For as long as I can remember, being a facilitator has been a massive part of my persona. I’ve always loved teaching, learning and holding space for engagement, creativity, movement and dialogue.
For years, I’ve straddled two lines – one in my work as a movement practitioner teaching dance and movement in community spaces and the other as a wellbeing coach and trainer in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion, where I regularly deliver talks and trainings on themes such as anti-racism and wellbeing for Global Majority people.
I’ve always loved the power of facilitation and have learned so much from outstanding teachers, mentors, and coaches over the years. Like anything, however even perfect facilitation can have its constraints. Delivering work with a top-down approach risks being caught in institutional frameworks or operating within spaces that uphold systems I am actively trying to dismantle.
When I think about the dance and movement space, over the years I’ve noticed the hierarchical power imbalance that can appear between ‘teacher’ and ‘student’; the rigid lines around what is considered ‘classical’ movement and the ableist and Eurocentric body standards placed on dancers of all physicalities, sensibilities and backgrounds. When thinking about culturally diverse bodies, these hierarchies can often reinforce colonial power dynamics, which can suppress the lived experience of those who experience marginalisation.
In 2024, I had the very special opportunity to participate in Movema’s Wildfire Rising Programme, a creative development programme for dance artists from the Global Majority. I took this opportunity to explore the practice of co-creation, something I’d been fortunate enough to experience throughout my years as a dance and performing arts student.
My belief when embarking on the programme was that co-creation could foster a sense of ownership and unity within community groups by enabling them to express themselves authentically. From a decolonial perspective, when people are supported to create their own artistic narrative, we are allowing a broader range of diverse perspectives to be shared. This was super exciting to me, and Wildfire Rising allowed the license to develop further into the concept.
Throughout my time on the programme, I trained with a wide range of practitioners in varying disciplines, from martial arts to improv theatre to partner dance. All taught me something different, but a theme that ran through was that the energy built through a co-created process is magical. I loved being in the position of a student and soaking up all the knowledge of my teachers, peers and collaborators.
Although I initially started the programme seeing myself purely as a facilitator and teacher, as the programme developed, so did I. I experienced a shift in identity and suddenly, I was starting to find myself falling into the label of ‘artist’. I realised that exploring movement solely from the perspective of an artist allowed me a level of embodied storytelling that facilitation alone could not.
I realised that for many years, when comparing my dance training (mainly on the streets) to that of ‘professional dancers’, I felt ‘less than’ and, therefore, kept myself firmly in the role of facilitator.
The process of co-creation enabled me to fully embody the movement stories in my body, which was a powerful and decolonial experience. I was able to reclaim creative expression outside of Eurocentric frames of learning and knowledge.
Of course, I still love to facilitate! I’m able to bring all the lessons I’ve learnt through the process of Wildfire Rising into my classes and workshops. To me, artistry is not the opposite of facilitation, but rather an expanded form of it, as I've experienced it.
I’m very grateful to have come to this learning, which, although deeply personal, was not just an individual evolution, but also part of a wider puzzle of disrupting colonial norms. So, now I fully embrace being both a facilitator and an artist!
Lildonia is a PhD candidate at Coventry University, researching Caribbean Carnival and dance as a form of resistance and its role in social justice.