About Swing Out London
This website is designed to give dancers (or dancers-to-be) all the information they need to take advantage of London's Swing Dancing scene.
London has one of the oldest revival Swing Dancing scenes in Europe and probably one of the biggest. Navigating it all can be difficult: part of the reason I made Swing Out London was so that I could to keep track of what's going on.
I try to make it useful for others by making sure that it is always:
1. Clear
Easy to read and quick to decide where you want to learn and dance
2. Accurate and Up-to-Date
If it's new it get's listed, if it changes it gets updated, if it's cancelled it gets flagged, if it's dead it's not listed
3. Comprehensive
Every class and every social dancing opportunity (within certain criteria: see Listings Policy)
5. Independent
Complete and unbiased
How does it work?
There's a lot of information on the site, but it's not so much work to keep it updated:
Firstly, Swing Out London is a listing of links to other websites: the only information on the site is the minimum required to decide whether you're interested in checking out those links. Details like times, DJs and class details are best managed by the websites of the event organisers.
Next, it only lists the next 14 days: this helps ensure that the listings are complete and accurate.
I'm on all of the mailing lists, Facebook groups and Twitter feeds. I also get emailed by promoters and helpful dancers about new events, changes and cancellations. Basically I'm in as good a position as anyone to know what's going on.
I've written a system to manage the listings: weekly events are assumed to repeat until I hear otherwise, and I queue up the dates for less frequent events when I hear about them.
Also Listing Vintage Events
Swing Out London attempts to list all the social dancing opportunities in town - not just those aimed at dancers. With the recent burst of interest in Vintage in London there are a number of vintage-themed events like the Blitz party and the Candlelight club which are not aimed at swing dancers, but which play suitable music.
These nights aren't to everyone's taste and you shouldn't necessarily expect to find dancers there, but if you Bring Your Own there's often a fun evening to be had. The same applies to swing gigs.
Grassroots Swing Dance
London has a large and well-established infrastructure of Swing Dance schools, but this is augmented by a number of independent not-for-profit groups who deserve kudos for their services to the scene:
Swing Dancers Of London are a great positive force for promoting Swing Dance in the capital. They occasionally organise events and the SDOL Facebook group is the hub for debate, rants and event promotion in the scene
The London Lindy Exchange is an annual event which invites dancers from all over the world to come and dance here. A large number of overseas visitors are hosted by locals
The Sunday Shuffle is a Monthly not-for-profit Balboa social dance
Although Blues Revolution isn't exclusively not-for-profit, they are a driving force behind Blues dancing in London
Swing Records is a Facebook Group which promotes and arranges for free and discounted entry for dancers to events