Organizers -- What do you do or have seen others do to build inclusivity at your dances?
What is your vision of inclusivity? Culturally, how do you balance a culture of consent (nobody *owes* anybody else a dance, you can refuse without explanation at any time and dance with somebody else) with a culture of inclusion where anybody who walks in the door, whether they're new dancers, middle-aged women, newish dancers in the zone between "let's take care of the first-timers" and being experienced dancers who can take care of themselves, etc. can be genuinely welcome and can dance as much as they want to without feeling like they're part of an out group? I was discussing this with Seth Tepfer and he set up a google doc to collect ideas. It'd be rude to make people on the list go there to participate in this discussion and that format is bad for clarifying questions anyway, so you may certainly update that document but you can also just post here and I'll try to add new ideas to the doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vwc-weK43t9nJ94LJIQg6UxiUeP8iqT1_VvqZO7P6z4 Doc contents right now: ' 1. Caller can be encouraged to program circle and scatter mixers. After the circle or scatter mix, the caller can say 'keep this parter for the next dance. 2. Callers and dance organizers can reserve the first 1/3 of the evening to only dancing with new dancers. Role model this behavior for other experienced dancers 3. During the early 1/3 of the evening, the organization can welcome everybody, and applaud the new dancers 4. Nametags for everyone. 5. We used to have nametags saying (it's my 1st/2nd/3rd time here: ask me to dance) 6. Caller's can remind folks to ask the people sitting out to dance. 7. Try to discourage booking ahead. Talk about why booking ahead is detrimental to your community - on listservs, in signs, at post dance gathering. (I'm an organizer for the Palo Alto Contra dance, an English dance series, and some camps, and an English/Victorian/Regency/Contra caller. Even if what organizers can do is what callers can do, the organizers can tell the callers to do what they can do, so caller suggestions are appropriate here.) -- Alan
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