Funded £36,388
Campaign: Europe’s First Gender-Neutral Community Dance Studio
I worked with a small team of volunteers at Irreverent Dance raising funds to create Europe’s first gender-neutral community dance studio.
Classes with Irreverent Dance provided a safe, supportive and fun space for London’s LGBTQ and allied community to move and socialise together.
The team at Irreverent Dance understood that the complexities of experience, bodies, and gender don’t always fit into simple binaries – and their 500+ students agreed. But for all their hard work, they had to operate in hired spaces where their ideals were not always catered to. The time had come to create their own studio.
Working with Jo was key to the success of our campaign. From the very beginning she was on hand for any question, supporting us using the Kickstarter software platform, guiding our choice of rewards, and helping us select the frequency of updates for our target audience. Every suggestion she made was presented in a clear and informative way and she was flexible in her approach, happily adapting to the rare occasion we wanted to go in a slightly different direction. She made sure we understood why the choices we were making were best for our campaign, and approached everything we did with genuine enthusiasm.
Amanda Leon-Joyce
Since funding:
Despite a triumphant funding campaign, local and national press coverage, regularly sold-out classes and an incredibly enthusiastic and active student community, Irreverent Dance HQ was eventually forced to close when – like many other queer and alternative spaces in London – developers turned their studio building into flats. The Irreverent Dance project is currently on indefinite hiatus.
“As a community ID has: performed at festivals; taken over a theatre (three years in a row); taken part in Pride in London, twice; helped to change lives for the better; and opened a gender-neutral dance studio.” – Rarely Wears Lipstick