East London Dance’s Annual Review 2023-24

17 February 2025

ELD x UD Summer School Project at the Talent House, 2023

View the full Annual Review at the bottom of the page or HERE.

Download a PDF version of the full Annual Review HERE. 

Intro to East London Dance’s Annual Review 2023-24

We are delighted to present our Annual Review for 2023-24. It was a year of many highlights, from successful programmes, collaborations and the positive impact our activity has had on our communities. This was our second year in our beautiful home, the Talent House, that we share with music organisation, UD. Across the year East London Dance has welcomed 6.2k people through our doors; engaged 2.6k participants; gifted 1.1k hours of free space to artists and producers to train, create work or curate events; and provided 309 hours of free programme activity at the Talent House for young people, artists and producers.

A big focus for us has been around the sustainability of the organisation through successful fundraising and embedding wellbeing across the organisation so we’re looking after our staff, artists, young people and all our beneficiaries. We have continued to diversify our work force with 75% of those we employed from the Global Majority. We switched our staff training to a new and more inclusive model. Our training now happens in-house led by qualified experts and is attended by a full range of Duty Managers, Artists, Youth Team Staff and Core Staff team including the CEOs. Training covered Anti-Racism, Youth Mental Health First Aid, Fire Marshalling, Trauma Informed Practice and First Aid.

Our organisational goals have continued to serve us, and this year we spent time looking at our current and historic practice to develop 5 core pillars of impact.  These underpin all our programmes and will keep us on track to reach our organisational goals as we work towards our 40th anniversary in 2028!

1. We elevate people to realise their full potential

2.   We develop talent by investing in young people, artists and producers to develop creative leaders and increase the amount of creative and cultural work being created in east London and beyond.

3.   We champion mental health and wellbeing by providing emotional and psychological support to enable people to thrive personally and professionally

4. We educate by building skills, confidence & offer paid work promoting sustainable arts careers.

5. We represent diverse people and artforms by supporting the training and development of diverse creatives.   

Our foundations have grown stronger this year and as a team we remain as ambitious as ever about reaching our goals and transforming access to dance, wellbeing and routes into sustainable professional careers. This year-on-year growth wouldn’t be possible without our incredible Board, staff, artist teams, and our funders. A giant Thank you to our staff, Trustees, building partner UD, all our partners and funders and of course the artists, producers and communities that we work with.  

We’re delighted to share this Annual Review with a look back on our year and look forward to collaborating and dancing with you soon.

Tia Hassan & Kate Scanlan

Joint Creative Director & CEO
East London Dance