Facilitation & training
Regenerative workshops,
processes, gatherings
and rituals
Why I facilitate
I’m an experienced facilitator, with 15 years of hosting all manner of gatherings, from strategy processes and organisational culture workshops and retreats, to rituals and bespoke ceremonies to honour transitions and endings.
I dream of profound healing between people and land, where all beings are enlivened by creativity, reciprocity and dignity. Cultivating regenerative collaboration through facilitation is where I feel most in flow, and most useful to this collective endeavour.
I believe that when humans gather together to work towards a common purpose, it’s worth making that collaboration as regenerative, or life-giving, as possible. Because how we make things happen dictates the quality of the outcome. I’m sure we’ve all been part of projects with worthy ambitions that failed to materialise due to dysfunctional collaboration. And projects that far exceeded expectations because every person involved was liberated to do incredible work.
To me, regenerative collaboration looks like potent group spaces that honour the rhythms of life, gifting us more aliveness and more ability to effect change in the world. It looks like spaces that hold both care and accountability, where people can show up as they are and get things done. Spaces where we can gently learn how to honour both individual need and group need, how to sense when we’re giving to the group and when we’re receiving, and how to keep returning to healthy relationship with each other.
For a world enlivened by creativity, reciprocity and dignity, we need many, many spaces to remember and practice these ways of being together. Great facilitation plays a critical role in cultivating this. To “facilitate” means to “make easier”. I think of facilitation as easing the flow of aliveness, creativity and commitment within a group, whether that’s an organisational strategy workshop, a large conference, a grief ritual or a seasonal ceremony.
About my practice
Feedback on my facilitation usually includes the following words: effortless, creative, fun, responsive, intuitive, pragmatic.
I’m able to hold groups in complexity and tension, change up an agenda on the fly and keep participants accountable to their intentions and the people they serve. I love to create nourishing collective experiences that unfold transformation.
I have a wide toolkit of facilitation techniques for exploring
and narrowing, dreaming and deciding, diverging and agreeing, playing and clarifying. For lightness and for depth. I’m continually honing my practice, combining approaches from horizontal organising, behaviour change, systems change, coaching, Deep Democracy, regenerative strategy, collective imagination, grief tending and trauma-informed collaboration. Read more about my lineages in training, influences and accountability.
Facilitation & training for organisations
Regenerative processes, trainings and gatherings (workshops, away days, retreats) to help teams align and grow. My focus is team culture and collaboration, and organisational strategy. Read more about my approach in my popular post, A regenerative organisational design primer.
I’ve worked across the civil society ecosystem for 15 years: UK and international governments, local governments, funders and charities. Previous clients include Doughnut Economics Action Lab, MAIA, Thirty Percy, The National Lottery Community Fund, NCVO, The Children’s Society, London Borough of Camden and the Department of Health and Social Care.
Increasingly, I am supporting organisations with bespoke processes and journeys to explore what graceful endings
might look like, with the aim of facilitating better beginnings and, often, more effective organisational change work (given that all change work is loss work).
Facilitation for grief tending, rituals and ceremony
Collective experiences to witness and tend to our grief, and honour transitions or endings with grace. Check out Events for upcoming grief circles and rituals, or get in touch for bespoke ceremonies (this post about Megan’s ceremony will give you an idea of my approach).
Tending to our grief helps us metabolise loss and stay open, connected and creative. I believe that grief tending is the medicine of our unsettling times, necessary at all levels: planetary, community, organisational and personal.
Gatherings and practices of remembering
I’m the Co-founder and lead faciliator of Foregather. We help women to cultivate creative energy through practices for remembering our connections with self, community and earth. Subscribe to our newsletter to hear about upcoming gatherings.
Festivals, conferences and events
Coming soon
“I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.”
— Quaker Mystic Rufus Jones
(1863–1948)
Case studies
Guiding the Doughnut Economics Action Lab leadership team through crafting a new strategy and governance structure.
Co-design and co-facilitation of Camden Council’s and Moral Imaginations’ training programme, Camden Imagines.
Transition coaching for Local Trust staff and Big Local changemakers during the closure of both organisations.
Reflective practice sessions for Thirty Percy staff as they prototyped an eldership fund for activists.
Training and coaching the senior leadership teams of major UK charities in collaboration and systems change. Read more.
Facilitation of workshops, away days and multi-day organisational retreats for funders, charities, social enterprises and the NHS.
Co-founder and lead facilitator of Foregather. Cultivating creative energy through practices of remembering. Read more.
Design and facilitation of a group ceremony to support a colleague facing the end of her life to say goodbye to her career. Read more.
Defining what radically better organisational development in the UK nonprofit looks like, through the Patterns for Change consortium
Through NOBL, supporting a large public and private education consortium to improve their collaboration.
