for medical appointments into project timelines. There are emotional costs for disabled people when they must keep telling employers and colleagues about their access needs.
- Community
Communities are created by disabled dance artists and leaders for support and solidarity. There is true power in partnerships when organisations embed themselves in local communities and collaborate with local disabled artists. However, infrastructure that supports disabled dance artists to progress out of disability-specific and/or local organisations is lacking.
- Care
Care is demonstrated when organisations are creatively forward-thinking, honest, flexible, kind and willing to listen, learn and reflect. However, many organisations have a poor understanding of access which leaves disabled dance professionals feeling undervalued.
- Confidence
Disabled dance artists and leaders do not always feel confident in articulating their needs. Artists hide their disabilities to secure work or feel they are hired so an organisation can ‘tick a box’. Some organisations hesitate to provide accessible dance opportunities in fear of appearing tokenistic or making mistakes.
- Culture
Dance operates within ableist working practices and structures which do not support disabled dance artists’ needs. Representation is often poor, particularly for individuals with intersectional identities, and can be limited to community and engagement work.
About the Working Group
A group of leading dance organisations – Candoco Dance Company, Corali, People Dancing, Stopgap Dance Company and TIN Arts – formed a collaborative working group to address the lack of representation and leadership opportunities for D/deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, blind and visually impaired, learning-disabled, and chronically ill individuals within the dance sector.
Together, they have committed to exploring ways to challenge existing barriers and promote long-term, meaningful inclusion in the workforce.
Through a new research programme titled Barriers to Progression & Employment in Dance for Disabled People, the working group aims to shed light on these issues, with a focus on informing sector-wide change and supporting colleagues in making sustainable, collaborative improvements.
About the researchers
- Imogen Aujla is a freelance researcher, lecturer and psychological coach at Dance in Mind. An experienced researcher, she has worked on various dance projects ranging from small-scale interview studies to longitudinal, national, multidisciplinary projects, and has a track record of publication in the area of inclusive dance.
- Kate Marsh is a disabled/crip artist researcher with a long history of working in the inclusive dance sector including performing, making, teaching and practice research. Kate’s doctoral research explored dance, disability and leadership. She has also been part of two large-scale AHRC-funded projects looking at Dance, Disability and Law, and Disabled dancers as agents for change. Kate supervises a number of PhD students including 3 that are focussed on deaf, disabled, neurodivergent lived experience.
- Louisa Petts lives with moderate hearing loss and tinnitus, and uses hearing aids, lip-reading and SSE (Sign Supported English) to communicate. Louisa is a community dance artist and an early-career researcher, recently completing a PhD titled, “All dance is legitimate: an advocation and celebration of person-centred older adult dance practice” at Coventry University. Her published research stresses the positionality, methodological clarity and inherent value of the arts, and how lack of resource impacts those on the margins of dance participation, only further cementing barriers to access, representation and diversity.
About Arts Council England
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. Our vision, set out in our strategy Let’s Create, is that by 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. Between 2023 and 2026 we will have invested over £467 million of public money from Government, alongside an estimated £250 million each year from The National Lottery, to help ensure that people in every part of the country have access to culture and creativity in the places where they live. Until Autumn 2025, the National Lottery is celebrating its 30th anniversary of supporting good causes in the United Kingdom: since the first draw was held in 1994, it has raised £49 billion and awarded more than 690,000 individual grants.
For further information contact Helen Annetts, PR on behalf of Barriers to Progression & Employment in Dance for Disabled People research via 07779 026720 or email HelenLAnnetts@hotmail.co.uk
