The Social Dancer Magazine

Issue 1    and     Issue 2 

Social Dancers where are you now?

I find each class or each dance that I provide a buzz of social interaction that takes place each time my pupils meet up. Amazing friendships are made, dance holidaying in dance groups, caravan clubs that have adapted to provide dance holidays, hiking holiday companies that cater for dancers as well as hikers, cruising the oceans mainly for the dancing, and of course dance schools & clubs that provide important social dances that help keep their pupils & clients mental health, physical health & social interaction in check - all gone in 2020 due to COVID19.

Statistics

In my own school, 81% of my pupils are aged between 60 & 82 years old (The Baby Boomer generation!). 90% are social dancers & 10% are purely competitive & medal test dancers. This is a theme throughout dance schools & clubs in the United Kingdom. The 90% in my school have very little interest in the competitive world of dance other than watching Strictly Come Dancing, and want news relating to their main interest. Most sequence clubs will have an average age of 65-70 years old. Many of this generation do not operate a computer & a physical magazine is a must. An online magazine is also important to those who want to read & keep digital copies. 

What do social dancers want?

They want to know where the dance holidays are, which cruise ship is best to go dancing on, where to go and try new dance shoes, which dance schools have events on that are in the area where the dancers are on holiday, which music to purchase to be able to practise at home etc etc. There are no other magazines that are available in the social dance industry to provide all this information for dancers who just want to be social. 

Who else will this magazine help?

Dance teachers & professional groups that require dance teachers to provide health & wellbeing classes through dance.

Here are some police officers & their partners from Lincolnshire Police force who attended a 10 week Ballroom Latin & Jive course. You can see the laughter in this photo, they had name in stitches!

Schools that don't have a dance department often bring in professional dance teachers to provide either classes or Health & Wellbeing projects. A few school teachers secretly enjoy it too!

We also need to help dance teachers & dance leaders to rebuild their businesses again through pupils accessing information & knowledge that The Social Dancer Magazine can provide. Exploring the world of dance through this magazine will not only help these dancers keep up to date with next years events etc, but more importantly it will help the mental health & wellbeing of a generation who relies on social interaction to stay young & healthy.  

Many dance groups help provide funding for local charities, such as hall & church renovations, school funding, sports facilities etc. From my own experience, my dancers enjoy a raffle at Christmas and name cards throughout the year so the proceeds go to the hall that they dance in after it was threatened with closure two years ago. The money raised helped keep the hall open & gave it a refurbishment to modern standards. The magazine will highlight these funding ideas that dance schools & clubs provide giving new ideas to other dance groups in the process.

What will the crowd-funder funding be spent on?

I want to provide free advertising the first issue for dance teachers, shoe suppliers, music companies, theatre companies, in fact any dance company that will benefit from free advertising to the world of social dancers.

The first issue must be free to everyone, funding will help with all the costs of printing & processing this first issue. 

To go on to further monthly issues, I will need to employ staff to help with the production of the magazine, so extra funding will supply a guaranteed new member of staff a job for a whole year until the magazine pays for itself & can then go on to employing further staff.

Thank you for your time reading this project. I hope you can understand how passionate I am about helping the dance industry and the need to rebuild it in 2021.