As part of my ongoing work in decolonial, queer, and non-hierarchical art education, I developed and facilitated “Bridging the Old and the New,” a Radical Sanctuary session for the TENT and MaMA team. This workshop invited staff members into a collective exploration of communication, discomfort, collaboration, and organizational transformation during a period of institutional transition.

The session combined movement-based warm-ups, reflective mapping, embodied communication exercises, and co-created dialogue structures. Drawing on Queer Pedagogy, the Pedagogy of Discomfort (hooks/Boler), and Freirean non-hierarchical learning, I designed a space where participants could investigate how safety, discomfort, identity, and professional roles shape daily interactions in the institution.

Through practices such as the Radical Sanctuary Mapping, participants articulated the tensions between legacy systems and emerging organizational cultures, touching on themes like representational labour, visibility, organizational vision, and the embodied experience of navigating structural change. In Step into the Circle, participants used spatial positioning to externalize often-invisible dynamics around voice, uncertainty, autonomy, and emotional expression in public-facing roles.

The workshop emphasized embodied awareness, collective meaning-making, and radical honesty, while still offering grounding moments through resets, reflection rituals, and shared writing. By the end of the session, the group had created a living map of their communication culture and identified personal and collective strategies for healthier collaboration moving forward.

This workshop stands as a core example of my pedagogical approach:
learning through the body, honoring difference, welcoming discomfort as insight, and cultivating institutional spaces where safety and risk can co-exist.