People Dancing's Participate Magazine
Participate is a new newspaper publication launched by People Dancing back in December 2014. It focuses on a range of individuals and communities that Dance in participatory settings, showing the width of the sector that Dance is! I receive this as part of my professional membership with People Dancing and I do prefer the paper copy but there is an opportunity to download and read it online.
So this issue was the second that People Dancing had produced, I thoroughly enjoyed the first so as soon as the second issue dropped through the letterbox a couple of weeks ago I definitely wanted to review and share it with you all in the hope you'll go and check it out yourself.
Firstly I am always drawn to the size of Participate, it isn't bulky and just folds nicely into most of my everyday bags which is always a perk and makes it very easy for somebody to carry around with them.
Participate doesn't have a specific theme to its content and likes to draw upon the various sections to People Dancing's work structure. There are articles about young people dancing right up to older people. It gives you a real reflection upon the width of the dance sector and I think that's really beneficial for any young person reading this publication. It doesn't have an age specific audience, reaching out to all of their members and within the wider dance community to read.
Through Participate are well chosen, striking images of which are suitable and correct for each feature in the magazine. There aren't too many pages of advertisements for various dance organisations which for me personally is great, I really do not like pages upon pages of this stuff when all I want to do is read the features involved. The attention is drawn to the writing and the articles, whilst also complementing and touching on opportunities out there to develop your professional career and engage with new organisations.
My attention was drawn on two particular articles of which are the areas of Dance I have always been specifically interested in (but SO difficult to develop a career in hence why I haven't persuaded it for months). The first article was Film on Film which provides an overall context about People Dancing's photographic commission 11 Million Reasons which is just about to tour to a variety of different exhibitions. It represents the disabled body, both visible and non-visible through iconic Dance pictures. I saw it in Leicester at the Curve Theatre and I think it's a great visual representation that all you should check out.
The second article that I particularly paid attention was Flying High a celebratory feature on Magpie Dance who celebrate 30 years of participatory, inclusive dance this year. It's a great story of development, engagement and excitement for what will happen next for the company. I think it's great that the feature offers an insight into how you can become involved with the company which is really beneficial for young people interested in developing a professional career in Dance.
I also particularly liked the short story about Hannah, a dancer from the Highfliers Dance Training Company. It gave the reader an insight into how a young dancer has worked alongside Magpie in developing a professional career, this stuff again is so vital for a young person to read and acknowledge the options available to them from professional companies across the UK. I was lucky enough to check out Highfliers Dance Training Company in a celebratory performance at Sadlers Wells earlier this year.
