From my LinkedIn – things I also do besides my own workshops:
For the Speak Out project of FEDEC – International network for professional circus education, supported by the European Union and Fontys University of Applied Sciences, I am teaching a two-part workshop on consent and somatic autonomy to the Academy for Circus and Performing Arts students, supported by the amazing Rea Lenders – Beijk.
I am glad consent is a topic that becomes more engrained in curricula, although there is a lot to win. Not just consent within power dynamics (teacher – student), but also along peers (colleagues, student – student), especially in fields where touch can be ‘unavoidable part of what we do’. Group culture can create dismissal of personal autonomy.
This is the workshop we did:
On the other side of consent: Empowering embodied autonomy
Circus culture is a very collective and personal/ egalitarian culture with physical contact as an expectation and automatic normality. Where there is an assignment in circus schools to implement consent culture, the emphasis is mainly on organization and teachers.
In this theoretical and experiential workshop, we want to focus on a bottom-up approach in which we stimulate students to understand and somatically experience that touch should always be an autonomous choice present of the involved persons so that the students will be empowered to create their own conditions around physical touch like spotting.
We will use the theoretical framework of Betty Martin “The Wheel of Consent” to gain insight into the dynamics around touch and consent. We will use experiential somatic methods to give students embodied experiences that are easily reproducible after the workshop in their studies and further careers. One of the aspects we will work with is, for example, determining for whom touch is: the student can become aware whether the touch is: for them or for the other`. Based on this simple insight students can make more deliberate autonomic professional choices around physical contact and learn how to express this.”
I regularly work with universities, scientists, artists, musicians etc. on topics like consent, working trauma-informed, inclusion, etc. Outside of my workshops and training, I’m occasionally available to teach this work in the corporate and educational fields. Feel free to contact me if you are interested.