Developing professional equality: an analysis of a social movement in the Scottish dance industry

Abstract

This article analyses the growth of professional equality in the Scottish dance industry. It defines the growth of professional equality as a social movement driven by a group of core and peripheral individuals and organisations bound together by a shared cause. Through defining professional equality as a social movement, the article analyses the challenges, strategies and contextual factors that enabled the emergence of Scotland as a ‘hotspot’ for disabled dancers. The data used in this article is an autoethnographic account of professional equality co-produced by the first author (as interrogator) and the second author (as autoethnographer). Using the autoethnographic method allows us to address the development of professional equality ‘from within’ the movement and to highlight three key factors that drive the movement forward: the genesis of the professional equality movement within the dance industry (rather than outside it); informal networks, which secure information sharing and collective advocacy across the sector; and the institutional characteristics of the industry, in particular the lack of a national disability arts organisation.