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Research and Methodology

How this came to be

A tap dancer who studied sustainable development embarked on a research project. This page explains what that process looked like.

About the Researcher

Hi, I'm Courtney, and I'm a lifetime tap dancer from Fresno, California. At some point in my studies, I began to wonder whether the skills I was building in sustainable development, organization, and community systems design could actually be useful to the tap world I love so much. That's where this comes in.

I studied Sustainable Development at Duke University. My thesis asked: what would a peer-produced, community-governed digital commons for tap dancers look like, and can it actually be built? This site is my attempt to answer that question by doing it.

It's also only just beginning. The research informed the design, the design informed what got built, and what gets built from here will be shaped by the community that uses and contributes to it. Us. I didn't want this to be a stale academic reproduction of something nobody asked for, or something someone had already tried and abandoned. The tap dancers and digital commoners I talked to shaped what this is. If it's useful, that's because of them. If it continues to be useful, that's because of you.

How this was built

The project combined secondary research, ethnographic interviews, case study analysis, and iterative design. These are the steps, in rough order.

Step 1
Secondary Research
Four bodies of literature informed the design framework.
Tap Community
History, industry structure, existing digital infrastructure, the economics of access
Digital Public Goods
What this is. DPG frameworks, openness principles, international policy context
Commons and Digital Commoning
How this works. Ostrom's governance principles, peer production, Wikipedia, GitHub
Arts Infrastructure
What this functions as. Jackson's six-pillar framework, digital tools for artists, creative economies
↓
Step 2
Ethnographic Interviews with Tap Dancers
16 interviews conducted at and around the Singapore Tap Festival (December 2025) and with US-based dancers, covering four core questions.
What digital resources for tap currently exist?
What problems does the tap community face that a digital commons could address?
What digital resources would actually be useful?
What would and wouldn't work about a commons-based model?
↓
Step 3
Case Study Research: Other Commons
Tap dancers told me what they wanted. I then looked for commons projects that had already solved similar problems. These four were the most relevant to what dancers described, and they represent a useful range of openness and governance models. I also studied others; these are the ones that shaped the design most directly.
Solarpunk Wiki
Most open. Direct-edit wiki. Highest contributor flexibility, lowest editorial control.
HowlRound Theatre Commons
Submission model with editorial review. Theatre-specific, strong governance.
Queer Indonesia Archive
Community-governed archive for a marginalized community. Strong on care and trust.
SwingPlanIt
Event listing for swing dance. Community-submitted, curator-controlled. Adjacent arts form.
↓
Step 4
Design Principles Emerge
From the interviews and case studies, a set of design principles formed: no login barrier, light moderation (not opinion control), distributed stewardship, and credibility through design.
↓
Step 5
Building and Continuous Feedback
The site was built iteratively, with feedback gathered at each stage from tap community members, digital commons practitioners, and design advisors. No stage was built in isolation.
↓
Step 6
First Iteration: Thesis Defense
April 12, 2026
The first version launched publicly alongside the thesis defense at Duke University. This is that version.
↓
Ongoing
Community Stewardship
The commons continues beyond the thesis. Future direction is shaped by the community that uses and contributes to it.
Who was involved

23 tap dancers and organizers participated in interviews, spanning the United States, Singapore, Japan, Korea, India, Brazil, and Australia. All participants are anonymous unless they requested otherwise. Interviews were conducted via Zoom, email, and in person at the Singapore Tap Festival in December 2025.

Commons practitioners from HowlRound, the Solarpunk Wiki community, the Queer Indonesia Archive, and SwingPlanIt also contributed perspectives on governance, contribution models, and the risks of building shared infrastructure.

This research was reviewed and approved by the Duke Campus Institutional Review Board.

Read the full research The public thesis is available to read here.
Read the thesis
Get in touch

If you have questions about the research, want to contribute your perspective, or want to talk about building something similar for your own arts community, reach out.

courtneyyribarren@gmail.com