Success at the Eskdale Festival!

Emma Howells from “We Can Dance” had the great privilege of being in the audience of the recent Eskdale Festival at The Whitby Pavilion on Wednesday 15th March 2023 where two of our school groups performed in the Supported Free Dance Category.

Su Crossland, our teacher who was instrumental in the creation of this category, prepared a group each from Springhead School and The Woodlands Academy, both in Scarborough to take part in this year’s festival. Both groups helped to choreograph their dances and even chose their music.

The first to perform were Springhead, where a group of boys and girls aged 11-14 performed “U Know What’s Up”. Second up were the group of girls aged 13-15 from Woodlands Academy who performed “Dancing in the Dark”.

The level of performance and presentation from all the children blew Emma away. Their smiling faces showed how much they enjoyed being up on a professional stage and performing to a packed audience who cheered both groups on enthusiastically. It was also wonderful to see the different schools supporting each other.

They were adjudicated by Head Judge Barbara Benson-Smith MBE who is a well known figure in the dance world. She gave both groups some helpful and specific feedback on their performances, complimenting them on their use of space and happy performances!

In the end Springhead were awarded runners up certificates and medals and The Woodlands Academy were overall winners. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as the pupils came up on stage to accept their awards.

What a fantastic achievement from all involved! Thank you to the diligent and always enthusiastic Su Crossland who We Can Dance funds to teach these pupils on a weekly basis during term-time. We Can Dance is all about giving the opportunity of the joy of dance to ALL and this was a fantastic display of what can be achieved. Dance should be shared and performance opportunities like these are so special for our pupils. Well done everyone!

Listen to We Can Dance Chair on BBC Radio York!

Everyday at lunchtime on BBC Radio York Jonathan Cowap makes The Lunchtime Connection, calling a nominated stranger for an interview.  Yesterday he called Yvonne Nicholson, our Chair, and she spoke about We Can Dance and her passion for our work throughout Yorkshire and the North East. Listen here:

For more details and to book tickets for our next event or donate to our work click here




Surprise from McAlpine Dance Studio!

Thank you so much to Louisa from McAlpine Dance Studio in London. They held end of term join in sessions for parents and siblings etc and thanks to a recommendation from one of the parents, they chose us as the recipient of the charges for the sessions!

What an unexpected and welcome surprise! Even more so when they raised a whopping £349.09! We Can Dance are so grateful for their donation which will cover the cost of lessons at one of our schools for a whole term!

The photos below were taken at some of the sessions

We Can Dance bags £1500 from Tesco’s community grant scheme!

We Can Dance has received £1500 which will help to pay for dance lessons in our schools in the Stockton Area!

Thank you to all our supporters who voted for us in the Tesco stores and allowed us to win 1st Prize!

For small charities like ourselves, grants like this allow us to help more children and make a bigger difference in our community

Claire de Silva, Tesco’s Head of Community, said: “Tesco Community Grants help support local good causes like We Can Dance and especially those projects supporting young people, those providing food, and local causes close to our colleagues’ hearts.”

Thank you to Tesco from our students and Committee


We Can Dance have bagged £1000 from Tesco’s community grant scheme!

We are delighted to announce that we have bagged £1000 from Tesco’s Bags of Help community grant scheme. 

Bags of Help is run in partnership with community charity Groundwork, and sees grants awarded to thousands of local community projects every year.

Since launching in 2015, Bags of Help has provided more than £68 million to almost 30,000 local community projects across England.

Tesco colleagues have come together virtually up and down the country to vote and it can now be revealed We Can Dance has been awarded £1000 to help fund “Dancing in the Dales”. This project will continue to fund dance lessons at two of our schools the Dales and Mowbray.

Thank you very much from our students and Committee!

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Dancing Through COVID and Beyond!

We Can Dance are extremely grateful to have been awarded a grant from the Rank Foundation (in conjunction with the government) which will help us to ensure our students can keep on dancing!

The grant will help to make up some of the shortfall over the last year due to our inability to fundraise.

We currently have 7 schools still offering dance lessons to their pupils and most of our teachers are holding classes on line. In addition, this means that some of the homeschooled pupils can also access the lessons safely. In addition to lessons we are also providing extra props, ballet shoes and hoodies which are recommended due to COVID regulations.

Thank you so much to the Rank Foundation

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Raise funds for We Can Dance by shopping with Amazon!

What is AmazonSmile?

AmazonSmile is a website operated by Amazon that lets customers enjoy the same wide selection of products, low prices, and convenient shopping features as on amazon.co.uk. The difference is that when customers shop through the URL smile.amazon.co.uk, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the net purchase price (excluding VAT, returns and shipping fees) of eligible purchases to the charitable organisations selected by customers.

Click here to access our page

Tesco Bags of Help Community Fund

We Can Dance is so grateful to Tesco Bags of Help! We have been fortunate to have been given a £500 grant! This will help our teachers to operate safely once our schools return. We have been investigating the use of Zoom and recently our teachers held their own workshop to discuss how best to use this type of technology.

Some of our schools are hoping to make use of this option once they return in September!

Thank you so much.
https://tescobagsofhelp.org.uk/…/Tesco-Bags-of-Help-Vertica…

Socially Distanced "Ascot" Lunch

As our Ascot Ladies Day event was cancelled due to Covid-19 some of our Committee decided to meet up (according to the current regulations and bringing our own food!) for the first time in person in 3 months. Luckily the weather was brilliant and Pat our host had decorated her large garden for us.

What a beautiful lunch we had and great fun starting to think of future events and how we might all enjoy them once this pandemic is over.

We hope all our supporters are well and keeping safe. In the words of the song “We’ll Meet Again!” soon!

Ascot Ladies Day 2020 Cancelled!

Unfortunately in the light of the ongoing Coronavirus Situation and the Government's recommendations for reducing social interaction we have had to take the decision to cancel our Annual Ascot Celebrations.

We apologise to all our supporters but hopefully we will all come through these difficult times safely and all being well we may be able to have a luncheon later in the year

Stay safe everyone!

Visit of HRH The Countess of Wessex to “We Can Dance” on 26 September 2019, hosted by The Forest School Knaresborough.

Happy faces greeted HRH The Countess of Wessex when she visited a “We Can Dance” class at The Forest School in Knaresborough.

The Charity “We Can Dance” funds dance lessons in 16 Special Needs Schools throughout the North of England. The Countess enjoyed watching a class of primary children led by one of the Charity’s 10 professional teachers. The smiles of the dancers and the audience “said it all”.

After a wonderful dance class followed by a performance and proud bows, The Countess of Wessex was presented with a posy by Ashley (one of the dancers). His character captured the moment and all the children shared the joy.

Smiling faces then gathered around to meet with the The Countess of Wessex. The Countess then met members of the Charity, all of whom are volunteers and work tirelessly to raise funds to support the continuation of the lessons within the schools they currently support.

The benefits of these lessons have been reported by staff, these include increased coordination, self-confidence and enjoyment as seen today. 

All the school children were included in the Royal visit. The school was decorated with red, white and blue bunting for the occasion and instead of school lunches they enjoyed a Royal Picnic.

Mrs Farr the Head Teacher escorted the Royal Party to view the classrooms giving the Countess the opportunity to meet with all of the 130 students and the newly opened classrooms.

“We Can Dance” are grateful to the Forest School for their kind hospitality and they thanked the Royal Party for generously making time to visit their Charity.

Photos by Marc Thorneycroft

Successful Exam Workshop! - July 19th 2019

One of We Can Dance’s latest projects has been to provide the opportunity for all students to undertake exams which would be all inclusive, no matter what their challenges are. To this end we commissioned Gemma Coldicott (Quality Assurance Officer, RADiate SEN Programme, Royal Academy of Dance) to help us to develop a syllabus and to provide a workshop for all our teachers and potential examiners.
This was held in the Education space at the Hippodrome in Darlington on the 19th July and was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

The day involved an intense morning going through the draft syllabus and PowerPoint presentation followed by a more relaxing afternoon with dancing involving different resource concepts and programming.

Grateful thanks to the staff of the Hippodrome for looking after us on the day.

We would also like to thank Gemma, our teachers and colleagues for attending and helping to make the day such a success.

Fantastic Results for our Ascot Ladies Day 2019!

Another fabulous day returning to the  Crathorne Hall Hotel in Yarm was enjoyed by approximately 95 guests. Thanks to the hotel we were all able to enjoy the full day’s programme from Ascot via a large screen, commencing with the Royal Parade of course. 

Lucy Hope of Artichoke (Grange Road, Darlington) again supported us with her beautifully arranged flowers in what has become our traditional trade mark at this event – tea cups and saucers. These were given as gifts to one lucky person on each table.

Catherine Hart, milliner, provided the most gorgeous  hats for many of our guests to try on, and hire if wanted, at just £5 for the occasion, with all proceeds kindly donated by Catherine to We Can Dance.

Angela Stevenson again organised us with betting slips and worked so tirelessly to keep us all enthused and then finally announced to a very excited audience, the winner and runners up of the day’s racing.

The day was full of fun with a spectacular prize draw and a presentation of champagne to the winner of the Prettiest Hat competition.

We must thank everyone for supporting us and we are so pleased to confirm that the final amount of  £2,630.58 was raised for the charity.

Mark Thorneycroft very kindly took some spectacular photographs of the group with the Hall as a magnificent background. The winner of the Prettiest Hat competition is pictured in addition with our founder Sue Hewgill Peterson.

On The Piste!

What an amazing night everyone had at our Après Ski Evening. The food was fantastic, prosecco was half price and the Juke Box was in full use all night!

The best news of all is that we raised over £1500 which will help us to continue to fund dance lessons in our schools! Thank you to everyone who attended and supported our evening.

In particular we would also like to thank Lucy from Artichoke for all the beautiful table decorations and Mel and all the staff at the Black Bull Inn for all their hard work in helping us to make the event a success!

A few photos from the evening below!

North East Ladies Day Presentation Evening

On Thursday 24th January NELD held Their annual Presentation Evening, at Middleton Hall Retirement Village.  The final donations of £7,200 were presented to the 2018 charities which were Neoangels, JPC Community Farm and ourselves.

All the charities were also presented with a cheque for £1,000 each at the Annual Anniversary Luncheon (which represented the money raised by Barclaycard staff running the Tombola)  plus Barclaycard, as part of their commitment to support local charities, match any funds raised by their colleagues.  This means each charity has also been credited with a further £1,000 directly to their bank account to match the amount raised by the Barclaycard team.

That’s an amazing total of £9,200 each for the three charities.

Attached is a selection of photos from the event.

On the Piste!

Après Ski Evening

Friday 1st March 2019, 7.30 pm till late

Black Bull, Moulton

Why not join We Can Dance for a fun Après Ski Evening at the Black Bull. Included is a welcome Glüwein on arrival and a 2 course Après Ski Supper

Better still, time to freestyle and shred up the dance floor!

Ski attire is welcome, but optional!

CONTACT SARAH ON 07768985056 FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TICKETS (£30)