In February 2021, Reside Dance C.I.C. were awarded £8529.00 through Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Fund to deliver our co-designed, Navigating Stories programme with women and children in refuge accommodation in Reading at Berkshire Women’s Aid.
As a partner of Get Berkshire Active, the six-month, pilot dance and movement programme aims to explore concepts of home and cultural belonging and narratives of domestic abuse and violence within a safe and healthy environment. Focussed on improving mental wellbeing and social and community development, the programme uses the participants’ self-identified health and social goals to reduce anxiety, stress, and depression, improve self-esteem, bring diverse cultures together and get more service users, more active, more often.
Dance movement psychotherapy, somatic practice and social choreography is used to promote social trust, develop resilience and to help vulnerable participants integrate into wider society, building the foundations for more active participation. The programme draws upon social impact measurement to create a robust evaluation framework that reaches the participants’ self-identified health and social goals during and beyond the programme.
