IMPACT aims to be a transnational Masters degree in performance and creative technologies in dance. It will be a traveling programme in which students will be immersed and educated in different contexts and cultures creating spaces for artistic dialogues, across cultures and disciplines. It will offer the possibility for participants to collaborate, expand their network and get to know people, practitioners, and artists working in several contexts and who view the arts from multiple angles. IMPACT will engage students in being responsible and accountable in their artistic practices as well as in relation to existing surrounding ecologies.

The study course is designed to immerse the students in the cultural particularities of place in relation to body-based performance forms. The IMPACT consortium has designed a programme based on shared pillars resulting in a multi-layered curriculum. The courses are shaped by the unique attributes and cultural contexts of each institution. This shared focus will act as a compass for students’ creative journey as they will navigate changing environments.

IMPACT will be a transnational Masters degree programme in performance and creation processes related to dance.  This programme will be organised by higher education and art institutions that form epicenters of dance in Europe and West Africa. 
As a traveling Masters programme, students should engage in situated critical perspective in multiple countries across four semesters. The curriculum will be designed to immerse the students in the cultural particularities of place in relation to body-based performance forms. The IMPACT consortium will a programme based on shared pillars resulting in a multi-layered curriculum. The courses are shaped by the unique attributes and cultural contexts of each institution. This shared focus will act as a compass for students’ creative journey as they will navigate changing environments.
The programme will offer the possibility for students to collaborate, expand their network and get to know artists and other professionals working in varied contexts and who view the arts from multiple angles. It will engage students to be responsible and accountable in their artistic practices as well as in relation to existing surrounding ecologies.
It will also values plurality and equality in dance / embodied expression from across varied cultural and geopolitical contexts.  

“Creative technologies in dance” refers both to the tools, strategies and ways of knowing used to make and support dance-based performance as well as the knowledges that emerge from the processes and practices of dance–anchored work. It includes different tools and various techniques such as artistic, material, digital, physical, methodological, intellectual, organisational, etc., that can help enrich, define, expand, or transform dance practices.
In this Masters programme, students will be presented with different creative approaches to dance, as well as guided in developing their own forms of embodied expression. 

They will: 

• investigate a wide variety of dance structures, systems and styles; 
• practice with professionals and artists from different political, ideological and physical contexts currently shaping/questioning the fields of dance through their work and research; 
• explore both embodied and non-embodied (virtual, digital, etc.) methodologies; 
• be offered different (theoretical) frameworks with which to contemplate and practice dance.  

Dance and performance have the potential to transcend barriers, connecting individuals and communities in profound ways.
IMPACT will propose an educational experience that will act on both students and institutions involved, favoring a proliferation of differences rather than consensus. Students will engage in collaborative knowledge production and sharing, building and nourishing sustainable relationships with respect to place and space.
The academic, professional, artistic and social dimensions should be equally valued in the offered programme. 

IMPACT will expand the possibilities of perceiving, doing and experimenting with artistic research. The Master will support dance practice as knowledge production and will provide tools to expand skills in teaching, researching, choreographing, performing, creation and production processes, policy making, curating, etc.
This Masters programme will connect embodied practice, critical reflection and artistic research through the following: 

• students should interrogate their practices with a critical perspective, positioning their work into wider artistic, cultural and social contexts; 
• students should be offered a wide variety of theoretical and artistic frameworks to critically reflect on their work, and should learn how to perform theoretical research; 
• they should be trained in different methods to express and develop this critical reflection, including experimental writing forms, academic writing, visual documentation forms (video, photography, etc.). 

Teachers, artists and other professionals will support IMPACT students to develop their final project in the form of a performative event and documented critical reflection over the course of two years. 

Dance shapes and is also shaped by politics, social structures and hierarchies, cultural practices and traditions, natural and urban environments. This Master programme will engage students to be responsible and accountable in their artistic practices as well as in relation to existing surrounding ecologies. 
IMPACT will require participants to critically reflect individually and collectively on their roles in society. It will encourage artists to take up roles in key positions in society creating an impact on policy-making through their arts. IMPACT is aware of the existence of structural discrimination and inequity in art practices, institutions and education. In response, it will create a responsive and flexible programme that will respect and promote diversity. 

IMPACT will develop and nurture relationships between institutions, artists and educational systems that go beyond conventional dance training; rather, the programme will advance the field through unexpected encounters, collaborations and methods in dance-based art creation.
IMPACT will actively invite students, professionals and academic staff to critically reflect on the programme, thus ensuring actual relevance. 
IMPACT will offer new (digital, material, methodological, embodied and non-embodied) tools to students to (re)position themselves in current and future (societal, natural, virtual, augmented and digital) realities. Our future program aims to inspire recent graduates to make significant contributions to artistic fields and to redefine and question the fields of performance, dance and education.  

The IMPACT CONSORTIUM offers performing arts education in a constantly changing society. Through flexible education with attention to the individual, we aim to enable every student and teacher to get the best out of themselves. The IMPACT CONSORTIUM therefore aims to be a ‘mind-blowing’ art programme where everyone feels welcome and respected for who they are.

In a society that still excludes many people based on gender, color, disability, language, culture, religion, income, sexual preference… we prefer to see such differences as a source of artistic and educational strength. They strengthen us as art education institutions to just challenge the norm and become a ‘textbook example’ for city and society in this. So we do not shut ourselves up between white walls, but broaden our (Eurocentric) tradition in critical dialogue and through collaborations outside our comfort zone.
THE IMPACT CONSORTIUM strives for arts education that is multi-voiced and multilingual , both in the curriculum and in the classroom. By decisively addressing sexism, racism, validism and other negative forms of discrimination, we create trust and safety as an equal basic condition for everyone’s individual growth. Artistic values that we encourage in students and teachers also underpin the school’s diversity policy: quality through skill, creativity from critical self-reflection, with room for vulnerable experimentation.
Around diversity and inclusion, THE IMPACT CONSORTIUM aims to be a ‘learning consortium’ with a sense of change and innovation.