Facilitation & training
Creative, effective processes and gatherings for regenerative culture
and strategy
Why I facilitate
I am experienced facilitator, with fifteen years of hosting all manner of gatherings, from strategy processes, events and organisational culture retreats, to rituals and bespoke ceremonies to mark life’s transitions.
Facilitation is where I feel most in flow and most useful to the work of creating better worlds. I dream of profound healing between people and land, and where all beings are enlivened by creativity, reciprocity and dignity.
To “facilitate” means to “make easier”. I believe that when humans gather together to work towards a common purpose, (an organisation, product, event or ceremony, for example), it’s worth making that collaboration as easeful, creative and effective 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 valued and liberated to do incredible work.
About my practice
My facilitation is creative, elegant and transparent. I’m flexible, intuitive and effective, able to hold large groups in complexity, change up an agenda on the fly and keep participants accountable to their intentions and the people they serve.
I have a wide toolkit of facilitation techniques for exploring and narrowing, dreaming and deciding, playing and clarifying, diverging and agreeing. 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. See more in training and influences.
I care deeply about creating spaces of 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 know when we’re giving to the group and when we’re receiving, and how to keep returning to healthy relationship with each other.
Facilitation & training for organisations
Effective, meaningful processes, trainings and gatherings (retreats, away days, workshops) to help your teams align and grow (culture, collaboration and strategy). Read 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 good 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).
Festivals, conferences and events
[Coming soon]
Facilitation for grief tending, rituals and ceremony
Collective experiences to witness and tend to our grief, and support transitions or endings. Check out Events for upcoming grief circles and rituals, or get in touch for bespoke ceremonies (see Megan’s ceremony below).
I believe that grief is the medicine of our unsettling times, necessary at all levels: planetary, community, organisational and personal. Tending to our grief helps us metabolise loss and stay open, connected, flexible and creative.
Gatherings and practices of remembering
I’m the Co-founder and lead faciliator of Foregather. We help women to cultivate creative energy through practices of remembering. Subscribe to our newsletter to hear about upcoming gatherings.
Case studies
Design and facilitation of workshops, away days and multi-day organisational retreats for funders, charities, social enterprises and the NHS
Co-design and co-facilitation of Camden Council’s and Moral Imaginations’ training programme, Camden Imagines
Facilitation for the MAIA team as they explored and defined their organisational infrastructure of care
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
Co-creator and co-host of Foregather, gatherings and practices that connect women more deeply to creative energy
Training and coaching the senior leadership teams of major UK charities in collaboration, change, operating model transformation and systems change
Guiding the Doughnut Economics Action Lab leadership team through crafting a new strategy and governance structure
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
Designing a new coaching-led appraisals process for With You, still in use six years later