Consent as Liberation

Beyond Sex: consent as liberation

CI class, workshop, talk & individual and group consulting

TALK: Beyond Sex, Consent as Liberation

This talk offers an intersectional approach to cultivating a strong consent culture within CI spaces by addressing the ways that everyone––but particularly those who come from marginalized populations––has a need for bodily autonomy and freedom of movement.

CLASS: Contact Improvisation and Consent

This class offers tools to facilitate communication and listening around consent within our CI dances, with an emphasis on those from dominant populations dialing up their listening, rather than putting the onus on those from marginalized populations to have to hone their ability to say "no."

WORKSHOP: Matching Tone/Matching Power

When we look at the idea of tone through an embodied lens, we find a wealth of knowledge and material to use in our CI practice toward more dynamic, juicy, relational dances. When we look at these principles through a social lens, we find opportunities to look at power dynamics, and any biases we might have toward certain kinds of tone.

TRAINING: Deepening into consent culture for CI communities

This training that provides tools for CI event organizers to develop their own knowledge of consent culture from an intersectional perspective, and to hold safer spaces for their communities through clear guidelines, communication, and protocols.

Training includes:

definitions of consent, informed consent, consent culture, polyvagal theory, liberation, and intersectionality
tools for how to commit to safer spaces and intersectional social change
tools for working through power dynamics within local CI leadership and how that plays out in the broader community
a guided process to create agreements among the leadership group that outlines mission, vision, values, roles, and commitments
a guided process to create guidelines that match the community's values and how to create a response protocol to enforce those guidelines
tools to navigate conflict and how to do repair work when there has been a boundary violation in the community from a compassionate, survivor-centered process
support in discerning when to ask for outside help and where to go for that support

"Nicole came to our jam community to teach a workshop on tone, power, and consent. She also met with the small leadership collective to give a lecture/discussion about how consent culture, intersectionality, and transformative justice pertains to CI communities. In the lecture/discussion, she was both knowledgable and open to our opinions and concerns. She sparked a lot of deep inquiry into the organization of our local jam, and reinvgorated the importance of inclusion, communication, and education to strengthen the support within our community. In her workshop, she put the very topics we had discussed as a small group into practice. She was generous and spacious in her planned lessons, and left time at the end of the workshop for a brief discussion with community members as well as a short facilitated lab where small groups of participants created exercises from what we had learned during the workshop. Though we dove deep into material that could be emotionally triggering, participants gave the feedback that they felt held and supported during the workshop. All in all, I can't reccommend Nicole enough for her commitment to this work and its positive affect on our community." –Chrissy Martin, Movement Educator