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The Dance Research Matters Festival is happening on July 10-11, 2025, at the Delia Derbyshire Building, College of Arts and Society, Coventry University. The festival has two main themes — Celebration and Futuring.
The Dance Research Matters Festival is the closing event of the AHRC-funded Dance Research Matters Networks Programme, which has been running since October 2023.
The five funded Networks encompass dance pedagogy (Critical Dance Pedagogy Network), digital Black dance (Digital Black Dance Ecologies), producing dance (Future Ecologies: Producing Dance Network), pluriversal approaches to dance practice (The Dancing Otherwise Network), and South Asian dance (South Asian Dance Equity: The Arts that British South Asian Dance Ignores). These networks tackle pressing issues like visibility, change-making, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. From health and wellbeing to inclusion and equity, community and place, art and pleasure, this festival is all about celebrating the dance research in all the ways it is present in our lives and co-creating the future of the sector.
The event is free to attend. We will be offering a limited number of bursaries to support travel and participation by freelance artists. Bursary details to follow.
Day 1: Celebration
Day 1 celebrates the dance research community and its networks, including those funded by the AHRC. Discover how these networks make a difference, connect locally and globally, and what they've learned along the way. There will be panel discussions on putting dance research and its practitioners at the heart of interdisciplinary studies. This will be followed by a roundtable on how we value, document, and share practice research.
Day 2: Futuring
Day two dives into "futuring"— imagining and shaping the future of dance research. Join forums and roundtables discussing future dance doctorates, support structures for the community, and new ideas for funding and policies. We’ll highlight diverse voices and perspectives, including a panel led by postgrad researchers who’ll bridge our current conversations with future possibilities.