moving assembly project
WHAT WE DO
Under the artistic leadership of South African born choreographer Dane Hurst, we facilitate yearly trips for a team of international performance professionals based in the UK to travel to SA and other developing countries, delivering vital creative arts workshops and lectures whilst collaborating with local artists to create new choreography for performance in South Africa, UK and the rest of the world.
We use the arts to create opportunities and bring people together: across borders, ethnicity, sexual orientation and economics. We use the creation of dance, photography, spoken word and film to inspire young people and practicing artists from areas of socio-economic hardship to develop and prosper; addressing inequality of opportunity enabling them to expand their skills set and move beyond their circumstances and geography. We provide an artistic voice to young people and artists from challenging backgrounds share their passion and cultural narratives with the rest of the world through performance, exhibition and film.
WHY WE DO IT
Our slogan, ‘movement beyond borders’, captures the essence of what lies at the heart of MAP. We use movement in art, dance and music to inspire young people and practicing artists from challenging backgrounds to develop and prosper, moving beyond their circumstances and expanding their skills set to share their passion and cultural narratives with the rest of the world through performance.
We believe that the arts can be transformative and that access to the arts should be equal across socio-economic groups and geographical areas. Since its founding in 2016, MAP has engaged with hundreds of underprivileged students and diverse communities, primarily but not exclusively in South Africa, through youth workshops and performances for all in theatres, at festivals and in community halls and art galleries.
We’ve worked with young people from favelas in Recife Brazil, street kids from community programmes in Kigali Rwanda, created performances and workshops for youth from townships and rural locations in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Durban and Grahamstown, South Africa as well as leading workshops in photography and poetry on London’s South Bank at the Oxo Tower Gallery and performances and exhibition at Africa Centre London. Our professional artists, from the UK and South Africa are given the chance to develop their mentorship skills, artistic practice, cultural understanding as well as benefiting from employment.
OUR MODEL
We facilitate yearly trips for a team of international performance professionals based in the UK to travel to SA and other developing countries, delivering vital creative arts workshops and lectures whilst collaborating with local artists to create new choreography, photography, film and poetry for performance and exhibition in South Africa, UK and the rest of the world. We run youth programmes, delivering training by experienced industry professionals leading creative workshops and offering performance opportunities for young people and professionals at key partner organisations in South Africa and UK as featured in our project pages. Our work is a journey in three stages:
1. DANCE TRAINING, CHOREOGRAPHY AND CREATIVE WORKSHOPS
Using contemporary dance we explore movement and creative expression with groups of young people, many of whom are entirely new to dance. Crucially, all of our work results in a 'sharing' or performance of work created, with friends, family and community at the end of the process. We have expanded our programme to offer photography, film and poetry workshops leading to performances and exhibition.
2. CREATING NEW WORK FOR PERFORMANCE, STUDY AND EXHIBITION
In tandem with our teaching we collaborate as a team of UK artists with professional and emerging South African practitioners to create exciting new work exploring cross-cultural narratives for performance and exhibition in both the UK and South Africa. Opportunities are offered for the students involved in step one to observe artists crafting and creating their work. This experience provides tangible access to the professional process as well as providing a platform for artists to showcase and share their artform with the wider community.
3. SA/UK STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM
Our yearly exchange programme offers a South African student from partners Jazzart Dance, the opportunity to gain full funded training with Rambert in London for two months and, vice versa, for Rambert student to travel to Port Elizabeth for a secondment with Jazzart Dance Theatre. MAP are proud to have initiated its first student exchange between South African and UK students in 2018. This exchange is to continue the cycle of investment started by Nelson Mandela and Anya Sainsbury in the 90's and aims to create a cross-cultural, bridge between UK and South Africa.
