We create immersive experiences
that work directly with the relational patterns shaping how people show up, communicate, and collaborate — whether that's a leadership cohort building new capacities together, or an intact team ready to shift the culture they've been living in.
Grounded in theory, activated through practice — because understanding something and being able to do it are two very different things. The learning happens in the room, in real interaction with others — not just on the page.
Meet the Team
For over fifteen years, Shannon Litzenberger has been designing and leading relational leadership programs for executives, leadership cohorts, and organizational teams across corporate, academic, and social impact sectors. Her clients have included RBC, McKinsey & Company, National Bank, the Ivey Business School at Western University, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the Banff Centre, and the Trudeau Foundation, among many others. Her approach draws on twenty-five years as an award-winning choreographer and artistic director — bringing a depth of creative, ensemble-based methodologies to leadership development that sets her work apart from conventional leadership training
Shannon
Litzenberger
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Shannon is the co-founder of PlaySpace and has evolved its core methodology through twenty-five years of artistic practice, fifteen years of applied leadership facilitation, and ongoing engagement with the practices of artist and leadership facilitator colleagues from Canada and around the world. At the heart of her approach is a focus on recovering the embodied, relational capacities that complex times demand: sensory attunement, expanded attentional awareness, deep listening, reciprocity, imagination, and the ability to co-create generatively across difference. Her work is grounded in a conviction that relational practice is not only essential to organizational health — it is foundational to the kind of worldmaking that supports mutual thriving and a functioning, pluralistic democracy.
The ground-breaking leadership course she designed and teaches at the University of Toronto is the first university-level course in Canada to bring this methodology directly into a management curriculum. Her research into embodied ensemble-based practice as a leadership development strategy has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and developed through partnerships with the Ivey Business School at Western University, the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, and her current role as Associate Researcher with Creative Labour, Critical Futures at the University of Toronto.
Shannon is currently co-editing Relational Leadership — an interdisciplinary volume forthcoming with Columbia University Press, co-edited with Robert Ransick and Amy Whitaker — which synthesizes embodiment, relationality, and worldmaking as a new framework for leadership in complex times. She is also a contributing author to the volume.
A prolific writer and public thinker, Shannon has published over 100 articles on creative process, leadership, systems change, and public policy, and is the author of the widely read essay Why We Need Artists Right Now. She was the first Arts Innovation Fellow at the Metcalf Foundation, a Chalmers Fellow, and the first Arne Bengt Johansson Fellow at Banff Forum.
Her artistic work — sensory-rich, multi-disciplinary performances that animate our relationship to land, community, and the forgotten wisdom of the body — has been presented across Canada and the United States, with residencies at Soulpepper Theatre, Toronto Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, and the Banff Centre. She is a member of the Wild Soma embodied worldmaking research collective, a Public Imagination Fellow and an invited speaker and guest at universities, conferences, and events across Canada and internationally.
"Taking time to feel and sense, to expand our attention, to listen with our whole bodies, to play without agenda, to connect and express freely — this allows for unforeseen possibilities to emerge. I believe that when we lead from this place, we become capable of the kind of collective worldmaking that our organizations, our communities, and our world most need — one that orients our compass toward mutual thriving."
Mairéad Filgate is an award-winning performer, choreographer, and facilitator whose twenty-year practice in collaborative improvisation and ensemble creation forms the foundation of her work with PlaySpace. Widely recognized for her ability to design experiences that rapidly build trust, surface group dynamics, and unlock collective creativity, she brings a rare and highly developed facilitation intelligence to leadership and culture-change contexts — one shaped by decades of working at the leading edge of collaborative artistic practice in Canada and the United States
Mairéad
Filgate
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Mairéad is the co-founder of PlaySpace and co-investigator on its Canada Council for the Arts-funded research into embodied ensemble-based improvisation as a leadership development strategy — research conducted in partnership with the Ivey Business School at Western University and the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. Her contribution to that research drew on two decades of practice as an improviser and collaborative creator — expertise that proved central to the methodology's effectiveness, particularly in its capacity to lateralize power dynamics, activate collective intelligence, and create conditions of genuine inclusion and trust among diverse groups.
As co-founder of the award-winning Throwdown Collective (2008–2023), Mairéad spent fifteen years developing and refining innovative methodologies in collaborative improvisation — methodologies now at the heart of how PlaySpace works with teams and organizations. She has led workshops and creative projects across Canada and the United States, working with community members, organizational teams, and leaders across a wide range of sectors and contexts. Her work consistently demonstrates that the capacities developed through ensemble-based creative practice — deep listening, shared agency, responsive co-creation, and trust across difference — are precisely those that organizations most need and most struggle to cultivate through conventional means.
Her facilitation practice is grounded in a deep commitment to inclusion: creating spaces where diverse voices, perspectives, and ways of knowing are not just welcomed but genuinely activated in service of shared goals. From 2015 to 2018, she served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists, where she led strategic planning and developed policy and programming around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — bringing the same relational intelligence she brings to facilitation to the challenges of organizational governance.
Mairéad is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at Concordia University's Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, where she is working toward the publication of an oral history of Canada's Danny Grossman Dance Company — a project that reflects her longstanding commitment to amplifying diverse voices, preserving collective memory, and understanding how the social, political, and artistic conditions of an era shape the cultures organizations create.
"I am continually amazed by the unexpected magic that transpires in processes of collective collaboration. When space is made for each unique voice — in their diverse ways of being and knowing — the joy of togetherness and the creative potential that emerge are remarkable to witness. Both within and outside the arts, I have seen the transformative power of this kind of practice over and over again. And transformation is what our planet and society so urgently need."
Collaborators
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At SHARE Foundation, she has developed dialogue-based approaches to rebuild trust across divided communities. With over a decade of experience, she designs and leads experiential processes that help leaders and teams navigate tension, strengthen communication, and build more resilient ways of working together. She teaches in the PhD in Global Leadership at Pepperdine University, integrating her field experience into her academic work
Dr. Veronica Escalante
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Here they examine and shape cultural policy and co-creative production and distribution in the digital age for arts, culture, and media.
Dr. Luka works with research-creation, arts-based, and walking methods. Luka is also an award-winning digital media producer who has worked with over 100 cultural organizations as a consultant, staff member or advisor to imagine and activate an increasingly vibrant Canadian culture sector.
Dr. Mary Elizabeth (ME) Luka
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Her written work has been published in The Routledge Companion to Voice & Identity (forthcoming) Seismograf (forthcoming),Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media and the Journal of Urban History. She has also produced several podcasts, sonic projects, and documentary films. She is a current board member on both the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE) and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE). www.laurenknight.ca.
Lauren Knight
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"I have now applied these practices on a daily basis to find new and successful ways to lead and co-create within my work environment."
— Al Chapman
Executive Director, Arts Habitat Edmonton -
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"It was eye-opening and transformative to see how I embodied my leadership values and how they could manifest and influence other members of my team. These exercises have truly helped me walk how I want to lead, not just talk about it."
— Tak Pham
Curator, Illingworth Kerr Gallery
Alberta University of the Arts -
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"The session was both energizing and deeply meaningful. It was easily and demonstrably evident in the faces of the fellow participants, in their post-event conversation and in the real and positive residue that remains with me."
- Kondwani Mwase
Executive Director of Audience Engagement
National Arts Centre
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