mairéad filgate
Play Space
Co-founded by artist-educators Mairéad Filgate and Shannon Litzenberger, PlaySpace designs interventions using embodied, ensemble-based play, investigating its potential as a transformative methodology to foster collaborative leadership, community wellbeing, and inclusive culture-making. Their work spans multiple sectors, including the arts, corporate environments, healthcare, education, and social services.
PlaySpace has conducted workshops in Toronto, Montreal, Mérida (Mexico), and at the Ivey Business School at Western University (London, ON), supported by the Canada Council for the Arts Strategic Innovation Fund. Their ongoing research has demonstrated the positive impacts of these methodologies, including fostering trust, creating a sense of belonging, and enabling diverse group members to contribute meaningfully to shared goals. By integrating embodied play practices, PlaySpace seeks to cultivate stronger, more connected communities and enhance group dynamics in both creative and professional contexts.
projects.
Play Space
about.
Mairéad Filgate (Montreal/Toronto) is a Dora Mavor Moore Award winning performer (Ensemble – Public Recordings) and choreographer (with Throwdown Collective), and a K.M. Hunter and Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize nominee. She is a founding member of the collaborative trio Throwdown Collective, and in 2022 she premiered Note the Weather, her first independent, full-length, site-specific work, on the grounds of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto). Mairéad has had the immense privilege to tour to India, China, Mongolia, France, Belgium, UK, USA, and across Canada. She makes regular sojourns to NYC to study with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Recent projects include works with Throwdown Collective, Gabby Kamino, Sashar Zarif Dance Theatre, tiger princess dance projects, Roshanak Jaberi & Karen Kaeja, Erin Flynn, Marie-Josée Chartier, and Compagnie Katie Ward. A member of the Danny Grossman Dance Company from 2003-2008, Mairéad is currently collecting oral histories of the company’s storied three decades. In August 2023 she presented some of her research at an exhibit at dance: made in canada/fait au canada.
