WhoLoDancE: Deliverable 2.1 - Recruitment protocol and informed consent form

The success of the WhoLoDancE project is dependent on being able to build a repository of dance movements and to do this we need to draw on the expertise and experience of dancers who are competent practitioners in a range of dance genres. A number of dancers will be invited to perform set sequences of movement in a variety of dance genres for both video and 3D capture. Most dancers will be drawn from the project consortium. Any dancer who is not a member of the WhoLoDancE project team will receive a Participant Information Sheet and be required to sign an Informed Consent Form as a mandatory precondition for their involvement in the study. Both these documents will need to be approved by each participating research organisation’s ethics committee before distributing to participants. Gaining ethical approval ensures that the project team is proceeding responsibly with due care for the participants and the storage of data that will be produced as part of the data capture process. Whilst it is not possible to anonymise the video recordings, these recordings will be made as part of the research process for internal visual reference, to assist in the database creation process and to define the shot-lists for the 3D motion captures so will not enter the public domain without prior permission being specifically sought from the participant. All video and 3D records will be retained securely and no personal data of the participants will be stored.

It is the duty of all researchers to ensure that any research activity meets the highest ethical standards. The project team has submitted the research protocol and associated documents for ethical review and clearance to Coventry University’s research committee in line with its requirement that all subject related research obtain ethical approval before undertaking any research involving human participants. Ethical review and approval will also be sought from other participating research organisations as appropriate. WhoLoDancE falls under Coventry University’s requirement that ethical approval is required for any research, design studies, artistic studies, experiments, survey work, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups or case studies.