Holding space for liberation
who we are.
Together, we have a collective experience of over 35 years as educators and learning designers, consultants and facilitators. From culture and leadership consultancy, through learning design and movement building, to the disciplines of feminism & Queer Theory, anti-oppression, sovereignty and transformative justice, our work draws strength from the fusion of our perspectives and experiences.
priya.
Envisioning new processes of liberation and ways of being with each other is at the core of what ignites Priya. Throughout her career, she has created spaces where possibility can exist.
As a lecturer of design thinking, experiential learning designer, leadership consultant and a seasoned facilitator, she blends those disciplines together to enable others to achieve their vision and build the world they want to be a part of, together.
In our work you’ll find Priya alongside you in a constant state of emergence, listening deeply to what is present for you and creating solutions to move you forward towards justice and liberation.
alexander.
Alexander is a facilitator, consultant and coach focused on supporting people to get clear on, and take responsibility for, their relationships, and their role in the world.
He has worked as an anti-oppression learning designer and facilitator, integrating the practices of conflict transformation to equip people for more humane, relational approaches to justice and change.
He has a background as an organisational culture consultant cohering diverse groups around shared purpose and values, communications strategist for social changemakers and spiritual leaders, and a speaker coach and event host.
He is also a Trustee at Rainbow Migration, and draws on science fiction as the playground for imagining radical new ways of being and living together.
vanessa.
Vanessa works as a learning designer, trainer, facilitator, and consultant of anti-oppression, conflict transformation, collective liberation, and movement-building.
In doing this work, she resources people with what they need to dismantle tools of oppression, cultures of supremacy, and cycles of dehumanisation. She takes aim at the colonial project of divide and conquer by supporting social movements to unite across difference, in service of a greater we.
Things to know about Vanessa is that she is a British-Nigerian living in London with her partner and two cats. She’s a fluent speaker of Spanish, a part-time dj of world music, and a full-time lover of international cinema and literature.
Our work as a partnership is rooted in our values of Reponsibility, Possibility, Clarity, Integrity and Interdependence.
The funny thing about our values, is that they used to be different - a set of four we named that we thought would sit at the root of our decisions and the way we are together. As our partnership deepened, they turned out not to be as important as the ones we were really living; values that kept popping up even when we weren’t trying! We decided to pay attention to these instead, and they’ve helped guide us through both our toughest and most joyous moments.
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Responsibility at Held is the decision we make that upholds our commitment. When we’re unsure where to go, feel fatigued or tempted to retreat, we ask the question “what will we take responsibility for?”, and the answers begin to unfurl. Responsibility is the love language of our accountability, to ourselves, eachother, and the world we want to create.
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Possibility is the antidote to years of zero-sum thinking that was limiting our relationships. Possibility often comes through in Priya’s voice with the words “and there’s more”. More to you. More for you. More for us. Possibility encourages us to watch out for what we’ve missed, and to get creative about how expansive our vision might be.
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Clarity is the gift we’re always giving and receiving; the value we celebrate whenever we reach it. Clarity is the value that raises things to the surface and names them, illuminates where we are and where we’re going, and creates the foundation for decisions to be made. Getting clear is also about differentiating one thing from another, allowing room for complexity, and opening the door for alignment or principled struggle.
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This value has been a hard one to learn, the one that feels most like an act of resistance against what we are taught to prioritise. Interdependence is the value that calls on us to take our partnership seriously. To strive together, to lean on one another, to be changed by eachother. Interdependence reminds us that our boundaries are not walls, and that we are not alone.
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Integrity is the power behind our yeses and our nos. As a value, we know that integrity is the one that may feel tested the most often, as we get tempted to disregard what we feel and what we need in favour of ease and appeasing others. Integrity is a reminder to keep ourselves in the equation. To feed our decisions with where we’re at, what we need, and what we stand for.
get in touch.
Drop us a message using our contact form and we’ll get back to you.
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible”
— Toni Cade Bambara