Education Consultancy

Dance and Health

Loop’s specialist trained team of professional dancers offer a variety of Dance and Health packages ranging from one-off workshops to in-depth fitness testing and training projects, nutrition and anatomy.

Dance 4 Your Life

Tuesday 1st December 2009 saw the launch of the finding for the Dance 4 Your Life project funded by NKLAAP (North Kent Local Authority Arts Partnership) and in partnership with LABAN. Three of Loop’s company members were involved as practitioners on this project and Nina Atkinson Loop’s Artistic Director was employed at the lead artist. The project showed positive impacts on young people’s health particularly upper body strength (6% increase) and Aerobic Capacity (10.5% increase) as well as statistically significant increase in self esteem by participating in the dance classes, indicating that the young peoples general sense of self-worth was improved by participating. We are currently in conversations with NKLAAP and LABAN with regards to providing a legacy for this work and further research into dance and health.

Ashford Healthy

In September we started delivery of the year long Ashford Healthy project working with children and parents in the borough of Ashford, Kent in two discrete strands. 

Strand One – Weekly classes with children from Phoenix Primary school have started with a bang, Loop dance artist Kate Scott firstly work with year 5 children who are now acting as peer to peer mentors as Kate moves to work with the younger children. Kate is also engaging in a Inset training day for teachers in the school and It is hoped that the year 5 children will continue the energy of the project after the year is finished alongside the trained teachers. 

Strand Two – Weekly classes in partnership with Sure Start Ashford have been taking place with parents/careers and children at a variety of their satellite stations across the borough. The fun creative sessions not only encourage dance activity during the session but also support parents wanting to dance with their children at home. In addition to this advice is available on healthy balanced diets. It is hoped that some of these children will feed into Phoenix Primary School with the benefit of having already participated in dance.

All children are tested pre and post project and findings will be reported to the funders at the end of the year.