New approaches to community-engaged practices focused on young audiences, emerging artists, youth mental health, and wellbeing.
Responding to Real Societal Needs
The YOUNG Working Group plays a critical role in EDN’s strategic response to sector-wide demands for more socially impactful, pluralistic, and accessible choreographic arts.
It focuses on developing and strengthening community-engaged approaches that position contemporary dance as transformative to youth development, mental health, and societal well-being.
Transformative Impact of Dance
Dance, as both an artistic and embodied practice, makes a remarkable impact on public life. It mobilises participation, deepens connection, and builds resilience across generations.
The Working Group leverages this potential by convening EDN members and partners to co-research and co-develop methods that enhance young people's cultural participation, empower dance artists' community-driven practices, and respond to urgent social needs through embodied engagement.
Embodying Contemporary Values
By linking practice with reflection, and local initiatives with international networks, the YOUNG Working Group articulates the role of dance in addressing cultural rights, structural inequities, promoting wellbeing, and shaping civic spaces rooted in plurality, inclusion, and democratic resilience. It builds capacity across the network by facilitating knowledge exchange, testing innovative models, and informing cultural policy through practice-based insights.
Long-Term Impact and Policy Influence
Over its multi-year cycle, the group will generate tangible outcomes: policy-relevant documentation, new collaborative frameworks, and expanded access to dance, ensuring that the impact of dance on society is not only articulated but embedded in the sector’s development strategies.
Meetings and Events
The working group gathers in monthly online coordination meetings and hosts yearly onsite Atelier Workshops, an ongoing Exchange Programme, a Sector Consultation (2026) and a dedicated Online Conference (2026).
The YOUNG Working Group is part of Embodied Transformations, EDN’s EU-funded network project. It connects contemporary dance professionals, organisations, and communities across Europe to foster a transformative and interdependent dance ecosystem.