Embodied Social Justice
I do the following:
- Create learning experiences, leading to a deeper understanding of topics related to nervous system regulation and how oppression, such as racism and ableism, impacts the body.
- Facilitate meetings and events with somatic, care and embodied social justice principles woven in.
- Speak, present and interview people about embodied social justice.
- Provide thought partnership, strategy and consultancy to support certain goals, projects or visionary initiatives.
What is Embodied Social Justice?
Embodied Social Justice is an area of practice based research that seeks to understand and re-pattern the ways that socio-political issues, such as racism, ableism or incarceration, impact our bodies.
Non verbal communication is the main way we transmit information as humans. Our body language signals who is seen as safe or dangerous, who should lead or follow, be included or excluded, depending on the social position of the people we are interacting with. These often unconscious gestures and movements often reinforce the systems of power and inequality embedded in our societies. We could spend a lifetime intellectually learning about racism, for example as a means to un-do it, but if we ignore the body we will fail to re-pattern the non verbal cues that reinforce it. As a result, it is necessary to include the body in our strategies to create holistic and intergenerational social change.
Professional Highlights
Contributor & Thought Partner at the Embodied Restoration Lab (2024)
Presenter of an Embodied Social Change workshop at the Architecture(s) of Planetary Well-being Conference (re:arc institute, 2023)
Author of an Embodied Decolonisation exercise in the book, How We Hold: Rehearsals for Art and Social Change (Serpentine Galleries Education and Civics team, 2023).
Project partner, Programmer & Presenter for Rehearsing Freedoms Festival (Healing Justice London, 2023).
Presenter at the Embodied Social Justice Summit (2021 & 2022)
Guest on the Emergent Strategy Podcast with adrienne maree brown (2022).
“I worked with Camille on a book chapter to do with leadership in the younger generation, and they also led workshops at St Ethelburga’s and participated as a guest speaker many times. Camille is beautifully articulate and inspiring. Their practice and thinking is original and cutting edge. They have been consistently professional, generous, open and a joy to work with. Camille will always be a go to person for us on certain key issues and someone whose path through the world we watch with interest and learn from. Their unique spark is very much needed in this world.”
Embodied Social Justice – Background
In recent years, I have become a sought after practitioner within the embodied social justice space, presenting at conferences including the Embodied Social Justice Summit, Body IQ Festival, the Somatic Movement Summit and teaching the popular Somatics & Psychedelics course with the Embody Lab. In 2022, I was a featured guest on the Emergent Strategy podcast, hosted by adrienne maree brown, to talk about my research to decolonise the body. Since 2016, I have been hosting workshops combining somatics, dance and social justice theory to map, as well as re-pattern the impacts of oppression on the body. In 2020 my approach was featured in the VPRO (Dutch public TV) documentary The Post Racist Planet. One of my exercises is being published in a book by the Civics and Education Department at the Serpentine Gallery (London).
During the early years of the pandemic, I was a host for the online Wxtch Craft KABK series and had the deep pleasure of being in conversation with visionaries including Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nkem Ndefo, Kai Cheng Thom, Neema Githere and Aurora Levins Morales.
My work in this area led me to be invited by Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam) to design and implement a temporary masters programme based on my research called Ecologies of Transformation (2021 – 2023). This course researches how art making and embodiment can create social change.
Camille Barton is an extraordinary and skilled practitioner, facilitator, artist and visionary. At Healing Justice London over the years, we have deeply enjoyed collaborating and working with Camille. They bring an intentional, rigorous and thoughtful practice coupled with a broad and expansive analysis, as well as awareness of social, political and economic conditions.
We are deeply inspired by the depth and connectedness of Camille’s ideas as well as their practice. Personally, working with Camille over the years, particularly on their grief retreat was not only a joy but an opportunity to collaborate and learn with somebody who is deeply committed to fair, just, kind and joyful practice. They bring so much creativity and compassion to what they do, not only towards the people that they are working with, but also towards themselves as a broader way of building and practising.
I would recommend working with Camille without hesitation; they bring a remarkable humility to their work that allows them to stay curious, honest and deeply collaborative.”