I work with cultural organisations, festivals and creative teams to support more inclusive, thoughtful and sustainable ways of working — particularly within music, live events and cultural spaces.
My approach is shaped by lived experience and over a decade working across media, music and events. Inclusion works best when it’s treated not as an obligation, but as a creative and organisational strength — something that supports better decision-making, healthier teams and more meaningful engagement.
This work doesn’t need to be heavy or intimidating to be effective. It works best when it’s grounded in real environments, real people and real pressures.
How I Work
Many organisations want to do better, but aren’t always sure where to start, how to prioritise, or how to bring people along with them.
Real change tends to begin with individuals understanding themselves — how bias, privilege and experience shape the environments they create. This work isn’t about blame or perfection. It’s about awareness, responsibility and care.
I create space for honest, supportive conversation, helping teams recognise where patterns show up in practice and how they can shift them in ways that feel achievable. My role often sits somewhere between facilitator, advisor and critical friend, offering both encouragement and challenge where needed, with a strong understanding of how organisations actually operate on the ground.
Consultancy & Training
Consultancy
- Clarifying aims, values and priorities
- Developing bespoke learning and action plans
- Setting personal and organisational goals
- Ongoing organisational support
- Acting as a critical friend
Training & Workshops
- Self-awareness and unconscious bias
- Intersectionality and difference
- Identifying barriers to inclusion in practice
- Organisational power dynamics
- Seeing difference as essential to creativity
All work is tailored to the organisation, its context and the people in the room, with particular experience working in fast-paced festival and cultural settings.
Collective Practice — Insight Into Action
Alongside my independent consultancy, I work as part of Insight Into Action, a collective of facilitators and researchers.
Insight Into Action exists to support organisations at a grassroots level, helping representation, inclusion and belonging become part of everyday practice rather than a surface-level exercise. We don’t offer quick fixes or off-the-shelf solutions. Instead, we work through conversation, experiential learning and personal accountability.
Our work is collaborative, energetic and human. We’re less interested in having all the answers, and more interested in asking the right questions — and working alongside organisations to respond to them with care and integrity.
As a collective, we bring a range of lived experiences and perspectives, including people who experience racism, come from working-class backgrounds, identify as disabled and LGBTQ+. This allows us to work with depth, nuance and accountability across different organisational contexts.
Testimonial
“In 2017 Artspace Lifespace and sister company Invisible Circus received funding from Bristol City Council to develop a strategy to make our spaces more inclusive and manage our diversity reporting processes. We wanted a larger demographic to not only use our spaces but feel empowered within them through collaboration and discussion.
We selected Ngaio as she showed a strong understanding of both organisations and suggested new ways to reach new audiences. She helped us move beyond surface-level approaches and focus on opening up production, allowing diverse voices to be part of our creative practices at all levels.
Ngaio is a brilliant, confident communicator, skilled in active listening and empathy, with a real ability to motivate people to engage with systemic change in a constructive and non-confrontational way.”
— Kathryn Chiswell Jones, Company Manager, Artspace Lifespace
My practice is informed by my ongoing work as a DJ, live performer and stage curator within the music and festival landscape. Being embedded in these environments allows me to bring a practical, culturally literate and experience-led perspective to inclusion work.
If you’d like to talk about working together, please get in touch.