Case study:Achates Generates Income: Candoco

– Melanie Precious, Executive Director, Candoco Dance Company

Founded in 1991 by Celeste Dandeker-Arnold OBE and Adam Benjamin, Candoco Dance Company has spent 35 years redefining what dance is and who gets to make it. Now entering its 35th year, Candoco has evolved from a repertory dance company into a producing and artist development organisation, structured around four pillars: Performance and Commissions, Skills and Leadership, Partnerships, and Advocacy. Central to this transformation is the Artistic Assembly – a radical new model of distributed, democratic, disabled-led decision-making. With a deliberate commitment to 75% lived experience of disability among its members, each Assembly ensures that the people most affected by Candoco’s decisions are genuinely at the heart of making them.

As the organisation moved into the next phase of this evolution, securing major investment from core strategic funders was essential – not just to sustain the work, but to scale it. Candoco’s ambition is to work with over 500 D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent dancers, choreographers and creative leaders by March 2031.

Achates was commissioned to work on major funding bids in support of this vision. Working closely with the Executive Director, their team drafted and shaped compelling cases for investment that connected Candoco’s structural transformation to its purpose, its impact on artists and the wider sector, and its long-term sustainability.

Their support, spanning application writing, interview preparation, and prospect mapping, gave Candoco the confidence and clarity to approach these conversations not as an organisation in transition, but as one with a bold and grounded vision for what comes next. As Candoco’s Executive Director, Melanie Precious, put it: “we believe that dance is better when difference is celebrated and creating the conditions for that to happen requires exactly this kind of strategic partnership.“