Our Artistic and Programming Policy

Our Artistic Policy is founded on our commitment to working with professional and non-professional artists, from all disciplines and from all nations and cultures, who share our vision of creating lasting artistic and social change in and with dance.

 

Dance artist Suba Subramaniam performing for Suba Dance. Photo: Rebecca Zalatan.

We are keen to support artists whose work helps us understand and connect with the complex, rapidly changing world in which we live. In particular those artists who, like us, want to encourage more people to take part in dance and who are interested in working in public and digital spaces to do so. 

We want to place diversity in its widest sense at the heart of all of our artistic decision making - from the artists we work with, to the audiences we work to attract, and the participants we seek to engage with.

Because our ambition reaches much further than our budget can stretch, we make programming decisions based on supporting the artists who we believe can benefit most from, and achieve the greatest impact with, the advice, mentoring and seed funding we can offer.

We will support high quality work that is:

  • Contemporary: we want the artists we work with to know their public and create work that resonates with them
  • Intriguing, carefully considered and impactful
  • Relevant to our times: from the concepts behind it, to the way it’s created and presented; work that presents audiences with a different kind of experience
  • Reflective of artists’ perspectives from across geo-political boundaries
  • Truly representative of our community, ensuring that our community see themselves reflected in what is shown and delivered across our programmes
  • Sustainable and considers environmental impact

 

We will support artists by:

  • Respecting artists that work with the community and artists who work with professional dancers as equally important to the artform
  • Ensuring historically marginalised artists including artists who are of the Global Majority, disabled, and LGBTQI+ have equal opportunities to challenge their practice and realise their own ambitions for their work
  • Creating an international artist residency programme where global perspectives can be exchanged and shared with our community
  • Providing as much support as possible for UK artists to perform their work on a global stage
  • Creating a supportive environment that encourages artists to take risks, experiment, accept failure and hope for success. In other words, to venture into new terrain
  • Offering a safe place to celebrate the joy of dance, the rigour of movement practice, to share ideas, ambitions and challenges
  • Listening and responding to artists’ needs

 

Our dance performance and participation programme is usually booked or at least in discussion around 12 months ahead. If you are an artist or company who would like to be a part of our programme, email programming@southeastdance.org.uk. We aim to respond within two weeks.

 

Our complaints procedure
 

We are committed to good practice and providing quality services in the most effective and efficient way possible.  However, we recognise that even in the best run organisations things can go wrong and people may not be happy with the service they have received.   

In this event, South East Dance will investigate any complaint made and take prompt and fair action to provide a resolution following the guidelines set out in our Complaints Procedure. 

Please note that the Complaints Procedure cannot be used in the case of an individual appeal against a disappointing decision regarding commissioning funds or support giving. 

We are committed to equal opportunities and take complaints about racism and racist bullying or harassment, and any other form of discrimination, extremely seriously. We will always use complaints about discrimination to review our policies and procedures to ensure we treat everyone equally. 

View our full complaints policy and procedure