about conscious dance
Portfolio
Below you can read more about some of my past activities
The Ar(t)chitects
Building social infrastructure through art
While living in Stockholm in 2014-2015, I co-founded the Ar(t)chitects together with artists: Cesar Fulgencio, Franziska Kusebauch, Jasmine Attié, and Pelle Tillö. Our field of practice is Creative Placemaking; a blend of community building, art and placemaking. Our mission is to disrupt the static patterns people move in. We like diversity and love ambiguity. It’s easy to fall into categorical inflexibility, to get used to that a spoon is a spoon and a chair is a chair. By playing we want to reinvent the categories, widen them, increasing the possibilities. By re-playing the city we are creating new possibilities for human meetings. We help people reclaim public space and redefine what it means to be a citizen in the process. As Ar(t)chitects, we build social infrastructure through art, turning strangers into neighbours.
Read more about the Ar(t)chitects here: https://theartchitects.wixsite.com/the-artchitects
KWANDA AMSTERDAM - eBOOK
Organising for social change
In this accessible publication Beckx and Schram chart the fascinating journey of discovery as Dutch practitioners interacted with their African colleagues in seeking to learn from the methodology that underpinned the Kwanda reality TV show on community transformation. While the Organization Workshop methodology as used in South Africa could not be easily applied in Dutch conditions, it became clear that there was merit in looking at the Activity Theory principles on which it is based. This book shows how these principles were then applied in a completely new way in a three-month process leading to an Action Week involving scores of residents of Amsterdam Nieuw West. One joyful outcome is that the new insights gained from the Action Week experience can feed new practice in the global south… (Gavin Andersson)
Download the publication here
PLATFORM 1660
Cross Generation Community Dance Project
What happens when you bring young and old together on the dance floor? PLATFORM 1660 was a community art project that started in 2010 in the Southeast of Amsterdam. Léon joined forces with choregrapher Sarah Kate Gardiner and the Bijlmer Parktheater to find out what moves different generations.
HIPP
Help Increase Peace & Positivity
An intensive international 7 day training program for young change makers that enables them to facilitate community building sessions in their own home countries.
Life Lines
Spreading life's hard won lessons
Refugees aged 18 and older are not allowed to work in het Netherlands and have limited possibilities for education. As long as their status as a refugee is unclear their development is on hold. With Diversity Joy Léon worked with these young people on their life lines which were later shared with the outside world.
Dance Dialogue
Where body meets mind
An inspiring method for community art in which participants dialogue through the language of their own bodies.
Community building
Facilitating change & educating changemakers
Find out how communities, teams and organizations can benefit from nonviolent practices that were developed in prison.