Bruk Out, a not for profit personal and social development community performing arts programme based around estates in South London has been awarded with a £4,000 community fund from the BBC Performing Arts Fund.

The Performing Arts Fund is a BBC charity committed to developing new performing arts talent from across the UK funded through revenue from the voting lines of BBC One entertainment programmes.

“We’re proper shocked we got the funding. I know alot of people who went for this funding so I knew how competitive it was,” said Leanne Pero, founder of The Movement Factory, the umbrella company for Bruk Out.

The grants of up to £5,000 were awarded to 41 not-for-profit groups across the UK in order for them to carry out training, attract new audiences, encourage new members and raise their profile in their communities with nearly £3.5million in grants has already been awarded via the fund in the past 8 years. 2011 is the first year that the Performing Arts Fund has supported dance.

Miriam O’Keeffe, project manager of the Performing Arts Fund, said: “We are really excited to be supporting dance projects for the first time this year. It’s very encouraging to see such a diverse range of dance activity going on around the country and we are proud to be supporting those activities. 2012 should prove to be a very exciting year as the winning projects develop.”

As part of the BBC Performing Arts Fund Bruk Out will run community dance programme for 8-25 year olds in Lambeth, Merton and Hammersmith led by Leanne and run a 12 week street dance programme with training and accreditation course for 15 young people ending in a showcase event. Dance master classes will be given to all the dancers involved by Abyss (Britain’s Got Talent finalists).

“We are all so thrilled that we can carry out our programme of street dance activities and get all our volunteers trained up and accredited as well as have a master class from the great Abyss guys in December at our showcase – cant’ wait!”