Published 16 Sep 2024

On 18 June, we issued a statement in response to a list of demands from LCDS Student Justice for Palestine which included details of the activities that were already happening or starting at The Place. You can read the statement in full here.

Today, at the start of the new academic year, we’d like to share an update with you as part of our commitment to an open dialogue with our students.

Cultural Activism

In the previous statement we outlined our commitment to Cultural Activism as a core value at The Place. Our goal remains for the curriculum and our artistic commissioning to reflect London as a global hub in which many different dancing cultures intersect. As we continually work towards this, we welcome student feedback through the Student Voice Committees on the quality of this work and your input on how we can best integrate contextualising of the practices in the studio.

In the past year, we have witnessed striking challenges in the international environment including the continued war in Ukraine and the escalation of war in Gaza, and we continue to share hope for a much-desired ceasefire and the return of the hostages. We understand artists have an important role to play in these times and have leaned into our value of Cultural Activism to build relationships with dance artists in Ukraine and Palestine, with refugee communities – those navigating the asylum system – and with other artists whose voices have historically been underrepresented in contemporary dance and in our organisation, to ensure a multiplicity of voices are seen and heard. 

Through our membership of ELIA, the globally connected European network for exchange and development in higher arts education, LCDS has become a sister school for the Kyiv Municipal Academy for Circus and Performing arts through the ELIA UAx Sister Schools Network, funded by the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation. The UAx Platform supports war-affected art students, who have remained in Ukraine hoping to continue their degree studies and build their artistic practice, and Ukrainian higher arts education institutions looking to strengthen their resilience and capacity during a time of crisis and recovery.

As part of The Place’s public programmes over the past year:

We commissioned and hosted Protein Dance’s bi-annual project with refugees and migrants, There & Here, enabling 22 adults to take part in a 3-week project that culminated in an evening of dance and music in our theatre.

We collaborated with UA Contemporary Dance Platform, Ukraine, to produce Let The Body Speak: Over 70 Ukrainian Artists were supported through online professional development workshops and the creation of a digital hub to collect dance videos from Ukrainian dancers and choreographers. The culmination of the project was an online international sharing, showcasing work available to tour by three Ukrainian artists.

We presented works in The Place’s Theatre by international artists including BRABA Platforma (Portugal), Loraine Dambermont (Belgium), Er Gao (China), Junk Ensemble (Ireland), Gael Ndecky and El Hadji Malick Ndiaye (Senegal), Agathe Djokam Tamo (Cameroon), VestAndPage (Germany), Aesoon Ahn Company, 99ArtCompany, Sung Im Her, and Melancholy Dance Company (Korea), Su Pin-Wen (Taiwan) and Alexandre Fandard (France).

We have continued to cultivate curatorial partnerships which introduce distinctive new ideas to the programme and suggest new ways of understanding and articulating dance, including those with FRINGE! Queer Film & Art Fest, Dance Umbrella, BOP Jazz, Feel The Rhythm and Queer East. The season closed with Generation A, a new collaboration with the Parisian festival curated by Fatima Ndoye, presenting contemporary dance by artists working in French-speaking countries in Africa.

British Council supported a residency exchange with UA Dance Platform, Tanec Praha and The Place to support 6 artists to attend the Czech Dance Platform and EDN Atelier. Artists were: J Neve Harrington & Kesha Raithatha (UK), Tereza Kcralova (CZ), Khrystyna-Maria Slodondianiuk, Yana Reutova and Yulia Grishina.

We would like to encourage students to fully engage with the breadth of activities in this area across The Place by attending public performances and sharings where possible and taking an active interest in understanding how we work.

Equity, Diversity and Access policy and procedures

This October, we’ll be working with Spotlight Inclusion, an organisation that regularly works with educational and arts organisations to explore their diversity and inclusion position, to help us develop a new Equity, Diversity and Access Plan for The Place.Thank you to all students who responded to the call out to join the focus groups which will feed into this work. If you haven’t signed up yet but would like to, please refer to the call-out in this week’s student newsletter for details. We will keep you posted about progress and developments as we go.

Clarity on the organisation’s position as a charity

Over the summer, we have developed a set of guidelines on Political Campaigning and Activity (accessible for UAL students and for UAS students), which sets out the legal framework of the Charity Commission on political campaigning and other political activity and highlights key risks to be considered by charitable organisations when taking part in campaigning or other political activity.

The guidelines also refer to our key funders and stakeholders that regulate the activity of The Place as an organisation, including Arts Council England and the Office for Students.

The core aim of these new guidelines is for students, faculty and staff members across the organisation to have an understanding of the legal position on campaigning and sight of relevant guidance issued by the Charity Commission; an understanding of the areas where political campaigning is useful and beneficial for the charity; and an understanding of potential legal and reputational risks associated with political campaigning.

There is now a clear set of guidelines and process to be followed by all staff and students. Students wishing to organise or publicise a charitable fundraising event or activity should in the first instance contact both their Year Group Coordinator and their Year Group Representatives with the time and place of the activity and details of the charity. Year Group Representatives should then submit a statement of support for the proposed event to the LCDS Senior Management Team (SMT). Any fundraising requests will ultimately be considered for approval by SMT. 

Reviewing our financial services

After raising questions and receiving a response from our current provider, we are reviewing financial service provision with oversight from the Finance and General Purposes Committee, as any change requires governor approval. We will communicate the outcome through future student newsletters.

If you would like to know more about our governors and their areas of expertise, you can find information on our website here.

Going forward
We wholeheartedly value an open dialogue with students through the existing student-centred committees and groups including Student Voice Committee, Student Representatives and Year Group Meetings. The impact of this dialogue on effecting lasting and embedded change is proven; so please do continue to attend the relevant meetings and raise the questions and issues you believe are important for us as a unique artistic and learning community to think about and act upon.