Burnley dance expert's Malaysian fact-finding mission (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Burnley dance expert's Malaysian fact-finding mission

1:40pm Monday 13th April 2009 in Harle Syke By Peter Magill, Chief reporter

A DANCE expert from Burnley is jetting out to Malaysia tomorrow on a month-long bridge-building exerciser designed to improve community cohesion in Lancashire.

Tids Pickard, 30, a dance theatre artist who lives in Harle Syke, is taking part in a vocational exchange to experience the country’s culture and institutions, observe how her Malaysian counterparts work and exchange ideas on bringing communities together.

The trip is being funded by The Rotary Foundation through its Group Study Exchange (GSE) programme.

She will be joined on the trip by Sgt Abid Khan, a Blackburn-based officer, and team leader Lynne McDougal, a Darwen-based holistic therapist and member of the Rotary Club of Church and Oswaldtwistle, who is hoping to learn about Malaysia's health care systems.

Blackpool Council equalities advisor Catherine Mugonyi and prison worker Bronya Cooper make up the rest of the group.

Tids is partway through a three-year project for East Lancashire Primary Care Trust which sees her undertaking health promotion work in schools across Burnley and Pendle.

Previously Tids has toured the country as a professional performer but is now concentrating on project work.

She added: “I am hoping to visit some community arts projects out there which are related to dance, which also address health issues.

“Hopefully then I will be able to bring some of these ideas back to the work I do in Burnley and Pendle.”

Like the rest of the party, she will be stopping with host families as the expedition tours various locations in the Far East country.

Five Malaysians, including an IT consultant, an architect and a car manufacture worker, have already been to Lancashire, where they visited Accrington and Rossendale College, Leyland Truck Museum, the Textile Museum in Helmshore, Stoneyhurst College and Ribchester's Roman ruins.