Rural Touring Dance Initiative announces new Associate Venue programme

Since its launch in 2015, The Rural Touring Dance Initiative (RTDI) has transformed UK rural dance touring, successfully increasing the quality and quantity of dance touring across the country, to make dance a vital and celebrated part of rural cultural life.

Entering its next phase, the RTDI is launching a new Associate Venue programme, partnering with 9 venues, predominantly in market towns across the UK, to support their dance programming over the next 3 years. The RTDI partners will collaborate with venues to present bold and diverse dance work and to develop new audiences for dance across the UK.

Currently the project has partnered with 9 venues.

The nine confirmed Associate Venues are:

• The Heart of Hawick, Hawick
• Kirkgate Centre, Cockermouth
• Bishop Auckland Town Hall, Bishops Auckland
• The friends of Thimblemill Library, Smethwick
• Haverhill Arts Centre, Suffolk
• The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury
• Strike-a-light, Gloucester
• Weston College, Weston-super-Mare
• Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA), Falmouth

Each of these venues will work closely with the project, programming two pieces of work a year and developing locally specific community engagement work around the performances. In addition to this, each venue receives marketing support from marketing experts in dance and rural touring fields, networking opportunities with other Associates, dance artists, organisations, and programmers of dance across the country, and an allocated ‘go and see’ grants to allow people to travel to see shows live.

Julie Kirdy, Promoter at Friends of Thimblemill Library, says: ‘The friends of Thimblemill library are thrilled and excited to be part of the RDTI and one of the Associate Venues. We feel privileged to be part of and look forward to working with such brilliant artists.’

Emma-Jane Benning, Artistic Director of Strike a Light, says: ‘RTDI is an important long term national partnership for Strike A Light & Gloucester. The project team have a flexible approach that has embraced Strike A Lights’s new methods of delivery through community producers. Supported by Strike A Light’s embedding of engagement, including schools and community, the result is banging dance in community settings, accessed by people that don’t normally encounter dance or consider themselves audiences. It’s magic.’

Venues can currently pick from a menu of shows including Little Murmur by Aakash Odedra Company, A Real Fiction by AKA Dance Theatre, And by Charlotte Mclean, DONUTS by Extended Play, Unbroken by Nikki Rummer:, May Contain Food May Contain You by Protein Dance, Thumbelina by Rachel Dean and Club Origami by Seven Circles.

About the RTDI:

RTDI was launched in 2015 when The Place, National Rural Touring Forum, China Plate and Take Art joined forces to address the lack of quality dance in rural spaces. From the start, RTDI has introduced some of the UK’s leading dance companies to rural touring, including Ben Duke’s Lost Dog, Luca Silvestrini’s Protein, Uchenna Dance, Tom Dale Company, Scottish Dance Theatre, Mr & Mrs Clark, Jo Fong and George Orange, and Joshua ‘Vendetta’ Nash.

Every year, RTDI has published a national menu of some of the best dance productions touring in the UK, and provided producing, financial and marketing support to enable them to visit village halls across the country. Six years on, RTDI has had a huge impact on the rural touring dance ecology in the UK.

Audiences have encountered high quality dance in their local spaces, and an evaluation report published in 2022, highlighted that 98% of audiences enjoyed watching the performances, with 88% saying the experiences made them want to see more dance, demonstrating demand for high quality touring dance. Artists have discovered a pleasure in touring and making intimate connections with audiences. Programmers and rural promoters are more confident choosing dance for their venues.

With the new Associate Venue programme, RTDI will be supporting 9 associate venues in rural areas and market towns, many of them in Levelling Up for Culture places, to programme dance, as well as eight dance artists and companies per year to tour their work to rural areas. Over 200 performances and 90 workshops are expected between autumn 2023 and summer 2026.

Entering this new phase will facilitate longer and more sustainable regional tours for artists, offering them the chance to develop meaningful relationships with audiences and arts professionals in each area.

For more information about RTDI, visit: Rural Touring Dance Initiative – NRTF