Joe and Barnaby both receive funding to help them train because Northern Ballet and NSCD are National Centres for Advanced Training in Dance (CAT).<\/p>\n
The schools offer a training programme to the next generation of aspiring dancers aged between 11 and 18 which is funded by the Department for Education (DfE).<\/p>\n
Until it was cut earlier this year, the CAT programme also had an outreach arm that funded dance schools to go into communities and mainstream schools to find potential dancers.<\/p>\n
Students and teachers fear the CAT scheme could be cut altogether after they were told that ministers could only promise funding until the end of this academic year.<\/p>\n
According to its organisers, across its 10 regional centres, the CAT scheme reaches about 900 students.<\/p>\n
About 68% of those receive means-tested bursaries and 52% come from households earning less than \u00a325,000.<\/p>\n
Ms Witney, who as well as teaching Joe is also chair of the National Dance CAT managers group, says: “Joe’s training was supported by DfE grants, so Joe’s career trajectory has been supported by that financial income.<\/p>\n
“Without those grants, we won’t have the Joes.”<\/p>\n
The DfE says it is committed to “breaking down barriers to opportunity so every child can achieve and thrive”.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the department said it was providing \u00a336.5m across the music and dance CAT schemes this academic year.<\/p>\n
“We are creating those dancers of the future, it’s just we need that support and that backing to keep it going,” says Ms Witney.<\/p>\n
“It might be 25 years of Billy Elliot, but actually some things still haven’t changed – or they did, and then they’ve come back around again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe and Barnaby both receive funding to help them train because Northern Ballet and NSCD are National Centres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,393,4884,1860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-543742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-leeds","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}