A new Arts Council England (ACE) report offering ideas for the future of dance agency provision in England has revealed widespread confusion over the terminology used to identify funded dance activity. It offers a new set of definitions to characterise the types of work taking place, and makes a range of proposals for improvements in support for dance. Under these proposals, the term ‘national dance agency’ would be abandoned, and organisations involved in the different parts of the current dance infrastructure would be re-categorised as national strategic organisations, dance development agencies, and dance houses and choreographic workspaces. The report, ‘Joining up the dots: Dance agencies – thoughts on future direction’, highlights a number of areas where support for dance could be improved, and concludes that “agencies need to better define their services, and states their curatorial and development functions”. It recommends that support systems for the development of talent should be aligned with a new focus on job creation, especially for artists, and states that there is a need to increase knowledge and skill-sharing, in order to improve the dance sector’s standards of governance and management and to share artistic practice. ACE currently supports 72 regularly funded dance organisations, of which 42 are described as local, regional or national agencies. From 2004 to 2007, the dance agencies generated 4,380 performances and over 100,000 education sessions, engaging with an estimated 3.5 million people. ACE has acknowledged that current funding models do not always best support the agencies and their work, and the report is seen as one step towards the creation of a “clearer intellectual framework” relating to dance, which can help inform decisions about what to fund.
