– Ian Abbott, September 2026 –
One of the big pieces of work we’ve done over the last six months has been to create and embed a new operational and organisational clarity; this type of internal work is as important to the structural health of any organisation as the external output and public facing delivery.
As SPD entered the ACE NPO in the current round, there were many new systems that needed to be tested and built during the first three years; taking that step from being a very successful independent artist with decades of practice, productions and project specific teams does not necessarily prepare you for what is needed when operating as a company and charity, with the additional reporting, policy and external demands from ACE.
What this new clarity looks like has come from a series of targetted workshops and time spent together to think and plan together. We wanted to strengthen the connection between the staff and the board and ensure that everyone across the organisation could input into and understand how and where SPD positions itself and what its priorities should be from 2028-2033. Our outputs were:
- Defining our polycrisis priorities
- Developing a new ethical framework
- Three day organisational retreat
- Identifying our climate superpower
Polycrisis Priorities
With the capacity in the team, SPD cannot tackle all existing polycrises; so we voted on and articulated what our focus should be from the following six options:
- Class and structural power
- Racial justice and decolonisation
- Disability justice and access
- Climate justice and environmental responsibility
- AI and technological disruption
Racial justice and decolonisation was the clear priority with class and structural power coming second; so those two drivers will inform our strategic direction, actions and will be woven through our artistic output, internal organisational culture and how we behave and appear in the world.
Ethical Framework
We worked with Nadine Patel on our Ethical Framework, she offers this piece of work to other organisations and it felt like a good addition to what we were doing. While it’s primarily an internal document, what it does is sets out how our values, vision and mission are put into practice across our work, relationships, and decision-making. It ensures that what we create, how we collaborate, and how we operate are approached with transparency and intention. It provides a basis for decision-making where there are tensions, trade-offs, or uneven impacts, particularly in relation to power, access, authorship, and representation. Within the Ethical Framework our commitments are:
- Collaboration As Practice
- Equity Over Equality
- Responsibility To People
- Power Made Visible
- Decolonising Practice
Sitting under each of these is a lot more detail and questions about how these commitments will manifest in practice The questions are there to support us, enable reflection and create a clarity in decision-making. They are prompts to surface thinking, tensions, and implications.
- Is this aligned with who we are and what we are here to do?
- Are we set up to do this well, and what would need to be in place for that to happen?
- What are we gaining, what are we compromising, and are we being honest about both
- Does this reinforce existing systems, or does it help to shift them?
Organisational Retreat
We spent three days together at Hawkwood – Centre for Future Thinking (Stroud), facilitated by Lerato Stanley-Dunn, and what emerged from our time there was significant: a new vision statement, a new mission statement, the distillation of our core company values and a clear set of priorities and programmes for where we should focus our energy in the future.
The feedback from our board members was particularly heartening saying that they learned more about the company and felt a deeper connection to the company in those days, than they had in the previous 12 months of board meetings, sub groups and being present at events.
Our new vision is:
We are working towards a world where existing hierarchies, underpinned by colonialism, are dismantled across dance, the cultural industries and wider society opening up an equitable landscape in the arts and beyond, where economic, social and cultural investment is rebalanced, and we are sector leaders in how we work.
Our new mission statement is:
Seeta Patel Dance exists to provoke, disrupt and inspire; creating pioneering artistic work rooted in Bharatanatyam and supporting the next generation of South Asian artists. We do this through performance, artist development, community engagement and advocacy by working in solidarity with others and rooting our practice in our political and ethical values.
Our new values are:
Integrity, courage and responsibility
There was some useful new thinking and re-framing around the idea of “pedagogical solidarity” and SPD’s pedagogical approach as we are the only UK bharatanatyam led company with a non-hierarchical, research-backed pedagogical framework and we’re reshaping the traditional teacher-student relationship, bridging South Asian and western cultural contexts.
Identifying Our Climate Super Power
Amber Massie-Blomfeld of Fern Culture facilitated this piece of work which started with the idea of articulating what our climate super power could be. This was the area where SPD was weakest and where we’ve spent more time on since. We’re asking questions about how SPD can meaningfully contribute to this area of work, how can we develop our knowledge on what good practice looks like within the UK and internationally for organisations at our scale. Our Executive Director, Rae, took this challenge on and created a climate tracker that is related to the Theatre Green Book and covers all areas of the organisation – from production and transport to comms and policy. Whilst we’re not quite ready to define our climate super power, we’re making progress – we’ve got actions, task owners and most importantly how each point relates back to our ethical framework.
These were four separate pieces of work, but of course, they are inter-related and like any muscle, they will get stronger the more you use them. All of this means that we are in a much stronger operational position and working with a clarity that enables us to work in solidarity, deliver our external facing work and write a compelling ACE NPO application which is due to launch very soon.
