Two aspects to having an inclusive dance, one is for the dancers who come to feel welcomed,
which is what you are focusing on at the moment,
but there's also how do you present your dance such that different groups of people feel welcome to come at all. 

Re dancers who come feeling welcome, there's all the usual mechanisms noted already, but, in addition,
you can have better dancers in your community be "dance angels" who are on the look out for new dancers
or dancers side lined and invite them to dance.  This is a program that several dance organizations
use, as brought up in our SE region organizers weekend retreats over the past two years.
These dance angels often have special buttons denoting them as such, i.e. its usually an explicit program.
-
I'd also mention the Jonesborough dance's program of getting contact information for all new dancers
and having people follow up with a phone call.  That's a special touch that makes new dancers
feel like they have value. I'm not ready to go that far at our dance, but we do try to have a
designated "host" who welcomes dancers as they arrive. We require the caller to take this role
on at the start of the lesson, but in addition we have another person to ensure new dancers
don't feel lost when they walk into the dance hall.
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Re making different demographics feel comfortable, the obvious answer which is also the
hardest to fix answer is to have a full spectrum of demographics attending your dance.
Then when a new dancer does come in they have a sense that they are welcome because
their demographic is present.  But that is a chicken-and-egg thing.
Social time on the weekend is precious time, and many dancers want to dance in a social group where
their age/social/? cohort is represented.
One of my flippant targets for younger dancers (age distribution) is "a third under thirty".
Or, I check the stats from the door and look for 25% of the dancers be paying as students.
-
Another insight that came out of our last regional organizers weekend retreat is that
if social media (facebook, official web page, youtubes) of your dance show old white folks
then young and non-white folks will likely avoid (for example). 
Yes, another chicken-and-egg thing. But something to be conscious of.

Aging of our community is something I'm acutely aware/concerned about.
I encountered square dancing in the late 1960s in the mid-west when the age range was 40s to 60s.
Some 20 years ago you could square dance every night of the week in the north Atlanta metro area,
though it was rare to find a square dancer in those groups who was younger than 50 and most were well into their 60s.
My understanding is that most of those square dances have died out.
The one in my small city, Gainesville, did.
________________________

Heitzso
http://atgaga.com



Organizers --

What do you do or have seen others do to build inclusivity at your dances? 

What is your vision of inclusivity?

Culturally, how do you balance a culture of consent (nobody *owes* anybody else a dance, you can refuse without explanation at any time and dance with somebody else) with a culture of inclusion where anybody who walks in the door, whether they're new dancers, middle-aged women, newish dancers in the zone between "let's take care of the first-timers" and being experienced dancers who can take care of  themselves, etc. can be genuinely welcome and can dance as much as they want to without feeling like they're part of an out group?

I was discussing this with Seth Tepfer and he set up a google doc to collect ideas.  It'd be rude to make people on the list go there to participate in this discussion and that format is bad for clarifying questions anyway, so you may certainly update that document but you can also just post here and I'll try to add new ideas to the doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vwc-weK43t9nJ94LJIQg6UxiUeP8iqT1_VvqZO7P6z4

Doc contents right now:

'

  1. Caller can be encouraged to program circle and scatter mixers. After the circle or scatter mix, the caller can say 'keep this parter for the next dance.

  2. Callers and dance organizers can reserve the first 1/3 of the evening to only dancing with new dancers. Role model this behavior for other experienced dancers

  3. During the early 1/3 of the evening, the organization can welcome everybody, and applaud the new dancers

  4. Nametags for everyone.

  5. We used to have nametags saying (it's my 1st/2nd/3rd time here: ask me to dance)

  6. Caller's can remind folks to ask the people sitting out to dance.

  7. Try to discourage booking ahead. Talk about why booking ahead is detrimental to your community - on listservs, in signs, at post dance gathering.

(I'm an organizer for the Palo Alto Contra dance, an English dance series, and some camps, and an English/Victorian/Regency/Contra caller.   Even if what organizers can do is what callers can do, the organizers can tell the callers to do what they can do, so caller suggestions are appropriate here.)