CYD is a professional development and creative residency programme focused on deepening disability-informed inclusive practice within participatory dance. Our approach moves beyond traditional one-off training, prioritising experiential learning, co-design, and active application ("doing"). We believe that inclusion should not be an additional consideration, but a transformative creative methodology. Through our cohort-based model, artists are supported by disability-led mentors, peer reflection, and lived-experience perspectives to investigate what 'high quality' and 'meaningful inclusion' looks like in practice.

Alongside workforce development, the project will generate new participatory approaches and small-scale sharings, enabling rural communities to experience and shape dance locally. Learning will be documented and evaluated, culminating in a Wales-wide symposium and an accessible bilingual toolkit sharing methods, case studies and practical guidance - supporting resilience, sustainability and collaboration across Wales.

Meet the Artists

Elise Norgate

Hi I'm Elise! I'm from a small village in the Bannau Brycheiniog. My background is in ballet and contemporary dance with particular loves of improvisation with voice and movement, chance-based choreography, and Zumba.

Through CYD I'm really looking forward to finding community with like-minded artists and expanding the edges of how I think and work artistically.

Eluned Owen

Shwmae, Eluned Owen ydw i. I’m a Welsh dance artist from Aberystwyth, now residing in Cardiff. I’m an inclusive choreographer and screen dance maker. My choreography is intended to inspire joy for the performers, whereas my film work often includes themes of my Welsh and female identity.

Through CYD, I’m excited to meet other practitioners and expand our crafts together, to create a more inclusive dance sector in Wales.

Fran Higginson

I want to make places where everyone can find their own dance way. I am really interested in how touch and materials influence dance. I love it when there is no right answer. Things can get a bit silly. I love the feel of silence and I love working with language. I love that talking about dancing can sound like poetry. I enjoy learning Cymraeg (and other languages) and I like to find new meanings in between.

For CYD I have got lots of ideas. I am excited to think about inclusion in my early years and family work, developing the sense-world of my practice to make it more diversely inspiring and responsive. Also, I want to explore how I can build professional collaborations with dancers who may have been involved in inclusive dance for years as participants or volunteers.

‍ ‍Jessica Lerner

Jessica is a visual movement artist. Originally from London she has been living in Carmarthenshire, Wales since 2002, where she has a movement studio.

She has been making and showing work since 1989 within experimental dance venues and galleries. She has collaborated with film, dance, visual and sound artists. Her work is in live performance, installation and painting.

Jessica’s performances are playful, inventive and show vulnerability. She dances with objects and responds to location in an interplay creating a collage including somatic dance and live art. Through her improvisations, elements from family history, personal relationships and everyday life situations surface in a dreamscape of the abstract and concrete. 

She is drawn to the wild spaces of the Black Mountain where she lives. 

Jess is interested in learning about and sharing practices, with a focus on inclusivity, examining what this means and what is possible and trying things out , forming questions and widening my field of awareness. Coming from this with a personal enquiry, being a family member of my niece with a disability could be rich, but also challenging. 

Maeve Clara

I’m Maeve, an interdisciplinary freelance artist and facilitator in West Wales. I work broadly within Arts, Health and Wellbeing, with community often at the heart of projects. I’m really interested in how creativity can help bring us back to our bodies and connect with others, with movement and dance being great places to explore. Working inclusively matters to me, but there’s still so much to learn!

Something you're excited about exploring through CYD: I’m really excited to explore new ways of working and practice, whilst getting to meet and learn with such a rich range of individuals, organisations and communities and to connect across Wales.

Jess Tanner

I’m Jess Tanner, a multidisciplinary artist, ecotherapist and facilitator. I use movement, performance, video and storytelling to explore relationships between body, ecology and landscape. Through embodied practice, I’m interested in how immersive, multisensory approaches can open new ways of experiencing and accessing green spaces, and build community and solidarity between people, places and more-than-human life.

Inclusivity and access are central themes in my outdoor practice, and I’m really looking forward to joining CYD for this time of shared learning and discovery

Melody Watson

Hi! I'm Melody and I coordinate Mid Powys Youth Theatre (alongside loads of other creative pursuits across Wales). I think being involved in this project is going to be a really exciting chapter of my life; I can't wait to start!

Kaylum Cosgrave

Hello! My name is Kaylum and I consider myself to be a multi-disciplinary artist with a mixture of skills from making, performing and writing. I am the co-founder of an art collective called Future Of Fauna which brings celtic folklore inspired outdoor theatre to various festivals across the UK.

Outdoor theatre is very dear to me, as it is often silly, grandiose, colourful and accessible to all. Although I have not been formally trained and have had only a handful of mentoring experiences, I have found success in progressing myself by working closely with and learning from other experienced artists.

With that in mind, something that excites me about CYD is the opportunity to network with other artists and learn from them all I can about movement and dance, as well as how to be a successful facilitator so I can one day offer people like me the opportunity to learn and upskill themselves.

Zosia Jo

Zosia Jo is a dance artist, facilitator and trainee gestalt psychotherapist. She studied at Northern School of Contemporary Dance (BA, 2008), Independent Dance / Trinity Laban (MA Creative Practice, 2018), Spectrum Therapy (2013-14) and currently Welsh Psychotherapy Institute. Her creative work is rooted in somatic and improvised dance and combines performance making with community practice. Having worked internationally as a dance artist, Zosia now lives in Cardiff, developing her psychotherapy practice and facilitating movement sessions alongside family life.

CYD is a lifeline for me right now, I’m emerging from my second maternity service period in 3 years, both organisations I worked with have failed to renew their funding and I am floating untethered. I am hoping to fill this blank slate with movement and therapeutic work which is inclusive, creative, ambitious and joyous. Cyd feels like a good place to start.