Dance Mama™ is a Community Interest Company advocating and celebrating professional dancing parents, highlighting the issues that they face and providing inspiration, information and support.
Creating a growing community beyond dance, Dance Mama is a UK-based ‘unique and vital resource,’ pioneering research, information share, content and resources, learning activity, professional development and mentoring online and in person for parents in dance.
Hailed a ‘lifeline’ by participants, our flagship membership programme supports parents in dance through hybrid professional development opportunities. It includes access to specialist webinars and workshops with world-class experts from across dance, science, sport and medicine from our award-winning Dance Mama Live series (supported by Arts Council England), produced with 10 national dance organisations.
Our commitment to research and support for parents in dance across the globe, Dance Mama Co-Founded the International Parenting and Dance Network with partners in Texas Tech University (USA) and Queen’s University Belfast (N. Ireland) in 2021, alongside setting up a UK network to share best practice.
At the heart of our work is learning from sharing experiences of parents in dance. This foundation is born out of Dance Mama’s beginnings as a modest platform for stories uncovered whilst researching for an article Founder, Lucy McCrudden, wrote on becoming a mum and being dissatisfied with the lack of industry resources for parents back in 2014. The site now holds 80 interviews with 24 as podcast episodes and has attracted McCrudden award wins and nominations for her contribution to advocating for parents in dance. Lucy has recently shared the helix of her own story and Dance Mama’s development as a TEDx talk. As featured in Women’s Health & Barbie Campaign.
We help parents in dance move their worlds.
Lucy McCrudden is Founder/CEO of Dance Mama™ CIC, advocating and celebrating professional dancing parents, highlighting their issues and providing inspiration, information and support. Lucy’s 22-year career has dove-tailed her own work with key positions in learning and participation with world-class organisations including The Place and The Royal Opera House. She has taught over 19,000 people and has engaged with a wide variety of cultural organisations in consulting, management, choreography and presenting/public speaking roles. An Ambassador for PiPA Campaign and Secretariat – Active Pregnancy Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board, she received an Honourable Mention for the inaugural AWA Woman in Dance Award, won One Dance UK’s Change Maker Award 2022, in the same year she delivered her TEDx talk as she embarked on her PhD at Christ Church Canterbury University. In 2023 she co-Founded the AHRC-funded International Parenting and Dance Network and was shortlisted for This Mum Moves Ambassador of the Year. Lucy is a mum of two.