Decolonizing Facilitation: Holding Space with Purpose, History, and Ethos
- Nia Eubanks-Dixon
- Nov 17
- 4 min read
Every time we gather people to teach, plan, heal, or organize, we’re shaping more than a meeting. We’re shaping culture. The ways we listen, speak, and make decisions reflect our values and, often, the systems we’ve inherited. Facilitation is not a neutral act; it’s a practice that can either reinforce hierarchy or open pathways to liberation.
Decolonizing facilitation asks us to notice how dominant norms such as prioritizing efficiency over relationship, control over collaboration, or comfort over truth show up in the way we hold space. It challenges us to shift from managing people to building a relationship with them. It’s about remembering that every space holds history, power, and possibility, and that how we facilitate determines what can truly emerge.
What It Means to Decolonize Facilitation
To decolonize facilitation is to recognize that traditional methods of leading, teaching, or training often come from Western, individualistic frameworks that prioritize control, linearity, and hierarchy. These models can silence certain voices, especially those from communities historically marginalized or excluded from decision-making.
Decolonizing facilitation reorients us toward relationship, reciprocity, and repair. It’s grounded in the understanding that learning and transformation are collective — not top-down. In a trauma-informed and liberation-centered space, facilitation becomes a shared responsibility rather than a performance of authority.
Holds awareness of history and power in every interaction.
Centers culture and lived experience as sources of knowledge.
Values multiple forms of expression, such as storytelling, movement, and art, as valid ways of knowing.
Balances structure with flexibility, allowing space for emergent needs.
Views conflict not as disruption, but as an opportunity for deeper connection and understanding.
This approach aligns closely with anti-racism training for educators, equity-focused professional development, and restorative practices training. It calls on facilitators to design spaces that acknowledge trauma, nurture belonging, and uplift collective wisdom.
Reclaiming the Role of the Facilitator
In a decolonizing framework, the facilitator is not the “expert” who leads others toward a pre-set outcome. Instead, they become a steward of process: someone who creates conditions for authentic exchange and shared meaning-making.
This kind of facilitation asks for presence over performance. It requires deep listening, humility, and an ability to hold complexity without rushing to resolution.
For example, in community organizing training or trainings for youth-based organizations, a facilitator might begin by inviting participants to reflect on the histories and movements that shaped their communities. They might use visual art or collective storytelling to surface wisdom that isn’t usually captured in written words. Rather than dictating the pace or direction, they move at the speed of trust, responding to what emerges in real time.
Such facilitation honors not only what participants know, but how they know, through experience, ancestry, and embodied practice. It’s a way of reclaiming knowledge that systems have often devalued.
From Inclusion to Liberation
Many organizations today seek to make their work more “inclusive,” yet inclusion alone is not enough if the underlying systems remain unchanged. Decolonizing facilitation shifts the focus from inclusion — making space in an existing structure — to liberation, which means reimagining the structure itself.
In restorative liberation workshops for schools, for instance, educators learn to create classrooms where every student’s identity, language, and culture are integral to learning. Similarly, civic engagement workshops in Philadelphia that draw on creative and historical practices allow participants to see themselves as part of ongoing movements for justice.
In these spaces, power is shared, not centralized. Decision-making becomes collaborative. Emotional safety and accountability are treated as collective responsibilities. And the facilitator’s role is to weave connections between individual experience and systemic change.
Trauma-Informed and Healing-Centered Approaches
Decolonizing facilitation cannot exist without being trauma-informed. Many participants, especially educators, youth workers, and organizers, carry the weight of historical, systemic, and personal trauma into collective spaces. A decolonized facilitator understands that healing and learning are intertwined.
They integrate arts-based SEL practices, grounding exercises, and reflection tools that help participants regulate emotions and engage more fully. They also create structures of care: clear boundaries, consent around sharing, and an emphasis on rest and embodiment.
By modeling care and accountability, facilitators embody the change they hope to nurture in others. This is healing-centered leadership — one that transforms not just outcomes, but the very conditions in which transformation happens.
Principles for Practicing Decolonizing Facilitation
To move toward a liberation-centered approach, facilitators can begin with these guiding principles:
1. Honor history
Acknowledge the roots of the communities you work with, the land you’re on, and the systems that shape your space.
2. Design for relationship
Prioritize activities that build trust and mutual understanding before diving into content.
3. Embrace creativity
Use art as praxis — poetry, movement, drawing — to open emotional and cultural expression.
4. Share power
Invite participants to co-create agreements, shape agendas, and define success collectively.
5. Slow down
Transformation takes time. Allow for silence, reflection, and emergent learning.
6. Model vulnerability
A facilitator who shows up authentically invites others to do the same.
When facilitation is rooted in history and humanity, it becomes more than an exchange of ideas; it becomes a practice of liberation.
Toward Collective Liberation
Decolonizing facilitation asks us to hold space not just with skill, but with ethos. It means recognizing that every gathering is a microcosm of the world we’re trying to build; one that honors truth, care, and interconnectedness.
At Creative Praxis, our anti-racist leadership development and trauma-informed facilitation trainings support educators, organizers, and institutions in developing these practices. Participants learn to facilitate through an arts-based, healing-centered approach that deepens awareness and strengthens collective capacity for justice.
Contact us to learn more about Creative Praxis workshops and trainings, and discover how decolonizing facilitation can transform the way your community learns, heals, and leads.
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