It's been a while. Sorry about that.

In the past, scheduling a new festival has mostly involved booking a venue, picking the dates then off we go. While it's been tempting to simply do that again, the days of the festival breaking even or even making a profit are so very long ago, and doing yet another festival where everyone's unpaid or very badly-paid is so very unappealing. We all deserve better than that.  

Even with a wonderful team of two brilliant assistant producers for the last festival, there simply wasn't the time or resources to finish off everything which needed doing as part of the last festival.

This means there's still a lot to be done - as I mentioned in my earlier update here - and one of the first things on the list is scheduling a lot of conversations: 1. about CDF and how to develop it further; 2. with dance artists on how CDF can support them as choreographers, and 3. with people interested in volunteering so that we can race through the things which need to be done and start preparing for the next series of festivals. Which is a good thing, right?

While the festival has always been London-based, an increasing proportion of the participants are not, which means speaking to people in their regions, and so I've started making plans to visit Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham to hold some of these conversations, as well as others closer to home. And an online survey too, if anyone actually answers them.

Also, I'm looking for more people to get involved with the festival: not only volunteers, who are essential for sharing the workload involved in making another festival possible, but also in having a say in the festival's direction and future, as part of an advisory panel, and helping with our programming, as one of our panel of judges.  

So if you'd like to talk, please let me know. If you'd like to help out, please do get in touch. If you want to know when the next festival will be - well, the sooner all this gets done, the sooner we can start planning for it. And that's all for now.

Chantal Guevara
Director & Producer
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