It is important to have culturally diverse dance styles and genres available in schools in order to fully engage young people. There is a huge deficit of African diaspora dance of any form in the current dance curriculum in schools. This coupled with the recent funding cuts to education and the rise in university fees is a major issue.

In 2010 I attended the Re:Generations conference which, for me, was the first time that I had been exposed to African and Caribbean diaspora dance (ACDD) forms and discussions in an academic context. This caused me to reflect on my dance training prior to university level and I realised that if it wasn’t for my own interest and research I would know little to nothing about ACDD forms and their history in England. As pointed out by Funmi Adewole in Voicing Black Dance: The British Experience 19302-1990s, dance students’ knowledge of ACDD in Britain is severely lacking. Students questioned, at a London conservatory by Adewole, a performing arts lecturer, about British Black dance companies could not name any; their only knowledge were of American companies and artists such as Alvin Ailey and Bill T. Jones. When I asked a similar question to my old course mates at Middlesex University they answered similarly accept some people mention Phoenix Dance Theatre.

ACDD forms dominate the commercial dance field in manifestations of hip hop, street dance and jazz dance, to name a few. It is these styles that excite students and will help interest them in GCSE and A level dance studies. Kate Prince, the founder of Zoonation who has worked in community dance settings has stated in an interview with dance critic Donald Hutera that "the only thing I can get the kids interested in is Hip Hop". This reflects a general trend of dance representation in the mass media over the past 10 years which has exposed younger generations more and more through films such as Honey and gaming products such as Dance Central for Kinect Xbox, to hip hop dance often leading to children automatically thinking of hip hop when dance is mentioned. I know I constantly got asked if I could "do the Beyonce single ladies dance" because I was studying contemporary dance at university. The Arts Council England’s report Dance Mapping: A window into dance 2004-2008 confirms the effects of this growing trend. When discussing the effect programmes and films have had on the dance industry it stated that ‘more people are dancing and classes are full in many places across the country’ as a result of television shows and films.

IRIE! dance theatre has developed a programme exploring dance and diversity and together with Islington College are delivering a course that combines ACDD, contemporary and ballet. Out of this working relationship IRIE! and Islington College produced Dance and Diversity a report which examined diversity in dance education with a special focus on ACDD. Students interviewed for this report found that IRIE! and Islington college’s programme not only helped with their current study of dance whether it be at GCSE or A Level but that the programme also gave them more choreographic and musical ideas.

As the Dance Mapping report has highlighted ‘There is a need for...different genres of dance in order to further develop excellence’. Although this is referring to the dance aesthetic in Britain as a whole, it applies equally to dance education. The fields overlap throughout the dance world. One cannot exist without the other; education is the foundation of all the sectors because in order to get into any position in any dance field, one must train. GCSE is the level at which students start to seriously focus on dance in an institutional setting. By integrating ACDD into GCSE and A Level syllabuses it will give students more incentive to undertake the qualifications in dance and enjoy them. According to the national curriculum website ‘an inclusive curriculum is one where all learners: see the relevance of the curriculum to their own experiences and aspirations’. By having a broader diversity of dance forms studied this will be more prevalent in dance. As it has been shown, not only will the introduction of ACDD more widely into dance curriculums raise the profile of ACDD in the dance world, it will raise the profile of dance as an art form, also.

It must be acknowledged that a main factor in the lack of ACDD forms in dance education is the lack of scholarly material. If you look at the amount of resources and documentation that exists for Humphrey technique compared to hip hop you will see the lack of information on its history. There are great dancers with rich histories and stories to be told but have not yet put pen to paper and documented their lives and experiences. This must be encouraged. There are organisations and individuals such as State of Emergency who are working on expanding the current archival material and gathering more resources, however, until this is done ACDD will struggle to be integrated.

I went back to my old upper school where I studied GCSE and A Level dance and spoke to the current dance students about their feelings towards studying dance at university level and every time received very similar answers. These students had been discouraged from studying dance further due to the rise in fees and as a result they would prefer to do an apprenticeship or study a science. It became clear that they saw little future in studying any form of art at a higher level because funding was being pulled from it and the styles they were passionate about were not available to study. They would much prefer to study other subjects at a higher level and then take the occasional class in the style or dance form they enjoyed, or join a youth group.

Now more than ever it is important for efforts to archive ACDD histories so that there can be a push for ACDD in education to ensure that the profile of ACDD can be raised and further study of this field of dance within an academic context in the UK, increases.