Becoming a facilitator
I started getting interested in facilitation when I was a student - learning how to facilitate consensus decision making processes for groups I was part of in the Student Union.
Over the years, I became increasingly fascinated with a good process - how to support people to say what they needed to say to each other, to think through and bring intention to how they want to work together for the long haul and to support the people involved in this work to reflect and move within it.
For more about my background in facilitation - check out the Resist + Renew podcast series, especially the what is facilitation episode. Shout out to Sami and Ali who co-hosted this podcast where we geek out about all things facilitation and speak to some amazing social movement organisers about their work.
Why I do what I do
I want social movement groups and organisations to be more effective at transforming the systems of domination around us to something more just and regenerative. I actually want that world to come into being. I think supporting groups to be more effective might contribute to this wider change.
I’m fascinated by groups and how people work (or don’t work well) together. I enjoy supporting people to move in the work they are trying to do, whether through one-to-one work, facilitating a conversation or delivering training in something like decision making processes or on power dynamics.
Many people focus on the important work of ‘WHAT’ social change do we want - strategy work and campaigns. I focus on the ‘HOW’ of social change work - how we are with each other, how we build power together, how we move together to create the changes we want to see.
If we are going to bring about the worlds we want to see, how we do it is very important in the face of competing pressures, the possibility of burnout and the many challenges we face. We need to do this work to rise rooted together.
Experience through collaboration
Over the years, I have worked with a number of collectives and other facilitators who have taught me a lot about the work I now do.
From co-founding Organising for Change with Tatiana Garavito and Natasha Adams - a training collective teaching organising methods and approaches to campaigners, to being a collective member of Resist+Renew - a facilitation collective holding processes for social movement groups, to working alongside amazing facilitators and trainers like Guppi Bola, Jannat Hossain, George Woods, Ali Tamlit and Jake Coleman.
A thread running through all this collaboration has really been how do we work together well, across differences? How do we tend to power dynamics? How do we live our values as much as we can in the ways we work? This has shaped my approach in so many ways.
“Working alongside Katherine was an experience of being supported and seen, not just as a collaborator but as part of a collective becoming. Their facilitation did more than strengthen my practice as a social movement trainer; it rooted us all in the kind of transformative work that lingers, reshaping what feels possible for movements and organisers alike.”
Lineages and teachers
I have learnt from many lineages and teachers over the years.
Most recently, I have been inspired by Paul Kahawatte’s work through Navigate developing the Living Systems framework for supporting groups and organisations to thrive, the Politics of Trauma work developed by Staci K. Haines and offered by Staci alongside Erika Lyla and Brandon Sturdivant, and image theatre and theatre of the oppressed, developed initially by Augusto Boal and taught to me by Jasber Singh.
For more in-depth background click here
When I am not working…
I love to dance and have been dancing in different forms since I was a small child - from tap to swing to folk - I love the energy of connecting with my body, with the music, with a dance partner, which a whole room of bodies moving.
Dancing has led me to somatics and I’ve been enjoying geeking out about somas, practices, shapes, and feel really inspired by the work of Staci Haines (based in the USA) and Cai Tomos (based in mid-Wales/London).
I also love being outside and connecting to the more than human world - I do this by swimming in the rivers and seas of the Dyfi Valley where I live, organising a local walking group to get out into the forests and hills of Mid-Wales, and practising remembering the seasons through ritual and ceremony on each of the eight earth days on the wheel of the year.
