Facilitation

I am an experienced facilitator and have held healing spaces within community, retreats, festivals, schools, programs, grassroots organisations, theatre groups and beyond. My practice is informed by what is alive and challenging my own edges at the time, and I facilitate from a non-hierarchical place - encouraging shared wisdom in the room. I work forever with the intention of collective liberation and in an abolitionist framework - that is - dismantling oppressive systems, primarily carceral systems like prisons and police, while building community-based, healing and transformative alternatives. I tend to draw on practices of movement, clowning, theatre of the oppressed, somatics, touch, talking, journalling and tarot.

Some of the organisations I have facilitated in/with are: SLEEC, Healing Justice LDN, Young Vic, Speak OUT (Forum theatre in schools), Battersea Arts Centre, Rebel Soul, Sistxrhood, Alianza Arkana, Blue Elephant Theatre, Sex and Rage, SOAS.

My facilitation practice is forever morphing and growing according to need, and juicy collaboration! So feel free to be in touch and discuss something that you have in mind.

Email me at indyriverbodywork@gmail.com

Some examples of workshops I have held and can offer are below:

Respecting the Self (For SLEEC)

Exploring ways to tune into ourselves, listen to our bodies and respect what is there. We will be finding ways of centring, connecting and communicating around where we are at honestly and articulating our wants and needs at any given time, as well as learning to hold others', including whether we are able to meet them or not. The intention for this space is to show up more fully for ourselves, our intimate partners, and for our wider community. We will be touching on multiple ways of relating in community, that include intimacy and sexuality. (commissioned by SLEEC

Survival Out of Solitude (With Sex and Rage for Healing Justice LDN)

Survival Out of Solitude is part of Healing Justice Ldn’s Seasons of Survivor Support series: building safety beyond the state. The 3 part workshop series includes 1. ‘Mapping the self’: tuning in and checking in with our bodies’ responses to stress. 2. ‘Mapping relational healing’: acknowledging the ways in which our personal, cultural and political relational spheres are shaped by trauma. 3. ‘Mapping resilience’: co-creating our unique journeys towards integration, validation and support.

Embodied Beginnings (Kink)

For queer folks who are beginning their journey with kink or beginning practicing kink through a lens of embodiment and liberation. We will be exploring the landscape of kink as an erotic and/or healing container and what this means for our bodies - getting to know our wants, needs, desires and edges of comfort. We will be exploring safety - what safety means for us as individuals and how we begin to identify a safe container for ourselves, to then communicate with kink partners.

Exploring Through Play (Kink)

We will be working with touch, intuition, inner sense, communication with body and voice. There is zero pressure to explore erotically but this is an option. We will be continuing to explore the landscape of Kink as an erotic and/or healing container and what this means for our bodies - getting to know our wants, needs, desires and edges of comfort. We will be exploring safety, power, identity - what safety means for us as individuals and how we begin to identify a safe container for ourselves, to then communicate with others. We’ll also be reflecting on how we can use the knowledge and tools unearthed in this space into other parts of life, be it community, activism, re-parenting, the list goes on.

Rooted Heart (With Sex and Rage, for Healing Justice LDN)

Rooted Heart is a series of workshops exploring the practice of abolition in individual and community healing. We will be processing the conditions in our society which develop and legitimise harmful behaviour, and co-creating strategies for collective regeneration. Together we will be working through an abolitionist lens to practice, process and plot for ourselves and our communities; exploring accountability, parenting our young ones and re-parenting ourselves. This wide-ranging series considers survivorhood on an expanded scale. A mix of sessions open to all and sessions only for FLINTA (femme/lesbian/intersex/nonbinary/trans) identifying folks.

Queering Parenting (With Ash Thornton, for Rebel Soul)

Opening up a space to carve and dream together. What forms Queer parenting can take, how we can best plan, adapt, to the many unique joys and challenges that queering parenting brings about. We will be holding the space with all the wisdom and chaos of our own journeys so far - there will be talking, generating questions, journalling and group sharing. Definitely giggles, maybe tears.

Me and White Supremacy / Anti-Racist Practice

A non-hierarchical space to come together and work through this necessary text in vulnerability and strength, with the wider aim of abolishing white supremacy and all the illnesses it seeds in society. The aim for the practice space is to create an environment where participants can be completely honest with ourselves and one another, for questions to be met with collective curiosity and care, and for nervous systems to breathe. Our bodies can listen, learn and change optimally when our defences are down. We will use Layla Saad’s text as an overall structure, and also invite in wisdom from other writers and practitioners such as Lama Rod Owens, adrienne maree brown, Prentis Hemphill, Ibram x. Kendi - the list goes on and participants are all invited to contribute to the sculpting of the space.