Gwyn Wansbrough is an international facilitator, learning experience designer, and course creator. She focuses on empowering educators and team leaders with the skills to make learning more creative, engaging, and human. She specializes in ways to create learning experiences that lead to breakthroughs. Gwyn recently stepped down as Executive Director of global facilitation training organization, Partners for Youth Empowerment, scaling programs to over 15k educators and team leaders in 15 countries. She has collaborated with organizations and schools around the world including the Ashoka Foundation, WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education), private foundations, departments of education, and universities. She publishes a weekly newsletter on creativity, facilitation, and learning called The Quest, and she launched an online cohort-based course in October called Breakthrough Facilitation for professionals who lead virtual groups.

She lives in Barcelona, Spain. She loves spending time by the sea, experimenting with watercolors, and playing cards with her family.

A Note from Nadia

Working closely with Gwyn Wansbrough for a little over a decade at Partners for Youth was an up-close education for me in people skills. As a director and manager she was unfailingly supportive and generous without holding back the feedback I needed to keep growing in my work. She was able to manage and handle the details and personalities of many projects around the world simultaneously. She was so good humoured, so loving and wise, it was an honour to work under her guidance and I would absolutely do it again, anytime.

Now that Gwyn is developing her own online facilitation method, I see all these skills at work again. I can’t possibly recommend The Quest newsletter or the Breakthrough Facilitation cohort-based course more highly. This podcast is full of tips, but I hope what you hear even more deeply is the amazing courage of a woman hearing a call and stepping up to follow it. If you don’t already know Gwyn, I’m excited for you to meet her! If you do, you’ll know that this is a podcast worth listening to. Pearls of wisdom, a gentle nature and a razor intelligence; can’t wait to hear what you think.

Link that leads to the Breakthrough Facilitation Official Course page coupon: 5OFFNET

(if you use this affiliate link Nadia will make a small commission, and if you use the code you'll get 5% off the course fee as well)

Personal Website: www.gwynwansbrough.com

The Quest Newsletter: https://www.gwynwansbrough.com/newsletter

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwynwansbrough/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/home

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gwynwans/

The 7 Secrets of Exceptional Facilitators Free e-book - https://www.gwynwansbrough.com/free-ebook

Other resources Gwyn mentions in the podcast:

https://coursecreatorlab.co

https://writeofpassage.school

https://www.ship30for30.com

Laura June Albert (she/her) is a researcher, cultural producer, and artist. She is a seventh generation European-Canadian settler based in unceded xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh) territories, colonially known as Vancouver.

Laura June's research investigates the experiential body as a liberatory landscape for anticolonial and anticapitalist self-determination and liveness. She is deeply interested in intersections in pedagogy and embodiment: learning through the body about body-based ways of knowing. Consent and access are core values in her work. Laura June holds an MA in Contemporary Arts Studies from SFU, and has worked as a performer, instructor, and lecturer in over ten cities.

A NOTE FROM NADIA

I’m thrilled to interview a very dear friend and colleague Laura June Albert. We met many moons ago, creating an inter-arts performance for the fondly remembered Sista’hood Festival in Vancouver, Canada.  Laura June’s movement pedagogy has taught me so much about facilitation and leadership. This is a pedagogy that questions the reaching of the eyes, the dominance of the head, the doing of the hands…and returns with the body as a wise and living place with its own authority and with gravity as its partner. This podcast is an invocation of “authenticity” that is profound and constant. While Laura June’s research is particular to dance and movement, I believe any facilitator will find these questions deeply relevant and stimulating. I can’t wait to hear what you think. Laura June has generously offered Toolsi six instructional videos, so you will also be able to move and play with this extraordinary practice.

Aida Gadallah is a creative facilitator, a trainer, designer and developer of content at Funtasia Egypt.

“I studied Geological Sciences and after the despair of not being able to achieve my scientific dream at this time, I returned to my teenage passion towards psychology. I took several courses in human development until I participated in a train-the-trainers group where I discovered my skills as a trainer. When I participated in PYE’s Creative Facilitation training at Funtasia Egypt, I became sure that this is what I wanted to be my career. I participated in the deeper levels of facilitation training, then I volunteered for a period of time with Funtasia until I became one of their great team. I kept learning about psychological health, counseling and art therapy to deepen my work with groups.

Now I enjoy being part of a process which helps young people and youth to be more connected and understanding of  themselves and able to use their potential to create their lives and be who they are.”

A note from Nadia

I’m so excited to introduce you to the mind and heart of Aida Gadallah. This is a facilitation style that rises up from the deeps of introspection and illumination. In this sparkling podcast, she gives some very useful tips on how to create and facilitate visualizations, and also a series of tips for new facilitators. The tips are all gems! Aida facilitates the inner self, and has an incredible theory of presence and its effect on group behaviour. Her clarity, her attention to detail and her commitment to working from integrity have taught me so much. I absolutely loved my time in Luxor, Egypt with the amazing Funtasia team and meeting Aida Gadallah was a big part of that!

Elizabeth Maria Ortega is a batch of stardust. As an educator and facilitator, she loves all things related to diversity, equity, wellness, equanimity and artistic expression. In her spare time, she’s a printmaker, creative and wanderluster. She is a certified holistic sex educator and absolutely loves to help create a container of safer and alive education for all peoples. Currently teaching at an independent school in Seattle, she has a burgeoning consultation, coaching and workshop life.  While in the Pacific Northwest since 2010, she originally hails from the proud and dusty trails of the Southwest. She holds a Masters in Education from Antioch University. Collaboration and creative projects and world building is tantalizing to her so connect by supporting her art, emailing her, following her on social media and saying hello.

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/elizabethmariaortega

Insta: @elizabethmariaortega

Email: [email protected]

A note from Nadia

Elizabeth Ortega is a bit of a legend. Long before we had met I’d heard of her amazing facilitation work with FEEST. In a group she is a sparkling, energizing presence and as a friend and community member she is quite unforgettable. As you might have noticed, the Adaptagen Podcast is focussed on unique facilitators; those who really think for themselves, and have developed a method, style and/or practice of their own. Elizabeth is most certainly one of these! Her community intervention is an investigation and deconstruction of “love” as we are taught to know it, in a way that recentres community, friendship and the inner self. After recording this podcast I was walking on air for a couple of days! My world looked different. Her radical insight into human dynamics, particularly into the nature of love, inspired me to face my own life in a very different way. I found myself looking at my little bird feeder with the winter chickadees and house sparrows that show up every day and thinking…this is love. THIS is romance. I’m sure you’ll find this podcast as fascinating as I did. Can’t wait to hear your reactions.

I’m a poet and writer at heart; a comedian at best. I’ve been facilitating and designing youth programs for over eight years and holding space for groups feels like a sacred and inherent role, for me. My general way of moving through most experiences is to remain curious and find the essential question. I keep returning to the work and learning new things about the world.

A Note from Nadia:

Kamilla is an incredibly magnetic and generous youth worker. She is currently part of the amazing team at YWE (Young Women Empowered).  There is so much luminosity and charisma in her work, it is poetic and hilarious and compelling and, in equal measure, it is nurturing and loving. I love to witness her fearlessness, her frankness, her incredibly tender and powerful heart. This podcast is a gift, full of personal stories and overflowing with essential tips for facilitators; how to work with resistance, how to work across difference, how to bring your whole self to the table, how to follow your heart into the depth of your practice. It’s also very candid and gives some powerful insight into the nefarious underlying dynamics that can appear in the NGO sector, and what it means to be an individual facilitator in that complex machinery. She is both philosophical and practical in her approach to facilitation. I’ve been blessed to encounter Kamilla on my path and I am so excited to introduce you to her through Toolsi.

“Maya: Being trauma-informed is a journey and a practice.”

Maya is a Trauma Informed Coach and Facilitator who has been involved in community healing and support work since 2007. Passionately committed to her own healing journey and creativity, Maya created the Heart of Flow Method combining creative expression and movement to help others transform their struggles and reach desired goals while softly easing into connection with their bodies and emotional landscapes. Her unique approach helps build security in our ability to navigate the challenges of our lives while embodying self worth, emotional resiliency and well being. Her approach prioritizes resourcing people so they are able to learn lifelong tools while providing deeply nourishing support to restore a sense of joy. She believes in meeting people where they are at, bringing balance to holding deep space for others with a sense of humour and facilitation that is both gentle and playful.

The Heart of Flow method operates from a trauma informed body-centric focus, believing that we can access profound transformation when we work with the body as the home where we experience our internal and external reality. Her work helps regulate the nervous system and build new neural pathways to redefine our relationship with ourselves and others. This process based method meets others where they are at- she has worked before with others coming from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and lived realities, including non profits and agencies that work with survivors of trauma including sexual assault and gendered violence.

She cultivates joy in her life through painting, dancing, writing poetry, conversation and wild laughter.

A Note from Nadia

I met Maya Nadeem at an Art of Facilitation Training I was running in Toronto in 2017. I was immediately struck by her sparkling presence and self-possession. As I got to know her, I found her to be incredibly open hearted, generous and curious. Maya’s work with the Heart of Flow method inspires me to keep searching for breakthroughs and to push my own edges. I am in awe of her courageous and bold design work, the depth of her experience and most significantly her choice to create her own therapeutic method. Her focus on trauma-informed practices while exuberantly pushing creative edges reminds me that there is no compromise in creating accessible spaces. In fact, the accessibility focus itself is an asset to any group member. I’ve already learned so much from Maya in terms of creating safer spaces without sacrificing boldness and courage, and I expect to continue to learn from her for many years as her brilliant method develops.

Shilpa P.A.- Bangalore – India - 39 years old –International trainer and Facilitator with Dream a Dream (a Bangalore based NGO), Certified Clear Beliefs Coach, and a Board member of the Sustainable World Project (a not for profit foundation registered in the Netherlands).  In her work with groups of young people and teachers in developing life skills over the last 8 years, she got to witness the power of a supportive community and how it impacts individual transformation.  Each one of us have our unique gifts we bring into the world and we all have the inner resources to connect within and manifest the life of our purpose.  Powerful transformative experiences and connection with inner self prepares us to deal with the ever changing life.  She envisions a thriving life for every person where each one of them are able to work with their limiting beliefs and are getting in touch with the wonderful being they are.

She facilitates Life Skills/social emotional programs with different organizations and practices as a Clear Beliefs Coach.  She is a single mom of one daughter who has published a book of poems at age 14.  She enjoys long walks in nature, meditation, music, reading, learning new things, quality time with loved ones.

Email – [email protected]

A note from Nadia

Shilpa Setty is a luminous, gentle, generous and practically fathomless facilitator.  She carries her quite enormous presence with so much humility that it is almost incongruous sometimes. I have been so blessed to learn and grow through her example of rigorous self-reflection and investigation and consistent meditative and spiritual practice. Her energy is well conditioned, like tilled soil; an incredible resource for a facilitator. Shilpa has the gift of making a person feel loved, and even fascinating! Her listening style in particular seems easily to draw out authenticity and a spirit of being already enough. It is a wonder to witness her work with young people, and the hidden young person in adults. The addition of a therapeutic practice to her facilitative toolkit is such an interesting turn of events. I look forward to seeing what new depths she will find in her practice now.

Emily Yee Clare is a community-based consultant, educator, and illustrator. As Kai Yun Ching, they illustrated of the upcoming children's picture book, For Laika, and co-illustrated From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea in 2017. They love dreaming and nerding out about different pedagogical tools and frameworks, and looking at the moon at night.

Note from Nadia:

Even though these is so much strange background noise in this podcast, I’m proud to share it with you! Emily Yee Clare and I (with other amazing collaborators) have been thinking together about this concept, consentfulness, together for more than two years.  Emily spontaneous used the terms to describe a group phenomenon in response to the question (routinely asked in the second day of the Partners for Youth Creative Facilitation 1 course I was running), “what did the facilitator do to support you in taking creative risks)? 

It’s been a joy to learn and play with Emily. She is one of the most intelligent and incisive thinkers that I know. In particular her ability to think in diagrams, models and with a kind of simultaneity and holism is wonderfully illuminating when thinking together about how groups of people move together. I hope that we will be able to create a small subarchive about our thoughts, with collaborators, about consentfulness!

“Searching for a unique blend of the practical application of spirituality and philosophy combined with the study of dream and energy.”

Hailing from Portland, Jamaica and based in Kingston, Andre Wilson is the founder of Youth-For-Development Network (YFDN) www.yfdn.org – a non-profit organization connecting marginalized groups with core skills, entrepreneurship and employability readiness training, using sports, multi-arts and innovative methodologies.

LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/andre-o-wilson-10b69a44

https://www-origin.usaid.gov/jamaica/news/sporting-change

A note from Nadia:

When I first met Andre, it was online. He was managing a camp for the One Love Foundation and I was the director of training at Partners for Youth. From those first moments, from so far away I both heard from others and witnessed almost immediately the vast capacity of this person to both, seemingly effortlessly, hold the details of a major undertaking AND plumb it to its ultimate depths. Andre asks hard questions, thinks extremely deeply and is ruthlessly committed to his vision of change in places where people may have given up hope, but somehow he never manages to miss being fun, silly, creative, compassionate and kind.

Without fail, every encounter we have had both online and in person, personal and professional he has changed me to rethink my assumptions, establish my inner alignment and recommit to the deepest calling that I can hear. He tells his fascinating stories the long way, and I always find myself pulling layers off our conversations for months to come.

Nadia: How to engage children at community events