As we have seen in this report, the act of creating, touring and presenting works of dance for children and youth is a world onto itself requiring more research. Some of that research has been done in other performing arts and an interdisciplinary approach to future research could bring benefits to all art forms.
In Canada, we should first engage more closely with the DYA mapping initiative in Europe. Their focus is on the 0 to six year old age group and they are taking four years to research and document creating, presenting and doing outreach for this age group.
Another area of research would be to engage with dance training studios that do not have a competitive component to build local partnerships that would enrich creative residencies, outreach and presenting activities. Some of these partnerships have been successful in the past and hosting a forum to discuss with studios how more collaboration and cooperation might be mutually beneficial would be a first step going forward.
Additionally, youth performing for youth warrants more attention. As pre-professional training programs place their students in front of young audiences, youth benefit from seeing pre-professional artists as role models. This touring, presenting and outreach activity was not captured in this report and it warrants more study.
Finally, there is a need to better share information and data across the sector in Canada. This report could serve as a benchmark to track future progress. There needs to be effective collaboration between public funders and dance networks to establish a descriptive, statistical and financial databank. As well, more qualitative research should be done in Canada, more specifically on a longitudinal approach to complement the research done internationally: we have enough activities, players and tools available to map over a number of years the impact of dance for young audiences on the physical, mental, social and artistic well being of youth throughout their lives.
