Student safeguarding, emotional wellbeing and inclusion

Engage with a panel of experts and enrich your knowledge of creating safe spaces for students at each stage of their maturation and artistic development. There will also be an opportunity for attendees to ask questions.

Chair – Imogen Knight ARAD, BA (Hons), DDE, RAD TD, RAD RTS, RAD Trustee and founder member of the Safer Dance group.
Panel – Dr Siobhan Mitchell, Postdoctoral Researcher in Child and Adolescent Health.

Biography: Imogen Knight

Imogen Knight is a multi-disciplinary dance teacher whose first love is classical ballet. Trained at Northern Ballet School in Manchester UK, she is a registered teacher with the RAD and is an Associate of the ISTD.  Imogen continues to learn and to be curious about dance & education as part of her Continuing Professional Development.

Imogen’s approach is to teach correct technique through the art and style of the dance type they are studying in an appropriately structured class, freeing students to have fun, be creative and reach their potential, whether they are hobbyists or pre-vocational.  At Colours of Dance, Imogen has established a school founded on the principles of openness, respect, inclusion and hard work, which reflect her personal ethos.  In 2019, together with 4 other teachers/parents, Imogen established Colours of Dance Radiates, a charity which provides a weekly creative dance curriculum for primary school children as part of their school day.

In the wider dance community, in 2020, she co-founded Safer Dance, a working group which raises awareness on safeguarding in dance and develops free learning & reference resources. As an RAD Trustee, Imogen is the named safeguarding trustee, and currently chairs the Artistic Subcommittee and is deputy chair of the Global Membership & Marketing subcommittee.

Biography: Dr Siobhan Mitchell

Siobhan trained vocationally as a dancer before completing a BA Hons in Dance Studies (University of Roehampton), an MSc in Dance Science (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) and an MRes in Health and Wellbeing (University of Bath). Awarded a full ESRC studentship in 2014, Siobhan completed her doctorate in 2018 and currently works as a Research Fellow in Child and Adolescent Health at the University of Exeter. Siobhan’s doctoral research explored the psychological and social implications of early and late maturation in adolescent ballet dancers. More recently, Siobhan led the GuiDANCE project, a collaboration which aimed to review practices in the dance sector around growth and development and propose guidelines for the sector going forward. As a result of the GuiDANCE project, Siobhan is now working to establish the GuiDANCE Network, a collaboration of individuals and organisations working to improve support of children and young people in the dance sector. Siobhan is passionate about education in the area of adolescent development and regularly delivers workshops for dance teachers, dance students and parents of young dancers.