Youth Dance Matters is an interdisciplinary research project that seeks to incorporate knowledge generated from within research participants' embodied perspectives and experience of the art form itself. The project aims to re-orientate the researcher's perspective from producing data and knowledge about an art form from an outside-observer position. The research builds on scholarship in dance, performance, cultural policy, cultural industries, youth development, and youth arts studies, and grounds it within post-conflict and cross-border scholarship.

Previous Dance Studies

The Dance and Borders Study (2019/20) mixed dance practice-as-research and social scientific research methods to pilot a study that asked delegates about their experiences of borders through improvised dance responses and paper surveys.

The work of mixing dance practice-as-research and social scientific research methods began in 2019 as part of our collaborative engagement with the Co-Motion conference and with Dr Peter Campbell , a social scientist at the University of Liverpool. Across the two days of the conference, we piloted the Dance and Borders study, which asked delegates to answer questions regarding their experiences of borders through both improvised dance responses (McGrath) and responses to a paper survey (Durrer and Campbell). Results from these two modes of response were then analysed in tandem resulting in publications in Performance Research and Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy. Findings from this initial experiment with a mixed methods approach to data collection evidenced both the potential benefits and the challenges inherent in the inclusion of artists’ embodied responses to research questions about their living and working conditions. The Dance Conversations study and the Dance Counts survey presented an opportunity to continue developing this mixed methods approach, as outlined below.

Dance Conversations (2021) and Dance Counts (2021) continued developing the mixed methods approach to data collection.