Why we pay our 'community participants'

In the reality of contemporary experience that results in poverty - social poverty, poverty of creative individual expression and of physical experience, We don’t feel comfortable in exploiting this lack felt by so many by offering opportunities to give skills, uniqueness and creative expression for free.

We don’t feel comfortable making an artistic choice to work with ‘untrained’ human beings and not paying them, when we are in the fortunate position to be working with funding. These decisions are artistic and we should take responsibility for them in a human way. If we as a collective want to make a creative choice to integrate the honesty and authenticity often so beautiful when working with un-trained humans, we feel this is a decision to ‘work’ with them, not to mirror contemporary poverty by offering an unpaid ‘opportunity’.

We know that this is against contemporary practice, we know others will likely disagree, but we feel strongly that this is a more ethical way forward and call to others to do the same.

Our ‘community participants’ are performers, artists and technicians in their own right if they choose to participate in one of our projects. If you would like to see an example of the equality and integration we hope this brings we are holding a preview of our current integrated project BOOTH on Sunday 24th March in the upstairs space at St Marks Church, Myddelton Sqaure, Clerkenwell, London, EC1R 1XX at 19:00. Contact us at mail@ensmebledance.org if you;d like to come.