The ERC DANCING Project Final Report

This report presents an overview of the past 5 years of research led under the European Research Council (ERC) funded project ‘Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union (EU) Law: Exploring New Paths – DANCING’. It describes the project, its objectives and ambitions, as well as delves into its organisational approaches and dissemination strategy. On the whole, the report showcases how DANCING has advanced the state of knowledge and contributed to methodological innovation. It further discusses the extent to which DANCING contributed to interdisciplinary scholarship on disability rights, particularly on the right of persons with disabilities to participate in cultural life, and supported the shaping of EU disability law as a standalone field of academic research. In that regard, the report shows that DANCING also enriched the broader scholarly debate on the EU integration, and on non-doctrinal methodological approaches to EU law. The impact of DANCING extends beyond scholarship, and the report further presents how the project endeavoured to effect social and policy change in the Cultural and Creative Sector (CCS).

DANCING comprised four different Work Packages (WP). Three of them relate to the key objectives of the project (experiential, normative and theoretical), while the fourth focuses on translating the research into practical tools for change which affect various stakeholders of the project. DANCING embraced a socio-legal perspective, and pursued an analysis of law that directly engaged with the social contexts, practices and stakes to which legal norms apply. Consistent with this perspective, and in order to achieve the three objectives indicated above, DANCING’s research strategy combined legal doctrinal research, qualitative research and arts-based research. 

Over the past five years, DANCING produced groundbreaking research. The project shed light on the barriers to, and facilitators of, cultural participation experienced by persons with disabilities and how they affect the wider cultural domain. It provided a normative exploration of how the EU has used - and can use in the future - its full range of competences to make the CCS more inclusive of, and more accessible to, persons with disabilities. It also looked at the intertwining between the promotion of accessibility and inclusivity and the enhancement of cultural diversity. The project also articulated a new theorisation of the promotion of cultural diversity as encompassing disability within the EU legal order. Such theorisation underpins several of the scholarly outputs released in the last part of the project or currently in press.

The findings of the DANCING project were disseminated beyond academic circles through a range of initiatives, including non-academic publications and public events, aimed at raising awareness among the broadest possible audience. DANCING’s ambition, innovative research methods, and numerous achievements contributed to unveiling both the normative and practical dimensions of participation in cultural life for people with disabilities, while opening new avenues for future interdisciplinary research.