Lowry Youth Dance Project - Project 3

The Lowry Youth Dance Project is running at The Lowry in Salford Quays from Thursday 15 October 2026 to Thursday 8 July 2027, with a performance on 6 May. It's a dance project for young people aged 8 to 14, built around workshops in choreography, movement and improvisation, and it ends with a performance opportunity on stage.

The project is part of The Lowry CAT (Centre for Advanced Training), the North West's centre for pre-vocational dance training. The CAT itself is a part-time course for young people aged 11 to 18, with students joining no older than 16 and training until 18. The Youth Dance Project sits alongside that, calling to those aged 9 to 15, all genders and abilities welcome, to pick up new movement techniques and unleash their artistic and physical creativity. The workshops are the main thing here — choreography, movement and improvisation — so it's as much about learning how to make dance as it is about dancing it.

It all happens in Studio 3 at The Lowry, which opened at Salford Quays in 2000. The building houses two theatres — the Lyric, the largest UK stage outside the West End with 1,730 seats, and the Quays, with 440 — plus a drama studio, galleries and events spaces. It's a registered charity that offers free creative participation and has premiered shows like 42 Balloons, with partner companies including Birmingham Royal Ballet, National Theatre, Opera North and Rambert. The Youth Dance Project is one of the ways it opens up that space to younger dancers.

So, if you've got a young person at home who's into dance, this is a good way to get them into a proper studio environment. The workshops run from mid-October through to early July, with the performance on 6 May. It's open to all genders and abilities, and the age range is 8 to 14, so there's plenty of room to fit in.