I’m happy to report some progress being made towards greater diversity in contact improvisation.
For the first time, Earthdance is offering a Diversity Scholarship for the October Falling Leaves Jam (10/23 – 10/26). The deadline is coming up soon — this Monday, October 6. (I’m way behind on getting this post up.)
The Scholarship is open to anyone who self-identifies as belonging to an group that’s under-represented in contact improvisation and who has not attended an Earthdance seasonal jam before. The award is free admission and room & board for the Falling Leaves Jam (10/23 – 10/26), plus a small travel stipend.
Here’s info on the Scholarship. And here’s info on the Falling Leaves Jam.
The deadline is soon, but the application is pretty simple — just two paragraphs and a short recommendation.
This is a personal project of mine that I suggested to Earthdance, and which they have taken the leap of implementing. This is also the first diversity scholarship that I know of for any contact improvisation event. Hopefully we can learn a lot from it, and it can become a model for scholarships offered by other CI events and other CI communities.