In the summer of 2024, TeesDance brought HOME to Middlesbrough Mela — the town's largest celebration of multicultural identity and unity. What started six months earlier as a series of community workshops became a joyous, moving, 45-minute promenade performance involving 3,432 participants from across Middlesbrough.

Commissioned by Borderlands Creative People and Places and funded by Arts Council England, HOME was one of the most ambitious community dance projects ever delivered in the Tees Valley. Dancers aged 7 to 73 took part, representing a genuinely diverse cross-section of Middlesbrough life: South Asian dance groups, LGBTQIA+ communities, Afrobeat dancers, learning-disabled adults, asylum seekers and refugees, sewing circles from Hemlington, and many more.

Under the creative direction of Associate Artist Jennifer Essex, a team of professional dance artists worked alongside community participants to weave these different communities into a single, shared performance — exploring what the concept of HOME means to the people who call Middlesbrough home.

The soundtrack, composed by Bridie Jackson and Nick Pierce, featured the real voices of Middlesbrough residents speaking about HOME. People who couldn't dance contributed thousands of hand-crocheted flowers, creating a spectacular field that formed part of the piece. Whippet Up CIC built cardboard sculptures of Middlesbrough landmarks — including a bright orange and pink Transporter Bridge dancing through Albert Park.

When the original Mela event was postponed following the riots that affected Middlesbrough so deeply in the summer of 2024, HOME became more than a performance. It became a statement: that this city's communities are more than the worst days, and that when we come together through creativity, we're stronger than what divides us.