THE AIEJ PROJECTS
Accra, London, New York
We use storytelling as a tool and a strategy towards structural change.
With Emotional Justice, we define storytelling as ‘contemporary lived experience within a global historical context centering race and gender.’
NOVEMBER 2020 – MARCH 2023
THE BLACK FRONTLINE
USA, UK, GHANA
The Black Frontline is the largest oral history project of global Black doctors and nurses. It is an Emotional Justice project that engages black digital humanities. Co-directed with Dr. Kim Gallon, COVID Black, The AIEJ leads a global team across the US, the UK and Ghana. We gathered more than 300 stories as part of the first draft of COVID that centers the lived experience and the lens of global Black healthcare workers. The Black Frontline project centers storytelling as part of our strategy to shape a future healthcare sector of equity and empathy.
The Black Frontline’s institutional home is Department of Africana Studies, Brown University, and was funded by The Skoll Foundation and Mellon Foundation,
It will be launched on the third anniversary of COVID 19’s entry into our lives, March 2023.
To listen to the stories, access the User Guide and resources go to: www.theblackfrontline.org.
2023 – 2028
HEALING HARM, HEEDING HISTORY
This is an Emotional Justice project on global racial healing across the Continent and the diaspora. It engages drum, dramatization and dialogue.
This project’s focus:-
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Intergenerational dialogue
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Notions of Belonging
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Narratives of Power
THE HISTORY
History is about more than dates, information and statistics; history is about silence and absence, how the information that is not shared shapes, influences, and hurts even if the mission is healing and protection.
THE HARM
Harm is not solely about the history that shapes us, it is about the toll of this history of oppressive systems, and how that toll manifests in how we see ourselves and each other; and how that seeing manifests in how we lead, work, learn. We engage ritual to identify harm, ancestral tradition of the talking drum mixed with the Emotional Justice framework to develop ‘the healing drum, as part of a process to engage a cleansing after identifying the toll and its havoc.
THE HEALING
Healing is process and practice; it is each demographic doing our emotional work of unlearning the language of whiteness, and learning the Emotional Justice love languagesto create humanity-centered cultures.
the 1952 project™
On Empire & Colonialism
Loss : Legacy : Grief : Healing
Africa: The Caribbean: England
2022-2024
'the 1952 project' identifies, explores, examines and interrogates the toll of Empire and Colonialism on who we – Black and white – became, and how that becoming shapes how we – Black and white - see ourselves and each other, how that seeing shapes an identity – a national, cultural, and personal identity. The 1952 project's focus will be Africa, the Caribbean and England. The project is named for the year the Queen's reign began. Her death in September 2022 marks the end of her reign, and offers crucial space to embark on this racial healing project.
The 1952 project has four themes: Loss, Legacy, Grief, Healing. The project's aim is to center the narrative of the colonized, and their descendants, name the loss, legacy, grief of Empire and Colonialism, for the purpose of beginning an emotional reckoning, and to begin a racial healing. The death of the Queen ignited wall to wall coverage, and a vicious backlash against those who rejected privileging the Queen and her white family’s narrative over that of the colonized and their descendants’ narrative. While Colonialism and Empire has fallen, the legacy remains – one major element of that legacy is the emotional connection that centers a language of whiteness. The emotional collapse of Empire and Colonialism severs this connection, centralizes the colonized and their descendants, and initiates our healing, by articulating the truth of this legacy and its deadly lie of white supremacy that permeates Africa, the Caribbean and England.
The wall to wall coverage whitewashes history, disappears Colonialism’s brutality, absolves itself, and diminishes the history and lived experience of the colonized, and their descendants. Healing requires undoing harm, undoing harm requires naming, identifying legacy, toll, and truth of those colonized and their descendants.
The 1952 Project is created to become an educational tool, an Emotional Justice resource to expand knowledge and understanding about Empire and Colonialism via a narrative that decenters whiteness.. It will be mixed media: Podcast, Essays, Theatre and Music. It is in partnership with The Radical Books Collective and will feature the work, creativity, stories of Educators, Scholars, Journalists, Artists, Musicians, and Writers. The 1952 Project is inspired by The 1619 Project by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.
#the1952project
BROTHERHOODS of BECOMING™
US, UK, GHANA
2019 -
This is our global Black masculinity and healing project. It invites and engages Black men to do their emotional work and create a masculinity of safety, empathy and accountability using Emotional Justice.
It has the following elements:-
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WITNESS
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Sex & The African Man
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Vision & Vulnerability
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I AM UNLEARNING
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2022 GHANA
WITNESS
50 Men : 50 Stories : 50 Interviews
November 19th 2022
Fifty men from across Greater Accra and Takoradi in the Western Region share, reveal and highlight what violence they witnessed by men towards women, and how what they witnessed shaped their masculinity and impacted them as men. The findings from the powerful and moving exchanges are for WITNESS, a masculinity project in Ghana.
The partner organizations for the oral history gathering was Life Relief Foundation in Takoradi and for the presentation of the project findings via visual graphics and text, Viz 4 Gender.
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2021 GHANA
SEX & THE AFRICAN MAN
CONSENT, CULTURE, PATRIARCHY, PLEASURE
November 19th 2021
This project explores what African men learned about consent, from whom, and how what they learned shapes their ides of sex, power, their bodies and women’s bodies. It explores the silence among men about sex, and its toll on men, and the power of permission.
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2020 USA
Emotional Justice 4 Black Men – Vision and Vulnerability
November 19th 2020 International Men’s Day.
In Emotional Justice 4 Black men we explore the toll of the trauma on Black men in America.
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2019 GHANA
#IAmUNLEARNING
I AM UNLEARNING
This project engaged with Ghanaian men to Reimagine power, Unlearn silence, Reckon with aggression as part of the global movement to end sexual and gender-based violence in Ghana. The focus is to shift national dialogue on African masculinity.
This project was in partnership with The Safe Space Foundation, White Ribbon Ghana, and EAA Media Productions.
2019 NEW YORK
the STAYED and the STOLEN
Black Portraitures [V]: Memory and the Archive - Past, Present, Future
New York University
'the STAYED and the STOLEN' is a multidisciplinary project exploring the relationship between Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora with African-Americas and Black people in the Diaspora via mixed media, video, podcast, and panel.
Part I: the STAYED and the STOLEN video project featured Dr. Joan Morgan and Dr. Treva B. Lindsey. It was presented at Black Portraitures [V] followed by a panel featuring Dr. Joan Morgan.
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2016 NEW YORK
The Emotional Justice Summit
This is an annual summit that focuses on a targeted demographic for reimagining our healing, developing our emotional literacy in order to lead, love, build, engage and organize more sustainably and impactfully.
The 2016 Summit featured: Dr Brittney Cooper, Joan Morgan, asha Bandele.
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#IAmBecomingGH: Ghana 2019
Inspired by USA Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s best-selling book ‘BECOMING’, we organized an event ‘theLword’: and gathered women in Ghana from myriad sectors to reimagine leadership. From there, we created this video project, in answer to Michelle Obama’s call to women globally: WHO ARE YOU BECOMING?
African Women in Media Conference: KENYA 2019
EAA Media Productions was a Panelist on the ‘From #MeToo to #TimesUpGH Sexual Harassment & Global Movements’ panel featuring journalists and organizations from Kenya, America, Ghana and Tanzania. #AWiM19 partners with The African Union to hold an annual conference bringing together African women in media.
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#16DaysOfActivism : Africa’s Media Houses, 2019
#TimesUpAfriMedia was the multi-media campaign led by EAA Media Productions in partnership with collectives, coalitions, journalists in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania for the annual United Nations #16DaysOfActivism focused on gender-based violence. The campaign focus: call out sexual harassment in Africa’s media houses, highlight the impact of sexual harassment on the industry, on progress, and on reporting.
EAA Media Productions partnered with Media Council of Kenya, Association of Women in Media Kenya (AMWiK); Biola Alabi Media Nigeria; African Women in Media (AWiM); and Tanzania Women in Media and Public Relations Professionals (TWMPR).
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International Day of the GIRLCHILD: Ghana 2017
‘state of the ZONGO MUSLIM GIRL CHILD in EDUCATION’ is the 90 minute live, radio discussion special organized and produced by EAA Media Productions for the UN’s International Day of the Girl Child on 11th October. It aired on Starr FM103.5, Accra.
It featured a panel of Muslim young women aged 18 – 30 discussing the challenges, influences, issues, barriers to Education in their Community. In Ghana, Zongo Muslim Girls and women are the marginalized of the marginalized.
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STORIES, STANDARDS, SEX - THE MEDIA SUMMIT : Ghana 2016 & 2017
reimagine: stories, standards, sex' is the two-year Media Summit created by EAA Media Productions, and held at Webster University. This industry-wide, interactive, debut media summit had a specific focus on gender and the reporting of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) by the industry, as well as sexual harassment within the industry. Panelists and attendees were Journalists (TV, Radio, Online, Print), Editors, Camerapersons, Producers, Communications Students, Hosts, and Media Communications faculty.
2016: Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV): Reporting It, Experiencing It, Naming and Narrative
2017: Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV): The Power and Peril of Online Reporting
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International Day of Action Against Illicit Drug Taking : Ghana, 2017
Ghana Drug Reform Policy was explored for the June 2017 International Day of Action Against Illicit Drug Taking. EAA Media Productions led a global team that featured West Africa Drug Policy Network; West African Civil Society Institute, Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) and produced a multi-media project of radio discussions, visual graphics and in print articles.
EAA Media Productions produced 5 x 1 HOUR specials on Drug Reform Policy in Ghana.
Executive Producer: EAA Media Productions
Host: Moro Awudu
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#finePRINTfriday : Ghana, 2017 to 2018
This one-year visual conversation project was a celebration and discussion of African print, fabric as identity, heritage, history, status, aesthetic and community. It mixed video, stills and podcasts. #finePRINTfriday was in partnership with Class FM radio station, Accra. It featured African print scholars alongside designers, buyers and fashionistas. The discussion aired on Class FM Radio, Accra and ABN Radio UK, the still images were featured across social media – on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Every Friday in Ghana, we rock print. EAA Media Productions has engaged that day to create this visual conversation project.
ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Rock your print, snap a selfie, post it/tweet it/IG it with the hashtag, your name and your location in the world.
ON AIR: ACCRA - tune in to Class 91.3FM 8.10am for discussions with Cultural Historians, Fashion Designers. Artists, Politicians, Celebrities
ON AIR: LONDON - tune in to ABN Radio UK 9.10am. #finePRINTfriday is an internationally syndicated radio segment on air in ACCRA & LONDON.
PODCAST: check out #podcastGHANA for #finePRINTfriday discussions.
Follow #finePRINTfriday on IG.
