Country Dance & Song Society

This section of the Resource Portal was inspired by our core value of Inclusivity. As an arts organization, CDSS understands inclusivity to mean striving to promote cultural equity. Cultural equity embodies the values, policies, and practices of providing equal access to the arts, including our dance, music, and song traditions, especially to people who historically have been underrepresented or denied access based on age, body size or type, citizenship status, disability, gender identity or expression, military or former military status, national or ethnic origin, race, religion, sexual or romantic orientation, or socioeconomic status.

In our communities, this means we are working to ensure that everyone who wants to participate in our traditions is empowered to do so with a full sense of belonging and ownership. This also means we are working to educate ourselves on the full history of our living traditions, including where and how these traditions have silenced marginalized voices and appropriated ideas from them.

With that in mind, the resources here are categorized by three purposes:

1. Amplifying marginalized perspectives (noted as “perspectives”) from modern-day folks in participatory dance, music, and song communities with identities that have historically been unacknowledged or ignored.

2. Expanding/retelling history (noted as “history”) of our various traditions to include narratives outside of the history written by the dominant culture that most of us are already familiar with.

3. Increasing inclusivity in our communities (noted as “communities”) using practical advice from folks who have implemented both specific and general strategies in their own organizations.

For the initial launch of this section, we focused on race, sexual/romantic orientation, and gender; as this section grows, it will include more resources related to different marginalized identities.