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Momentum and New Horizons! Allegro-Inclusive Dance Strengthens its Transnational Collaboration

Last Monday, October 6, 2025, the partners of the Allegro-Inclusive Dance project—AENMA (Spain), BIDA (Germany), and PHOENIX (Malta)—held an important online coordination meeting. These meetings are key to ensuring that our innovative project, focused on disseminating the Psychoballet methodology for older people with cognitive impairment, maintains its course with the highest quality.

The meeting, coordinated by AENMA, served to review the path traveled so far and strengthen the future planning of the project.

The Great Achievements Driving Us Forward

We are very proud of the solid foundation we have built. In the initial phase of the project development, highly valuable aspects were identified that we want to maintain and highlight for the final report:

• Solid Foundations: The structure of the application and the precise identification of needs were positively evaluated.

• Strategic Planning: We have a Risk Minimization Plan (risk matrix) which has been rated as very important.

• Focus and Quality: The use of focus groups with users and professionals to define the activities, as well as the existence of well-defined selection criteria, are strong points that highlight the quality of our design.

• Active Collaboration: A fundamental element for success is the common interest among all partners, which ensures that we work as a compact team to achieve our objectives.

• Clarification of Roles and Progress: During the October meeting, significant progress was made in the clear definition of the leadership of each activity. It was reinforced that each project activity must have a leading entity responsible for setting the schedule and communicating it to the other partners.

  • PHOENIX (Malta) has taken the lead in the Psychoballet pilot workshops, in addition to coordinating the documentary activity (toolbox and documentary).

  • BIDA (Germany) reinforced its role leading the dissemination and communication of the project on the website.

  • This balanced distribution of tasks demonstrates and guarantees the commitment and active contribution of all institutions.

• Flexibility and Effectiveness: The decision to reprogram the transnational meeting by combining it with the training course in Spain proved to be highly positive, strengthening the bond between the partners and allowing the exchange of specific knowledge.

Our Next Key Challenges

The Allegro project continues to advance, and we face exciting challenges that will take us to the final stretch. The success of the project's final evaluation depends on placing more emphasis on certain actions. The main challenges we have yet to address include:

• Maximum Visibility and Dissemination: Dissemination and impact are fundamental, accounting for 40% of the project evaluation. Our great challenge is to ensure that the website contains more news, images, videos, and actions carried out, and that a detailed dissemination calendar led by BIDA is developed.

• Ensuring Replicability: It is crucial that all generated material, such as the videos in the toolbox, be available under an open-access license (e.g., Creative Commons), allowing the non-commercial use by third parties and facilitating the replication of our project throughout Europe.

• Documentary Unification: We continue working on the management of necessary documentation. It is a constant challenge to ensure that all information and participant selection procedures are applied consistently to guarantee a quality evaluation of the results. For instance, regarding the evaluation scales, we must ensure that we indicate "Participant 1, Participant 2..." instead of full names, as some individuals do not authorize the use of their data.

• Visual Identity of the Program: We must ensure that EU funding and the Erasmus+ and EU logos are visible on all our platforms and products.

• Coordination Milestones: Looking ahead, we are already planning our next online meeting for January 2026 (with the possibility of bringing it forward if needs or doubts arise) and, most importantly, our next face-to-face meeting in Malta in February 2026, where we will be able to evaluate the project and plan the exploitation of results.

With the collaborative work and dedication of all partners, we are confident that we will achieve these objectives to conclude the Allegro project with the impact and quality it deserves.

There are currently around 1.8 million people living with dementia in Germany

What do we know today about its causes, treatments and prevention? Dr Eckart von Hirschhausen joins researchers in searching for answers to questions such as: What exactly is dementia? What happens in the brain, and how can the disease be diagnosed? To find out, the doctor and science journalist tests himself. He meets people with various forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer's, and learns how it is possible to live a good life with the disease. The Super Ager Study conducted by the University of Magdeburg also shows the role that brain training and fitness can play in prevention. Please see in the link below:

https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/hirschhausen-und-das-grosse-vergessen/habe-ich-demenz-1-2/wdr/Y3JpZDovL3dkci5kZS9CZWl0cmFnLXNvcGhvcmEtZDQxYWQzYzAtMDI3NS00NGI4LThlM2EtNjg4ZGVmODMzNTFk