The Rural Touring Dance Initiative (RTDI) is a national project that supports dance artists & rural promoters to make great dance performance events happen in rural spaces. It was launched in 2015 and was made successful by working with established rural touring schemes.
The Take Art Effect
Since 2015 the scheme has worked with 40 companies, promoting 140 shows to just under 13,000 audience members in rural venues across the UK.
Spring 2025 South-West Tour
SHED is Northern Rascals’ brand-new project that uses visual art, spoken word and performance to raise awareness of the issues young people face with their mental health.
Performed by a small cast of dancers in a pop-up structure, SHED invites its audience to stand on the outside and look in. A chance to witness real-life experiences told in a series of shorts, the audience get a glimpse of the stories that make us - a portrait of love and loss and the essential humanity that resides in us all. For full info click here.
- 1st March - AMATA, Falmouth Uni, Penryn Campus, Cornwall
- 6th March - GL1 Leisure Centre, Gloucester
- 8th March - Pound Arts Centre, Corsham, Wiltshire
This celebration of Indian classical dance will brighten any day, no matter the weather, with an energising and dazzling display of bell-jangling footwork, dazzling spins, and tight technique.
The show enfolds you in the powerful and mood-lifting sounds and colour of South Asian culture to create an hour of pure delight: the soaring melodies and riotous beats of the music carry your mind to far-off places and bring you home again, exhilarated. For full info click here.
- 22nd March - Broadmayne Village Hall, Dorset
- 5th April - Sheepscombe Village Hall, Gloucestershire
Grab your party wear and join Jack and his friends for an interactive dance show with live music.
Jack loves musicals and pantomimes. He’s on a quest to make his dream dance sequence and you are invited to help make it happen. This uplifting and joyous celebration, ponders friendship and belonging, acceptance and independence.
There will be plenty of opportunities to join in and be your best dancing self. An invitation to over 5s and their families to dance, let loose and join in. This event is also suitable for older neurodiverse audiences. For full info click here.
- 29th March - The Main Place, Coleford, Gloucestershire
AFTER ALL is a celebration of our vulnerable and courageous existence. Solène melds dance, comedy, storytelling, and theatre to ask - what happens in the end?
Through a series of impassioned re-enactments of the funerals of those she’s loved - as well as imagining her own - Solène attempts to conjure a better space, to be with death, dying and loss.
AFTER ALL is a heartfelt exploration of the death rituals we have; the ones lost and those that need invented. Joyously bringing us together to explore the role that dancing might play in healing. For full info click here.
RTDI Phase 3: 2022-2026
In July 2022 the RTDI partners (Take Art, the National Rural Touring Forum (NRTF), Highlights Rural Touring, Sonia Sabri Company, and lead partner The Place) were awarded funding of £400,000 from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and £450,000 from Arts Council England. These two funding awards ensured RTDI can continue its important work until June 2026, building on its success by working with and supporting more rural touring schemes, venues and dance artists across England, Wales and Scotland.
The funding supports eight new associate venues to programme dance in rural areas and market towns, many of them in Levelling Up for Culture places. It enables RTDI to support up to eight dance artists & companies per year to tour their work to rural areas, with over 200 performances and 90 workshops expected between autumn 2023 and summer 2026.
It also includes a small budget for volunteer Dance Ambassadors in each region to work with the RTDI team to develop their dance audiences in their area.
RTDI partners announced national open calls in July 2022, 2023 and 2024 for dance makers with tour ready shows. Artists who wanted to tour their work to rural areas applied, and the shows on these menus were selected by a panel which, for the first time, included an artist and a promoter.
We are excited to support the latest incredible productions to develop tours and meaningful relationships into rural communities in 2025/26 following hot on the heels of two successful years of touring with the artists featured in the 2023/24 & 2024/25 menus.
“Establishing a network of Rural Touring Scheme Dance Ambassadors is a key development for the next phase as is greater involvement of children and young people. We are excited to be part of this ground breaking audience development initiative and are determined to make it a great success”
Alison Lord, Director of Dance, Take Art
In Phase 3, RTDI now has a network of regional Co-ordinators. Based at Take Art Beccy is the RTDI Co-ordinator for the South-West region. She is working with rural touring schemes and Associate Venues in the area to produce six tours between Autumn 2023 and Spring 2026.
Alongside exciting performances across the region, we are welcoming artists for workshops, residencies and much more to develop audiences, dance networks and participation in dance and creativity through movement.
The South-West region Rural Touring Schemes include:
Artsreach (Dorset), Carn to Cove (Cornwall), Villages in Action (Devon), Beaford (North Devon), Super Culture (North Somerset), Air in G (Gloucestershire), Pound Arts (Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire), Take Art (Somerset).
The South-West region Associate Venues are:
AMATA (Falmouth), Weston College (Weston-Super-Mare), Strike A Light (Gloucester)
Take Art and Villages in Action are developing audiences in collaboration with volunteer Dance Ambassadors in the Shepton Mallet area and the Teignbridge District respectively.
Find out more about RTDI
Please visit the The Place's website where you will find a wealth of project information including news, archives, resources, previous menus, and programmes, and full UK listings.
Contacts:
Alison Lord, Director of Dance
Email: alison@takeart.org
Beccy Lloyd, RTDI Coordinator
Email: beccy@takeart.org
Watch our two original feature films below, which show what we successfully achieved within the first (2015-2017) and second stage (2018-2021) of the project.
