Lions Club International at Marchbank School!

A donation of £1,500 by Darlington Lions has secured dancing for pupils at Marchbank Free School on Barnes Road in Darlington.

Pat de Martino, President of Darlington Lions, and fellow Lion Ian Barnes visited Marchbank School to present We Can Dance with a cheque for £1,500 and to see the pupils dance.

Left to right is dance tutor Rachael Armin, Pat de Martino, President of Darlington Lions, Head Teacher Tess Wright, Lion Ian Barnes and Joan Mitchie Secretary and Grant Officer for We Can Dance.

We Can Dance are very grateful for the Lions Clubs’s very generous donation.

The Teesside Charity!

Jenny Williams and Vicky Powell from the Teesside Charity recently visited Priory Woods School with two of our School Liaison team (Shirley and Jonica). They loved watching the amazing young adults perform in one of our dance classes taught by our fantastic teacher Sue Thornton!

We Can Dance are extremely grateful to the Teesside Charity for their recent generous donation towards equipment, clothing and medals etc for our Teesside Schools. Here are some of the photographs taken by Michelle Madison Photography on the day.

Moto Foundation!

We were absolutely delighted to be awarded a grant of £1500 from The Moto Foundation in April. Yvonne Nicholson (chair) Emma Howells (School Liaison) received the cheque from Stephen Snowdon, Operational Manager of Moto Scotch Corner and Barton. Huge thanks to Jess Parker and Diane Catterick, Moto employees, who supported our application which was critical to its success. This money will benefit many children at The Dales School (Morton-on-Swale) and Mowbray (Bedale). It will enable us to continue our work delivering weekly professional dance lessons to them. The benefits are tremendous and will stay with the children into adulthood.

Thank you Moto Foundation!

We Can Dance Christmas Dance Showcase at Applefields School, York

Yvonne Nicholson (Chair) and Emma Howells (School Liaison) were delighted to be invited to a special Christmas Dance Showcase at Applefields School in York on Monday 11th December. Sandra Smith, our dance teacher who visits weekly in term-time and teaches two classes in the school, has been working with one group all term to produce this lovely performance. The girls involved wore costumes loaned by WCD and ballet shoes to visit different countries around the world collecting pieces of the Christmas Star. They danced the national styles of England, Spain, India and Greece with great enthusiasm. It was a joyous performance full of smiles!

Many of the school's pupils and staff were in the audience to enjoy the dancing which received a huge round of applause. Well done girls and our thanks to Sandra for her continued dedication to teaching for us at Applefields.

Wensleydale Arts Society Funding for Mowbray School, Bedale

We Can Dance were incredibly grateful to receive a generous donation of £1500 from the Wensleydale Arts Society to support our work with children at Mowbray School, Bedale.

On Thursday 9th March Susan Rumsey (Chair, Wensleydale Arts Society) and Bob Davies (Treasurer, Wensleydale Arts Society) visited the school to see one of our dance sessions in action.

The students, taught by Helen Grant, demonstrated what they get up to in a typical class.

Executive Head of Mowbray Schools, Rachel Hargreaves joined in the dancing too!

Here are some pictures showing our students creating wonderful movement with ribbons, just one of the resources provided by the charity which enhance our sessions. A lot of fun was had by all, evidenced by the beaming smiles of the students.

Yvonne Nicholson (Chair, We Can Dance) and Emma Howells (School Liaison - We Can Dance) were delighted to receive this generous donation after the class.

Pupils' Success at Abbey Hill Academy!

Fantastic quote this week from Abbey Hill Academy (one of our supported schools)!

“We are delighted to send you these photographs of our students who have achieved their Level 1 BATD Dance Certificates.

The certificates and medals were presented in school last week by Gemma.

Thanks again for all of your support, the students love their dance sessions and having the opportunity to gain accreditation is amazing!

They all passed with the highest grade of 'Highly Commended' and have already started working on their Level 2 syllabus.”

Thank you so much to everyone for your support from the Committee and the Children!

The photos below show the happy students with their amazing dance teacher Gemma and include Liam, Cody, Nathan, Harrison, Alfie, Matthew, Lexie and Rosie.

Well done to them all!

Lets Dance On in Harrogate and Knaresborough!

Our schools are almost all back up and running now. Quite a few of them are now having extra lessons each week as they proved extra popular during the pandemic.

We are always looking for ways of raising more funds to pay for lessons and are very grateful to have been chosen by Tesco to take part in the Customer vote for the following project. 

"Let's Dance On in Harrogate and Knaresborough!

To continue to give students at Springwater and the Forest SEN Schools the chance to continue with weekly lessons from professional dance teachers."

We Can Dance is in the customer vote for a Tesco Community Grant. It’s a scheme which gives community projects like us grants of up to £1,500. Tesco customers will now vote in the following stores

2625 Harrogate Express HG2 7HY Express
2731 Ilkley LS29 8UA Superstore
5426 Ilkley Express LS29 8BS Express
5887 Camb Rd Harrogate Exp HG1 5NB Express
4764 Killinghall Harrogate Exp HG3 2DH Express
5914 Knaresborough Exp HG5 0EN Express

during July, August and September 2022 to decide how much funding we get, so please support us next time you shop at any of these Tesco stores!

Thank you so much!

Beyond COVID!

The global Covid pandemic presented a situation that was totally unprecedented. Throughout lockdown all special needs schools remained open with their classes in bubbles as well as many children shielding at home. “WE CAN DANCE” were determined to meet the challenge. Live dance lessons were started via Zoom/ Microsoft Teams direct to the school classrooms with fantastic success. The schools reported that the music and dance brought much needed cheer into their schools during a very cold and wet Winter.

With the determination and commitment of our dance teachers, by the end of the summer term 390+ children were accessing dance every week, including many shielded children joining from their homes.

To enable this we were fortunate to receive a Covid grant from the RANK Foundation.

Beyond Covid...

The Autumn school term sees all our dance teachers back in school delivering face to face lessons. The remarkable achievement of “Dancing Through Covid” and the benefits the students gained has been recognised and the demand for increased classes and additional schools is overwhelming.

Your support going forward in our upcoming fundraisers will enable us to share the joy of dance with many more children. The proceeds from them will directly benefit these children as the Charity is run entirely by unpaid volunteers.

More Success Safely!

We now have 13 schools taking dance lessons safely from our teachers!

As a reward for our students we used some of the money gifted to us from the Rank Foundation towards special “Dancing Through COVID Medals” and certificates. The children were thrilled to receive these and we think they all deserve them!

One of our schools (North Shore) has sent us some photos of the children at the presentation from the dance teacher Gemma!

We Can Dance also bought some Dance Books for all the pupils. The teachers at North Shore commented that the students absolutely loved their dancing memory books. The dance teacher Gemma wrote a personal note inside each one and they were filled with lovely photographs from the past 5 years.

Delight at our Project's Success!

We Can Dance are delighted to announce that our COVID Project has been so successful!

We now have 10 schools dancing with 23 lessons per week and more interested in joining soon.

We have students joining us from home and in school via their learning platforms plus Zoom / YouTube / Microsoft Teams etc and also some with face to face teaching (with all the safety measures in place). Our teachers have embraced the new COVID world and helped us to provide a welcome lifeline to our children.

Teachers have reported how the children are wholeheartedly welcoming and enjoying their lessons amid all the confusion of the pandemic. It’s a chance to enjoy life!

Thanks to the generosity of the Rank Foundation and yourselves we have also been able to provide additional dance wear and props to enable COVID safe practices.

Watch this space for more news!