Dion is a music educator, community musician, conductor, and pianist trained at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, ON and Memorial University in St. John’s, NL. He has been playing music for over 25 years and is a dedicated researcher of the theory and practice of Filipino community music.
Dion lives and works in both Waterloo and Toronto, ON and has meaningful experience both as a choral singer and school music teacher.
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Bio
Dion Flores is a musician, educator, and active advocate for decolonization and social justice based out of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies in community psychology where his research focuses on studying cultural resonance and how this can serve as a framework for healing from colonial mentality and intergenerational trauma in the Filipino diaspora. Further, how addressing critical issues faced by the Filipino-Canadian community of KW and beyond can inform strategies and practices for decolonization and (re)indigenization of the Filipino diaspora while combating racial injustice in the broader society.
His aim with KW Sentro is to deliver high-quality cultural programming to his community by way of the Annual Filipino Cultural Gathering and Symposium, the 3rd iteration taking place April 24-25, 2025. This event will convene Filipino researchers, artists, and community members to allow Filipinos of KW to engage in aspects of their culture that remind them of “home” or “tahanan” in Tagalog. KW Sentro is preparing to launch its research journal in the summer of 2024 where it will feature stories and research by local Filipino scholars.
Dion’s passion for music education extends beyond traditional and conventional pedagogies and methods of Euro-centric music education. Throughout his studies, he has boldly questioned the normalized paradigms of instruction that he grew up with and was encouraged to uncritically reproduce in his teaching practice. Rooted in the literature of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Angela Davis, the Combahee River Collective, Robin DiAngelo, and other social justice scholars, he actively works to resist the control of White supremacy in his own mind and in the classroom while advocating for culturally responsive pedagogies informed by anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and indigenous methodologies of the Philippines.
His current work focuses on addressing critical issues faced by the Filipino-Canadian community such as intergenerational language and cultural loss, liberation from the colonial mindset, equity, migration, and Tagalog language instruction for children.
