DiverseWorks Co. is an Afrocentric arts organization and arts-based research practice rooted on the Haldimand Tract (Kitchener, Ontario). We work at the intersection of original creation, community-rooted research, and decolonial praxis — building the conditions for Afrodiasporic artistic futures.
Founded in 2021, DiverseWorks Co. has grown from a local pilot to a nationally recognised organisation delivering original productions, youth development programming, arts-based research, and cultural consultation. We hold long-form, inquiry-driven work that most institutions were never built to hold.
Our practice moves through the body, across disciplines, and into public life. We are not interested in diversity as decoration. We are interested in the radical, restorative, and generative capacity of Black creative life.
Raechele Lovell (she/they) is the Founder & Chief Dreamweaver of DiverseWorks Co. Her practice has been shaped by existing inside colonial systems that were never designed to hold her or care for her — and she has spent over two decades making work anyway, from the innerstanding that art is not neutral, access is not evenly distributed, and resilience is a birthright.
Rooted in Afro-Caribbean tradition and informed by her lived experience as a biracial womxn on the Haldimand Tract, Raechele works through movement storytelling, performance, and community-rooted creation to examine how power operates on bodies — and how we survive, adapt, and create meaning within and beyond those constraints. Her practice is grounded in the DiverseWorks Decolonial Praxis, where rhythm, repetition, witnessing, and care are not aesthetic choices but survival strategies passed down through generations. She built DiverseWorks Co. because the work demanded a house it could actually live in — and because Black artists, youth, and caregivers across this country deserved more than what existing institutions were offering. She is as rigorous in a boardroom as she is on stage, and she moves between both without apology.
She is a DéPOT Artist-in-Residence (Concordia University, SSHRC-funded), a national dance adjudicator with fifteen-plus years of experience, a Canada Council for the Arts jury member, and a 2023 Black Excellence in Leadership Award recipient. As City of Guelph Artist-in-Residence, she co-created Echoes of Liberation with Kween — the first residency in the city’s hxtory to centre dance.
✔ artistic research and development
✔ academic placements and study-aligned projects
✔ grant-funded creation
✔ residencies and long-term collaborations
Rather than producing singular outputs, the platform supports iterative processes that evolve across artistic, academic, and public contexts.
Many artistic projects require structures that honour time, depth, and care. DiverseWorks Co. was established to hold this kind of work—supporting inquiry-driven creation while navigating institutional, academic, and funding environments.
The platform prioritizes rigour, sustainability, and clarity, positioning artistic practice as a form of research and knowledge production.
