Two years of research by boffins in Leeds has put the city’s dancers in pole position to realise their naked ambitions.
Leeds Digital Agency fuse8 Group have developed a new mobile app offering detailed help and information for those working in what they call the “strip based entertainment industry.”
The new Dancers Info app follows extensive study by experts at the University of Leeds, who carried out research looking at employment conditions in the industry.
That included consultation with dancers, as well as getting tax advice from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and looking at safety issues
The app is also passcode-protected, to safeguard women who did not want others to know they were dancers.
Teela Sanders, who led the research project, said: “Fuse8 designed a useful, innovative and stylish app and we are very pleased with how sensitive the agency was to the branding aims of the project. Practitioners involved in licensing, club owners, managers and the dancers themselves have responded well to the idea, recognising the importance of a permanent and long term source of complex information.
“We have made a pioneering journey from empirical research findings to producing a smart, accessible and mobile resource for dancers.”
Staff at fuse8 were given access to photography from strip clubs to use in the app, including shots of dancers taking breaks, applying makeup or using their phones.
Joe Mason, designer at fuse8, said: “The app had to appeal to dancers who are mainly in their twenties and thirties and from a wide range of backgrounds, including single mums and university students. Our aim was to develop an app which is informative, useful and elegant. It was great to be able to take the detailed research into the digital space and create a tool that empowers users.”
As reported in the YEP earlier this year lapdancing bars in Leeds have been fighting against a campaign to curb the number of bars in the city centre.
Every existing strip club in the city recently had to reapply for their licences after being legally reclassified as sexual entertainment venues.
All seven clubs were granted new licences.