beatboard.org

Mike Sheehan - Founder and Director

Mike Sheehan is an artist and educator specializing in large group facilitation and youth engagement. For the past 14 years he has been designing and delivering a variety of educational programs for both youth and adults. His work is sought out by communities, conferences, schools, alternative education centres, Native Friendship Centres, youth detention centres, corporations and NGOs. Mike is known for creating meaningful and inclusive learning environments with a surprising level of engagement and energy.

Nadia Chaney

Nadia Chaney is an emcee, poet, musician, budding novelist, and multimedia visual artist who loves to dance and imagine. She brings clarity, compassion, gentle critical intelligence, exuberant creativity and a solid foundation of love, non-violence and respect. Her arts empowerment work includes violence prevention, unity-work, hip hop classes in detention centres, self care-for-employability programs, a massive car-free volunteer-run festival, and lots more. Nadia mostly works in collective, non-profit scenarios, but is also interested in enlightened for-profit work.

Rupinder Singh Sidhu

As a facilitator, Rupinder has been helping build healthy, passionate communties for the past 10 years. As a multiinstrumentalist, producer, dancer, cheoreographer and poet, his vision is ignited by an interdisciplinary passion for the arts. Strength and self-empowerment inspire all of Rup's work; he brings a fun, engaging and heartfelt energy to all of his facilitation. Rup is currently facilitating with Peer Perspectives, the Momentum Project, the Surrey Social Future Community Voices Project, and the Sarah MacLaughlin Music Outreach, a free inner city music school.

Sara Kendall

Sara Kendall is a Vancouver-based artist and facilitiator. Her work in spoken word, music and circus performance carry into her artistically informed facilitation processes with youth, community groups and non-profit organizations, bringing creative vibrancy into dialogues and problem solving. Sara is interested in fully-engaged group processes that are both personally meaningful and socially relevant; she brings her readiness for dialogue and learning to facilitation of all kinds.

Mark Vonesch

Mark Vonesch is a film maker, a VJ, and a media based youth facilitator. He is the Founder and Director of Reel Youth and is the principle of Mobius Media. Mark is passionate about using the creation of media for both a creative outlet and a vehicle for positive change. Mark's workshops are based around supporting young people to make films about the issues they care about most.

Emma Leigh Tius

Emma Tius is an artist and facilitator who has been engaging groups and individuals in meaningful learning for over a decade. Emma creates supportive spaces for diverse groups to participate in inclusive community building and empowering self-discovery. Passionate about inspiring positive change through creative processes, Emma delivers fun and experiential programs to classrooms, conferences, community groups and organizations.

Michael Derby

Michael is passionate about community development and empowerment through the
arts. He is a facilitator and a touring spoken word and hip hop
artist. Poetic articulation, surreal spontaneity and
social consciousness are central elements in his repertoire. He shares his talents as an artist and as a youth educator through creating inclusive and supportive spaces for discovery and learning.

Kxx

Kxx (Kim Citton) is a certified yoga instructor, outdoor educator and dynamic facilitator who has worked for diverse organizations from the local to international level. She specializes in experiential education for social change. For the past 10 years, Kxx has been designing and facilitating programs that help build more inclusive communities based on respect, choice, safety and fun.

Mike Robinson

Mike Robinson is a naturalist/guide, educator and change agent. He owns and operates Tiderise Consulting, and has worked with many progressive organizations that deliver leadership and personal growth programming. These include Royal Roads University, Power of Hope, Inclusive Leadership Adventures, Green Party of Canada, Terra-centric Adventures, Alberta Ministry of Education, Community Advisory Associations, Career-link and The Earth Charter,

Bernard Yankson

Bernard Yankson is a practicing Visual Artist and a 9
year dancer of the B-Boying kind. The 'B' in B-Boying
traditionally stands for 'Beat' yet B-Boying is also
known as breakdancing. These skills have allowed him to
work with established choreogaphers all over Canada.

Tammy Brooks

Tammy has joined the Beatboard team as a practicum student completing her degree in Social Work at the University of Victoria. Tammy will be assisting in the development and management of Beatboard programs as well as implementing structures for program evaluation. Tammy will also be involved with grant writing, promotion including media relations and networking with schools and organizations.

Kim Rowe

Kim Rowe has come on as a Practicum student from Camosun College where she is taking her Community Family and Child studies Diploma. Kim is a mother of two young adolescents herself and has experience in running programs for teenaged girls, theater for school aged children and art programs for preschoolers. She has sat on several committees and commissions in her hometown of Shawnigan Lake. Kim is excited to join Beatboard and work on promotion, office structure and to facilitate the expansion of more high quality programs.

Steve Parr

Steve Parr is a facilitator and writer committed to building healthy communities through dialogue, interactive theatre, compassion and endless curiosity. A graduate of the University of Victoria Women's Studies department, Steve is particularly interested in healing gender relationships. Steve works with men to explore and transform our personal and collective shadows. He has advocated for environmental and social sustainability nationwide with the Otesha Project (www.otesha.ca), and has trained extensively with Theatre of the Oppressed / Theatre for Living techniques.