DiverseWorks Co.

“By integrating caregiving into our creative process, we break down systemic barriers that often force parents to choose between their children and their careers.”

We welcome Level UP! 2024-2025 Performing Arts sector Partner:
DiverseWorks Dance Co.!

DiverseWorks Dance Co., founded by Raechele Lovell in 2021, is a decolonial Afrocentric arts company based in Kitchener, Ontario. The organization creates socially engaged works and offers a range of services including choreography, workshops, a Paid Apprenticeship Program, and equity consulting. DiverseWorks aims to foster cultural connections and creative outlets for Black artists, youth, and communities, while advocating for equity and decolonization in the arts sector. The company is committed to creating sustainable artistic jobs and reducing economic inequalities.

As part of the Level UP! Initiative, DiverseWorks is piloting flexible working models with a focus on creating alternative schedules that support parent-artists, particularly during production and touring. This project is led by Raechele Lovell.

Raechele Lovell (she/they) is a multi-disciplinary artivist, producer/curator, choreographer, dramaturg, and Founder & Executive Artistic Director of DiverseWorks Dance Co., based on the Haldimand Tract, colonially known as Kitchener, Ontario. A proud Black-identifying bi-racial womxn, Raechele’s decolonial pedagogy is informed by her residency at the Ubuntu Decolonial Arts Centre under the mentorship of d’bi young anitafrika, where she cultivated a praxis grounded in care, collaboration, and equity-centred artistry. As Project Lead for DiverseWorks' Creation & Care Pilot, she integrates caregiving into the artistic process, bridging intergenerational connections while challenging systemic inequities. Through movement storytelling, Raechele reclaims narratives of resilience and celebrates the complexities of Afro-diasporic legacies. Her leadership spans initiatives like the Black Theatre Workshop AMP Cohort and as the 2025 DéPOT Artist-in-Residence, advancing care-centred, transformative models in the arts sector.

ℹ️ Balancing Act’s Level UP! Initiative supports artists, arts organizations, companies, collectives, festivals, residency programs and project-based initiatives as they explore the creation of policies and practices that support parents, caregivers and others with specialized care needs.
Learn more about DiverseWorks at https://www.thediverse.ca
Get to know our Level UP! Initiative and 2024-2025 Partners at BalancingActCanada.com/Level-Up

We still need your help!

We are just $1745 away from our fundraising goal. Please help us to cross the finish line today.

Help us to show the system that this project is wanted, welcome and wrapped in community support.

We are crowdfunding our way as the only way forward in a broken, racist system. Our community is our ensemble.

Please donate if you can.
Please share widely.

We appreciate you ✨

👉🏽 https://chuffed.org/project/134681-backing-black-art-paris-bound

We are just days away from our travel plans to debut Uncovering Roots in Paris, France.

We are asking for help—not because we didn’t plan, but because the system did not deliver.

A very wise person who I admire very much recently said to me, “Raechele, can you please stop with the hyper-independent Black Womxn trope?”

This truth struck me like a tonne of bricks…

I needed this reminder.

I am because you are. Together we rise. It takes a village. Individualism is White Supremacy.

We have been working diligently on this commissioned project for well over a year now. After months of applications, follow-ups, waiting, begging and pleading, the funding we anticipated hasn’t arrived in time.

The opportunity is real—we’re going to present this work to an international audience—but the resources have not followed. This is the cost of navigating gatekeeping, bureaucracy, and institutional delay as Black Womyn Artists trying to do something bold, truthful, and global.

We are still going. But we need you.

This work is heavy
This work is hard
This work is urgent
This work is now

This campaign is not just about travel—it’s about ensuring that Uncovering Roots, a work grounded in generational memory and liberation, is not silenced by red tape and scarcity.

I am personally appealing to our community on this one. We need your support. We need your encouragement.

I need to know that there are still members of our society that give a damn about equity, anti-racism, art, culture, education and the end of systemic oppression. I need this reminder like I need water, food, shelter and love.

We’re raising $5,000 to make this journey possible without compromise. To honour our ancestors, our stories, and our right to be witnessed.

📣 Please give if you can, and share widely if you can’t.

👉🏽https://chuffed.org/project/134681-backing-black-art-paris-bound

Thank you for believing in me.
Thank you for making the path with me.
Thank you for those who have already supported.

Link in bio 🙏🏽

Asé ✨

- Raechele Lovell
Founder & Chief Dreamweaver
DiverseWorks Co.