Decoding community engagement in dance with systems thinking

Abstract

ABSTRACT Private dance studios exist outside the scope of K-12 institutions in the United States and serve students within their local communities. Many of them strive to benefit underrepresented groups fthrough community engagement initiatives. This mixed-method study scrutinizes the various community engagement practices of private dance studios through a grounded theory approach to investigate the following research questions: 1) What are the different ways private studios engage with community engagement practices? 2) How are the concepts of ‘community’ and ‘engagement’ perceived and manifested within dance studio practices? 3) How do community contexts and external environments influence the management of community engagement practices of dance studios? By engaging systems thinking and existing literature on arts-based civic engagement, we propose a three-level community engagement conceptual framework for dance programs and studios to better understand their communities and apply systems thinking to leverage resources and constraints within and beyond programs and organizations.