Grantham's u3a group

Following on from January's feature on u3a groups in Dance Scottish Together, John Aitken got in touch to share his experience of setting up a new Scottish country dancing group in Grantham.

'Having just read about the u3a Group set up by Peter Harris in Sutton Coldfield, it made me think I should share my own experience in Grantham. 

I am a member of RSCDS Nottingham, as well as the Newark and Waltham groups, both of which are Affiliated Branches. Soon after joining Grantham's u3a Group I heard that two members had expressed an interest in Scottish country dancing and there was a request for anyone who might be interested in taking it on as leader.  I expressed some cautious interest and of course was immediately given the role.  After making it known within the Grantham membership that a group was being set up and looking for members, the first session took place in April 2016 with interest expressed by 17 u3a members, none of whom had danced before.  There was quite a lot of coming and going during the first 18 months - a continual challenge for the teacher!  Since then, membership has settled down and we now have 19 regular members, six of whom have been coming since that first meeting.  I expected feedback that the dancing provided good physical exercise, but I was surprised at how widespread the mental challenge was - remembering the sequence of the formations.

We do not have plastic ducks, but I do use hula hoops to help learn reels and have a set of bean bags - four square red tartan ones for ladies and four round blue tartan ones for men; they are excellent props when learning virtually any formation.

We have celebrated our birthday each May with a cake and by the third birthday we had requests from local care homes to come and dance, so we also designed a logo and kitted ourselves out with t-shirts for our visits.

We meet in the local Squash Club and on one occasion a Squash Club member came out of the gym and saw us coming into the building, and after being told what we did, a u3a dancer said "why don't you come and try", not thinking he would - but he did and is now "hooked", looking up the programme each week to prepare, coming with scribbles and diagrams and has recently also joined one of the other local groups.

I am an avid fan of dance diagrams (now produced by Keith Rose) and during lockdown ran 20 weekly lessons using Zoom, and having finished them, was asked if they could be repeated for some who had not joined initially.  By that time lockdown was beginning to open up for outdoor exercise and on one occasion we practised reels of four using golf umbrellas to maintain distancing and prevent the temptation of hands, also making a colourful sunny photo. Umbrellas were certainly not a solution when dancing inside, with masks, so we tried not using hands as well as holding batons. We were very glad when we were at last able to throw the props away and simply dance!

I am really pleased to be able to report that we now have 16 members who have joined weekly classes run by other local groups while continuing with the u3a class, and some are now regularly dancing four times a week as well as looking out for weekend dances. 

I circulate a list of likely dances before each class and encourage members to look at a dancelist on my.strathspey.org - a wonderful tool - and the response is brilliant with many watching videos to help them learn.

It has been satisfying to see the progress from complete novice to competent dancers most of whom are sufficiently interested to seek out other local SCD groups, weekend dances and Day and Weekend Schools.'

Many thanks for sharing this with us John, and it's great to hear that the class is going from strength to strength.  If you have similar experiences you'd like to share with us, do get in touch at lyndsay.walker@rscds.org, we'd love to hear from you.