Creating employment-ready students
With increasing financial pressures across the university sector, and greater pressure to ensure the curriculum leaves students employment-ready for today’s more challenging work environment, it can be hard to fit in the full programme before graduation.
Covering the core training of the physical and intellectual study of dance plus additional modules such as criticism or dance science can make it easy to overlook the basic survival skills of setting up for employment or freelance working. What knowledge does a dancer need today to have a full and safe dance career? What are the risks? What survival skills are needed to be both successful and happy? How can we help you as a dance professional focus on training your students, providing essential skills and up to date industry insight?
Survive in Dance has designed a framework that delivers specialist dance-specific training. This covers all the essential knowledge and skills, ensuring that each student understands how to work legally and stay motivated, including a tool kit to help them find work and develop the critical skills to sustain what is likely to be a portfolio career.
The Survive in Dance training course complements your main programme, without having to worry about staying up-to-date on areas such as employment legislation and changes to tax. A range of external influences challenges the dance industry, from theatre, Local Authority and Arts Funding cuts to opportunities across digital and conventional business enterprise schemes. Survive in Dance maintains an overview of the sector. ‘The Survival Kit’ training programme prepares your students for the reality of the dance profession. When they leave your institution they have the core resources and knowledge to ensure the best chance of employment – an attractive incentive for prospective students whilst allaying fears of parents as to the unpredictability of the sector.
Benefits of Training Course:
For the Course leader/ Lecturer:
- No need to stay up-to-date with employment legislation and sector changes
- Programme ensures nothing is missed for starting out and your time can be spent delivering other activity
- External delivery by Survive in Dance: wide experience of all elements of the dance sector
- Provides motivation for your students – what is the light at the end of the tunnel when they are out there on their own?
- Provides evidence to future students of your institution’s exceptional focus on ensuring graduate employability
- Helps students over the hurdle of launching into the profession, enabling better results in ‘Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education’ Report – no short cuts.
For the Student:
- Prepares students for the realities of creating and maintaining a dance portfolio career.
- Widens students understanding of non-performing career options in dance.
- Access to the range of on-going resources of Survive in Dance
- Links them into the wider support network for dancers across the sector
- Decreases isolation when starting out and increases chances of staying in the profession
- Greater employment chances for graduates – certainly a more realistic expectation.
- Increased financial income for graduates for longitudinal studies – and how to ensure they are valued.
Course Content
Survive in Dance specialises in supporting graduates to enter the dance field by providing the essential knowledge. This course aims to support students to find work and manage the business of dance whichever area they wish to join. We work with you and your institution based on our established framework. We have designed specific training delivered over 1 day or with the option of a full course module that can be easily customised to accommodate your needs/time. We can scale to work with one group or several classes over a given period. We understand that with the complexity of courses today flexibility is an essential component of our proposition. We can also offer more in-depth personal career planning for students.
Content can include any of the following:
- Employment routes- Self employment vs. employment
- Tax and expenses
- Earnings in dance
- Contracts and what to expect
- Insurance
- Breakdown and statistics of what the sector actually looks like
- Managing a portfolio of dancing / resting jobs
- Types of jobs in dance including commercial (not just performance)
- Teaching with and without qualifications
- Staying motivated while ‘resting’
- Planning your career path
- Where to find support and local networks
- Dance agencies and their role
- Membership organisations and unions
- How to network in the dance world
- Where to base yourself and world of touring
- Auditioning and use of video material
- Where to look for jobs
Material is delivered in a range of learning styles including real-life examples of experienced dancers journeys, career ladders, and dance companies; scenarios; group tasks; career planning sheets and quizzes. Students will have access to online downloadable fact sheets and resources. Training is led by a charismatic and knowledgeable trainer willing to answer any question. Survive in Dance will provide a feedback summary report on completion of the course
Can you afford not to ensure your students have this Survival kit as they finish their studies?
To find out more information, discuss content, prices and book training contact:
Survive in Dance, info@surviveindance.com,
References can be provided if required.
