“I won the golden ball like Messi”: study of an inclusive dance experience with homeless people

Abstract

This paper presents a case study with an ethnographic approach focusing on an inclusive dance training workshop in Granada (Spain) that involved people of different ages, ethnicities, abilities and socio-economic backgrounds. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews with three of the homeless people who participated as trainees, this article analyses how the workshop space provided a ‘refuge’ from hostile life circumstances and a place to showcase their positive qualities and skills. It also discusses how the experience might have reproduced the same discriminatory structures suffered by homeless people in other contexts, and how the richness of the training experience might have been undermined by its dependence on the objectives of the bank that funded the event. Consequently, this research exposes the achievements of the experience through the voice of its participants, but also delves into the dilemmas and contradictions that arise within the framework of this inclusive artistic action experience.