FACILITATING

Introduction

I facilitate online webinars and in-person presentations that are centred around collective care, curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and change.

We live in a time of great upheaval AND also where great change is needed. How can we cultivate space individually and collectively for change and care through collaboration?

I believe that arts, culture, creativity, and storytelling can support us in exploring our thoughts, emotions, stories, connections, imagination, and resilience towards change.

I also believe that the arts and culture sector, also called the creative sector or arts ecosystem, requires great change in this great upheaval.

Join me in an online webinar or presentation where we will explore:

  • How we can know ourselves

  • How we can invite different perspectives

  • How we can use agreements to support collective care and collaboration

  • How we can cultivate systems change

  • How we can differentiate between colonial and decolonial ways of being

90-minute webinar

Cultivating Culture Change

This 90-minute webinar is an introduction to how we can prepare personally and professionally for change
through a culture shift.

This webinar is available upon request.
Please contact for more information.

3-hour
webinar

Cultivating Collective Care

This 3-hour webinar will explore how agreements can promote collective care. Also included is trauma and resiliency awareness and somatic and creative integrations.

This webinar is offered both publicly and privately upon request (contact for more information).

6-hour
webinar

Cultivating Space for Collaboration

This 6-hour webinar will include the content from the 3-hour webinar as well as time for independent journaling and small/large group conversations about a specific topic/question/scenario you have.

This webinar is only available upon request. Please contact for more information.

Content

In our time together, we will explore any of the following (depending on the webinar/presentation chosen):

  • the conditions necessary for cultivating a safe space begins with ourselves through knowing ourselves with love, patience, and intention (discipline).

  • the perspectives we have that are necessary for knowledge-sharing (tradition), connection and belonging (relationship), deep thinking and questions (innovative), and validating action (action).

  • the agreements (protocols) we can put in place to support well-being, connection, freedom, and validation for all.

  • the nested system that shows our connection between individuals, family, community, and land.

Also integrated into some of the sessions will be:

  • the difference between colonial and decolonial ways of being, doing, knowing, and feeling

  • the impact of trauma

  • resiliency, healing, and hope through creativity

Reasons

You may want to take a webinar/presentation to:

  • cultivate spaces of care for yourself, family, community, and land.

  • promote inclusion, belonging, freedom, and well-being in your spaces.

  • understand why we often feel excluded, oppressed, sick and invalidated in different spaces.

  • find out what is holding you back from your authentic self.

  • decolonize work, policies, procedures, and process.

  • use a holistic approach without appropriating anyone’s knowledge.

  • connect with your personal story about colonization.

  • explore the framework with integrated creative prompts.

Background

In my facilitation, I use the “Cultivating Safe Spaces” framework which comes from Elaine Alec’s Cultivating Safe Spaces (CSS) program. Elaine Alec developed this program to help us understand what cultivating a safe space for oneself, family, community and land looks like in our everyday experiences.

We cannot create safety, but using a decolonized approach we can cultivate spaces that promote inclusion, connection, freedom, well-being, and validation for all. Safety is not to be confused with comfort. This work is uncomfortable because it invites us into really understanding ourselves, trusting our intuition, having faith with each other, listening with intention, not blaming others for our triggers, taking time to heal from our trauma, and letting go of binary judgements (good/bad, right/wrong, success/failure). This way of being disrupts systems of fear, competition, scarcity, urgency, saviourism, sickness, perfectionism, and shame.

Testimonials

  • “This was an experience in the exploration of the theme and the self. It is the self inside of this theme that must make the first connections, before moving those understandings outwardly. I believe that realization was achieved in this webinar.”

    Wakefield Brewster
    Calgary Poet Laureate

  • “The webinar allowed me to understand how I can better integrate community and the variety of perspectives within it. It also allowed me to make commitments to concrete anti- colonial actions moving forward in communities with the deepest care. Although I was worried about the length of the webinar, the pace, breaks, and activities made it go fast. I am glad I made room in my busy schedule for this webinar that makes me work better as a community artist.”

    Rocio Graham
    Artist and Community Activator

  • “Geraldine made the complexity of the material easy to take in with diverse activities with which to better understand how to decolonize spaces. Definitely left me wanting more.”

    Tamara Ross
    Associate Director, Administration and Academic Operations at UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA

Customized Presentations

Available upon request.
Please contact for more information.

I am also available to prepare customized presentations that can be offered on Zoom or as part of an in-person gathering.

Examples of potential customized presentations:

  • Cultivating Collective Care for Change-maker

  • Cultivating an Understanding of Oneself as an Artist

  • Cultivating Collective Care and Change as a Leader

  • Cultivating Spaces of Care in Collaboration and Community Engagement

  • Cultivating Spaces of Care and Creativity in Meetings

  • Cultivating Spaces of Care for Brave Conversations

Frequently Asked Questions about
CULTIVATING SAFE SPACES

What does Cultivating Safe Spaces mean?

Cultivating Safe Spaces means a deep awareness, knowledge, reflection, and action about cultivating a safe space for all.

For more details, please see the Cultivating Safe Spaces website

Who is Elaine Alec?

Elaine Alec is from the Syilx and Secwepemc Nations. She is an author, political advisor, women’s advocate and spiritual thought leader and teacher and is a direct descendant of hereditary chiefs, Pelkamulaxw and Soorimpt. In 2022, Elaine Alec developed the Cultivating Safe Spaces (CSS) program and the Train the Trainer program to facilitate the CSS framework.

Is Geraldine allowed to facilitate?

Yes. Alongside the Cultivating Safe Spaces program, Elaine designed the “Train the Trainer” program (which I took in November 2022) so that Indigenous and non-Indigenous facilitators are trained to deliver the content within their area of expertise. What Elaine is trying to say is, “You can do this too” and “I will share everything I’ve learned with you.” And she does.

Why does Geraldine want to facilitate this content?

I have been so impacted by Elaine Alec’s story, her program, and the community of facilitators who have come together. It has changed the relationship I have with myself, my family, community, and the land. The content speaks to me because it is heart-centered, it is the teachings of the lands and peoples on Turtle Island, and it feels familiar - a memory of a time before colonization. As an innovator, facilitator, and consultant; I want to connect Elaine’s teachings to how we approach the non-profit systems that we exist in so that we can move into action and create meaningful change by unlearning colonization.

Is Geraldine appropriating knowledge?

The “Cultivating Safe Spaces” content is a way of feeling, knowing, learning, being, and doing that is directly connected to the people, the ancestors, and the land that you and I are taking up space on. Elaine has shared repeatedly with all of the facilitators that the decolonization framework she is sharing is meant to be shared. We are all vessels for that decolonization framework. You will become that vessel too and we will make meaning together.

What do I need to know?

Talking about cultivating a safe space can trigger a reminder of all the unsafe spaces we exist in. Please remember that we are all responsible for cultivating a safe space (knowing our triggers is one of the ways) within ourselves so that we can cultivate a safe space for each other and the earth.

Who is “Cultivating Safe Spaces” for?

The “Cultivating Safe Spaces” framework is for everyone. If you are working with a vulnerable population, this program is for you. If you are in a position of privilege, this program is for you. If you and your organization are committed to activating equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, reconciliation from the heart, this program is for you. If you are curious to understand the difference between a colonial and decolonized space, this program is for you.

If you are still not sure, please check out Nikki Sanchez’s TEDxSFU talk here.

Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces, Accountable Spaces?

There has been a lot of discussion over the last couple of years about what word to use - “safe spaces”, “brave spaces”, or “accountable spaces”? Safe spaces is often criticized because it doesn’t exist for equity-deserving communities and it is connected to white comfort. Brave spaces are often criticized because it negates the bravery that equity-deserving communities show everyday in addition to the requirement to educate from personal life experiences which is exhausting.

Elise Ahenkorah offers another option which is “accountable spaces” which Elaine Alec’s “Cultivating Safe Spaces” framework is most aligned with. At its core, CSS provides a framework for understanding oneself including one’s triggers, location, story, intentions, responsibilities, and perspective. In addition, CSS provides a framework for agreements to promote inclusion, freedom, validation, and connection for all.

What do you mean by creativity?

Supporting the content of some of the webinars will also be creative prompts because:

  • creativity is curious

  • creativity provides our bodies with a pause to process

  • creativity allows us to move into the most innovative and empathetic places in our brains

  • creativity allows us to express what we might have difficulty expressing verbally

  • creativity is an opportunity to explore another language within ourselves

  • creativity disrupts the status quo

These creative prompts will be an invitation. You can opt in, not, or out.

Do I have to participate in the creative prompts?

These creative prompts will be an invitation. You can opt in, not, or out.

Are there additional resources?

If you are looking for resources before or after attending a webinar, please check out the following:

  • Sign-up for Elaine Alec’s newsletter and receive a free workbook on Cultivating Safe Spaces here.

  • Listen to Jen Green’s Cultivating Safe Spaces podcast here.