Our Postdoctoral Research Associate in The Moving Bodies Lab, Emily Davis, has co-authored a new qualitative research article in Health Promotion International: ‘Dance for health impact in a rural Scottish island community: understanding stakeholder experiences.’
Emily’s article considers the impact of a community-centred, collaborative dance for multiple sclerosis (MS) initiative in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, a rural, remote island community with the highest prevalence of MS globally.   
Most research concerning disease-specific dance initiatives narrowly focuses on individual-level therapeutic outcomes, providing limited insight into wider stakeholder voices and community-level health impacts. In response, a longitudinal design was adopted and repeated interviews were conducted with involved organizational partners, dance practitioners, musicians, volunteers, and participant dancers with MS, providing a breadth of perspectives and insights into the wider potential impacts of dance for MS both among and beyond the primary target participant group, i.e., people living and dancing with MS.
Findings demonstrate the community impact of engagement with the dance for MS initiative in terms of amplifying specialist community dance capacity, promoting social capital and inclusion, and providing a holistic well-being resource. Regarding local capacity, the project supported local dance practitioners and musicians in developing a new specialist skillset in dance for MS, which, in turn, widened community access for individuals with MS to new specialist health-promoting dance provisions. In terms of social capital, impacts were reported across linking, bridging, and bonding forms of social capital, with particular insights into bridging across social differences like generations, professions, and illness experiences in the island community through the dance initiative.
There’s no differentiation really between who’s a musician, a dancer, a volunteer, or a person with MS. It’s a very inclusive class. And there’s no hierarchy in it. Everybody’s accepted and just does their own little bits that’s needed.
PROJECT VOLUNTEER, DANCE FOR MS INITIATIVE
Overall, for people with MS, sessions also provided a holistic well-being resource, affording regular opportunities for physical, joyful, and meaningful activity through dance, with some delivery staff also finding well-being and a sense of purpose through their roles in weekly sessions. Taken together, findings show a unique potential for locally developed and delivered dance for health programming in rural contexts.
If you’re interested in finding out more, Emily’s co-authored paper is available open access under Wellcome’s policy and can be read in full here:
Emily Davis, Bethany Whiteside, Tiffany Stott, Lorna Paul, Dance for health impact in a rural Scottish island community: understanding stakeholder experiences, Health Promotion International, Volume 41, Issue 3, June 2026.
