A mother from Halesowen in the West Midlands has taken a pro-active step forward in seeking a way of helping to fund her daughters’ ongoing ‘Dance Training’ by helping to create a start-up business with her daughter. The business is initially to be focused purely towards developing online services to benefit the whole of the UK’s dance community and as such she has aptly called the business ‘ABOUT Dance’.
Lorraine Tierney said, “By having two daughters aged 17 & 22, both of whom started dancing at the age of 3 and who are still actively working towards pursuing and establishing their own individual careers within the arts sector, made me think that starting a business within the performing arts sector seemed to make sense in more ways than one.”
As part of the continued dance training progression for her youngest daughter, meant that after being awarded a 3-year dance scholarship to attend a vocational dance school she was fortunate enough to be able to take up the once in a lifetime opportunity after finishing her GCSE’s and move on to a performing arts school in Hertfordshire in September 2014.
Lorraine continued “Many parents, if like me will no doubt agree that they can have a demanding dance duty to their children and as such there‘s a lot of time and effort, as well as monetary commitments which are required by those parents whose children are involved with dance and wish to remain so.”
“So with my youngest daughter having this lifetime opportunity to move further on in her dance training and despite her being in receipt of a scholarship now means that there is 3 years worth of costs for us as parents to fund – for such things as accommodation and uniform, plus her general living expenses. I decided that my best route forward was for us to set up our own business which could be targeted towards the dance industry whilst providing us with the ability to contribute financially towards my daughters’ ongoing vocational dance budget requirements.”
Lorraine’s knowledge of dance and the needs of dancers came from the 19 years of experience, in helping with as well as attending numerous dance shows, festivals, dance exams and auditions. Lorraine further comments “So whilst wondering what to do, a light bulb moment happened – because I always remember thinking that when I have looked online as part of my dance duty as a mom and searched for things such as dance suppliers and dance schools often I would come across the odd dance directory which may either be poor for users to navigate through or not serve any real purpose to those dance community members who may use or come across such a dance directory service.”
“So we decided to create an online dance directory of our own in order to serve a real purpose in more ways than one, this particular website site is hopefully only the start of my continued involvement within the field of dance as well as what our ‘ABOUT Dance’ business plans to offer in the future.”
Dancers know only too well that their active performing careers can be relatively short-lived after which they may then resort to teaching roles or opening their own dance school or similar. Our idea about starting the ‘ABOUT Dance’ business now is not only to do it for ourself, in particular, my youngest daughters’ immediate funding needs; But to do it for both my daughters who if all goes well and when the time is right could have a readymade dance business to take over and in an industry which they want to stay within.
The dance directory website can be found at dancedirectory.co.uk