[Organizers] Timing of family/community dances and how that impacts attendance?

[Emily Addison]

Hi All,

Following up from my email just now, I had a question about
family/community dances.

What timing do you find works best for your early evening family/community
dances? And what age groups do you get?

Here's my back story:
Ottawa Contra Dance's afternoon family dances have been running for 8yrs.
They occur from 330-5pm and there is a potluck right after.  Despite trying
to recruit school-aged children to those dances, we've mostly been getting
children in the 0-7 age range.

We want to have school-aged children attending our events and so we have
JUST have started an early evening community dance (630-730pm) with potluck
at 5:15 (advanced contra dance finishes at 5pm; contra beginner cont lesson
for the evening dance starts at 730pm ... it's a tight but good fit).
People who attend the community dance can stay for the contra beginner
lesson and first two contra dances as part of their community dance entry.
(We also have a little corner with a rug for kids to hang out in if parents
want to contra dance but kids not up for it... although kids totally
welcome during the contra dances 8-11pm).  We've only had three community
dances so far and we've had a few school-aged families at each.  However,
we want to get a lot more out and we do want families with young children
also enjoying this dance.  (We may or may not phase out our family dances
in the future depending on how things evolve.)

I'm wondering if we should tweak our timing next year in order to try to
engage more families.

What if we started the dance at 6pm??? I worry that families wouldn't come
as that's supper time.  But leaving it much later starts getting into
bedtime.

??? ???

With thanks!
Emily in Ottawa

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