Talanoa Lab: Fostering a Transformative Culture of Feedback
- Ages 18+
Reclaiming feedback as a relational practice rooted in indigenous Pasifika modalities, mutual care, co-learning, & community healing.
Date and time
Location
546 9th St.
546 9th St. Oakland, CA 94607Refund Policy
About this event
- Event lasts 2 hours
- Ages 18+
- Free venue parking
Talanoa Lab: Fostering a Transformative Culture of Feedback
Pilot Offering for FY 25/26 by Bean Kaloni Tupou
📅 Saturday, August 2nd, 2025
10am – 12PM PST
(Oakland, CA)
🎟 Limited to 25 participants
Sliding Scale Pricing:
$25 – Community Rate
$50 – Sustainer Rate
$75 – Supporter Rate
Want to have a conversation about funding and accessability? Please reach out- bean.tupou@gmail.com
About the Workshop
What if feedback and the act of sharing our honest observations and perspectives wasn't something to avoid, but a practice of connection, space making and mutual care?
What if instead of bracing for criticism, we opened space for dialogue rooted in trust, curiosity, and cultural integrity?
At Talanoa Lab, we explore feedback as more than performance and social management; it’s a relational tool for community growth. One that, when practiced with intention, can heal ruptures, deepen collaboration, and foster a transformative culture of shared responsibility and belonging.
Fostering a Transformative Culture of Feedback is a 2 hour in-person pilot of the Talanoa Lab, a community-rooted space dreamed up by Bean Kaloni Tupou. It's a space to practice feedback as a cultural and relational act of decoloization. We’ll explore feedback not as a tool for correction, control or power horading, but as talanoa: open, reciprocal, trust-filled dialogue that builds collective strength, rooted in growth.
Whether you’re a people manager, educator, artist, team lead, culture worker, community organizer, or you want to learn more acute communication skills; this workshop is for anyone curious about reimagining feedback as a tool for advocacy, transformation, confidence, and accountability in your life.
What We’ll Explore
- How feedback has the power to build or disrupt psychological safety in groups
- Strategies for feedback that strengthen interpersonal trust and mutual respect
- Tools to foster a growth-oriented, feedback-rich organizational culture
- How committing to a practice of feedback can help decentralize power & ownership
- Ways to make feedback more grounded, decolonial, and care-centered
What to Expect
- Interactive exercises
- Scenario rewriting and person reflection
- Real-world practice
- Rich group discussions and storytelling
- A communal, culturally grounded learning space
Facilitated by Bean Kaloni Tupou
Bean Kaloni Tupou (they/them) is a mixed-race Tongan musician, aspiring culture strategist, operations leader, and lifelong Bay Area community arts organizer currently based in Oakland. With over 15 years of experience building people-centered infrastructure across the Bay Area music & art scenes, grassroots collectives, and community spaces, Bean brings a uniquely grounded, refreshing and relational approach to systems change.
Influenced by an Indigenous diasporic context, Bean’s work is rooted in the belief that feedback, when practiced with care and integrity, can be a pathway to self-determination, healing, and collective liberation.
Their facilitation is shaped by years of worker training, people operations, cultural assessment, infrastructure-building, and decolonial strategy. They hope to make Talanoa Lab a culmination of their lived experience, ancestral inheritance, creative process, and vision for a more relational, reciprocal way of working and being together.
Tickets
Community Rate
0$25.00Sustainer Rate
0$50.00Supporter Rate
0$75.00
Frequently asked questions
Talanoa Lab is a community-rooted workshop that explores feedback as a relational, cultural, and transformative practice. It’s a space to unlearn extractive communication habits and practice feedback grounded in trust, safety, and collective care. The workshop draws from Indigenous Moana frameworks.
If you’ve ever struggled with giving or receiving feedback, are building culture within your team, teaching, caregiving, organizing, or managing others—this is for you. This space is especially for those invested in equity, healing, liberation, and collaborative leadership.
Talanoa is a Tongan and wider Moana term that translates to: tala = “to tell or speak” and noa = “without concealment” or “nothing in particular”. Together, talanoa means to talk openly and honestly, without a fixed agenda.
Expect storytelling, facilitated discussion, small group scenarios, gentle roleplay, writing/reflection, and lots of space to practice. You’ll leave with frameworks, tools, and language for feedback rooted in care, growth, and cultural integrity.
Both. It’s structured, but it’s not top-down. It’s part teaching, part reflection, part co-creation. You’ll be learning from me and from each other
The workshop will take place in Oakland, CA at the intersection on 9th and Clay St. The exact location will be shared with all registered participants the week of the event. The space is accessible and near public transportation.
Access matters. You choose the price that aligns with your financial reality.
Totally okay. This space isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being real. You’ll be met with warmth, care, and pacing that meets you where you are. Nothing is mandatory. Come as you are.
This space prioritizes BIPOC participants, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, & Pacific Islander, POC, or navigating white-dominant organizational culture.If you do not identify as BIPOC, we ask that you come with deep respect, a willingness to decenter whiteness.