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 music where his research focuses on studying Filipino-Canadian musical life and 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. 

Dion founded the Kitchener-Waterloo Centre for Filipino-Canadian Music, Language, and Culture, also known as KW Sentro in 2023, and currently serves as the Executive and Artistic Director of the organization. Dion’s conducting training has allowed him to use his leadership skills in a variety of different contexts from directing group singing and choral programming at Our Place Community of Hope, a mental health drop-in centre, to conducting children’s choirs like the Hamilton Children’s Choir and the Kitchener-Waterloo Filipino Children’s Choir. As an Ontario Certified Teacher (OCT), Dion has taught K-8 elementary music, piano and voice in private studios, and currently works as a teaching assistant for undergraduate music education courses at Wilfrid Laurier University.

His aim with KW Sentro is to deliver high-quality cultural programming to his community by way of the inaugural Filipino Cultural Gathering and Symposium on May 11-12, 2024. 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.