I’m a facilitator and DEI practitioner who’s worked with a wide range of private, public and charitable organisations and activist groups for over 10 years to deepen their connections, build understanding, navigate conflict, and create shared commitments.
I also run regular programmes for people who are already facilitators or want to do more facilitation to learn different practices and techniques and reflect on how to adapt those for our specific contexts. Through these programmes I’ve built a community of over 200 people that also regularly come together for peer learning meetups and in person gatherings.
Me facilitating a team away day
Hire me as a facilitator
I am able to confidently and compassionately facilitate anything from complex and multi-layered collaborations, to intimate small group conversations, to difficult conflicts and disagreements.
At the moment I’m most interested in facilitating:
Co-creation and generative processes (where people are producing things together)
Collective learning processes
Co-budgeting processes
Community and relationship building
Justice-centred research processes
Restorative and transformational approaches to conflict
Get in touch via ray@and-breathe.org to work with me.
“Ray’s ability to engage with a wide range of collaborators across the community-engaged research landscape has proven invaluable in building trusted relationships and gathering valuable insights. Their deep understanding of equality and diversity along with the ability to actively listen to stakeholders and engage them with empathy and sensitivity has been a true asset in fostering a participatory and inclusive approach.”
Photo of one of the Holding Space cohorts on Zoom together
Learn with me
I run accessible and experiential facilitation training across 5 or 10 weeks where each week you will be introduced to a new facilitation practice, we’ll try it out together and then reflect on the experience as a group.
This programme is for anyone that wants to improve their facilitation skills and knowledge, regardless of how much or how little experience they have already.
The next cohorts start in November and January. You can read more and sign up here.
Train your team
I can design facilitation training specific to the context and dynamics your team works within. I’ve supported funders to develop the skills for running participatory grant making processes, researchers to be able to hold group spaces in a trauma-informed way, agencies to be able to navigate power dynamics with clients in co-design processes and managers to make space for quieter members of their team.
I also adopt an approach whereby those who have been skilled up by me can practice implementing those new skills, design shared facilitation approaches together, and can confidently pass those skills on to others within the team.
“Ray has given me the tools to create open communication with my team, get out of my box and try out new ways of working, and most importantly encouraged me to continue to question and learn.”