We are now entering an exciting new chapter. Following a period of strategic reset, Candoco has evolved from a repertory dance company into a producing organisation and a catalyst for artistic development. Our work is structured around four pillars: Performance & Commissions, Skills & Leadership, Partnerships and Advocacy.
Central to this transformation is a new governance and leadership model. We have replaced the traditional Artistic Director role with an Artistic Assembly, a collective body that makes curatorial and artistic decisions, forming around each major project or programme. Members are selected by our Lead team using our Ethical Framework. We work to ensure that each Assembly has 75% representation of lived experience of disability, ensuring disabled perspectives are genuinely central to how Candoco is led. This is a deliberate move away from hierarchical structures toward something more collaborative, distributed, and democratic.
Why we exist
Candoco exists to expand what dance can be, who makes it, and who experiences it.
We work to create the conditions for brilliance, by removing systemic barriers to dance for disabled makers, performers and leaders through our four activity pillars of performance, skills and leadership, partnering and advocacy. Our ambition is to work with over 500 disabled dancers, choreographers and creative leaders by March 2031, supporting more disabled dance artists than at any point in our history.
What we believe
We do this because we believe that dance is better when difference is celebrated.
How we work
Candoco’s values are: equitable, creative, nurturing, accountable.
We have an Ethical Framework which sets out how our organisational values are put into practice, particularly when decisions are complex or contested. It is practical and measurable. It strengthens accountability and consistency and guides decision-making at all levels, ensuring our commitments to disabled leadership, equity, accessibility and artistic ambition are enacted in practice across the organisation. And it is grounded in our belief that dance is better when difference is celebrated.
Our Values in Practice
Candoco commits to being:
Equitable. We’ll do this by:
- Proactively making the space for disabled artists and cultural workers to shape our artistic direction, organisational development, and decision-making structures.
- Recognising that equity does not mean identical treatment.
- Designing access and inclusion into our structures, processes, and programmes from the start to create the conditions for everyone to show up at their best. We aim for the highest possible standards and pledge to be transparent where constraints require conversation, compromise, or prioritisation.
- Actively removing structural barriers in order to redistribute power, opportunity, and resources.
Creative. We’ll do this by:
- Thinking differently about the way we do our work.
- Resisting the temptation to categorise people as ‘operations’ or ‘artistic’. Everyone in our organisation and who we work with we see as creative.
Nurturing. We’ll do this by:
- Seeing people whole. We are interested in who someone is, not just what they do for us. We stay curious about people’s contexts, ambitions and needs – and open to who they are becoming.
- Investing in people’s growth, not just their output. We ask what each person needs to develop and thrive and we make space for learning and experimentation.
- Holding challenge and care together. Being nurturing doesn’t mean avoiding difficulty. We are honest in ways that are kind and direct, treating feedback as an act of investment, not judgement.
Accountable: We’ll do this by:
- Being clear about how and why decisions are made, naming tensions openly, and taking responsibility for their impact. While personal histories shape reactions, harm to others is not acceptable and will be addressed through our Code of Conduct.
- Avoiding overconfident or performative language. When we get things wrong, we acknowledge it and use those moments to learn and improve.
- Making decisions that support long-term cultural, environmental, and organisational sustainability.
