The Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance
The Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance was established in 2003 and honours Caroline Plummer (1978-2003).
Caroline completed a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and a Diploma for Graduates in Dance, and was awarded the University of Otago Prestige Scholarship in Arts. What made her academic achievement most remarkable was she was diagnosed and treated for cancer during her study. Caroline completed her degrees in November 2002 and was given a personal graduation ceremony in March 2003. She died on 28 April 2003. The Fellowship acknowledges Caroline's outstanding scholarship at the University of Otago, her passion for dance, and her vision for community dance in New Zealand.
The annual fellowship is for six months (usually February until July), and is open to community dance practitioners, teachers and researches from New Zealand and overseas who have a proposed programme of activity, or project, that furthers Caroline's belief and aspirations for community dance in New Zealand. It provides the recipient with an office/dance space and not less than the minimum salary of a fulltime University Lecturer for a six-month period.
Previous Fellowship recipients
- Sean Curham, 2009
- Barbara Snook, 2008
Suzanne Cowan
Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance
With her Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance, Auckland performer and choreographer Suzanne Cowan plans to choreograph a dance project, called Sight lines from the perspective of people with visual impairments.
Working with the Dunedin sight-impaired community and students from Dance Studies, she plans to use the media of dance, photography, video and sound to create a "vision for dance as a means of embracing diversity and difference."
The planned finished work will involve a performance at the university and in a Dunedin community arts space, a website designed for people with visual impairments, and an academic research paper for publication based on the project's findings.
"I am thrilled and honoured to be the next recipient of the Caroline Plummer Fellowship," she says.
"It is a wonderful opportunity to develop something really unique in an exciting part of the country. It is also an opportunity to build on my choreographic experience and take it in a whole new direction."
She says her interest in the creative possibilities inherent within physical and sensory impairment stems from her own experience of living with a spinal injury and using a wheelchair.
Ms Cowan received First Class Honours upon completing her Master of Creative and Performing Arts degree from University of Auckland in 2009. She also worked for an international mixed ability dance company 'Candoco' for three and a half years touring internationally (from 2000 - 2003).