Projects
Our projects take African ancestral tradition and modernize it for contemporary audiences. We fuse theatre, oral history, journalism, and story-telling. Our approach is collaborative and creative, and brings Emotional Justice to life through narratives that create connections to unfamiliar worlds as part of our work towards systems-change.
Our flagship project is:
HEALING HARM | HEEDING HISTORY is our project series.
Those four words – ‘healing harm, heeding history’ - reflect our project focus. You cannot heal a harm you do not name, nor heed a history you do not know.
We call it ‘the 4 H’s’ – and our lens leans into the intersection between them. While numbers provide information, narrative offers connection – and our focus is to mainstream connection to unfamiliar worlds. It is here that our storytelling as a strategy for systems change emerges.
Our projects break-down the 4 Hs using the Emotional Justice framework, creating multi-media immersive experiences.
HEALING HARM | HEEDING HISTORY is imagined, designed, and delivered as paths of connection, contribution, and support to serve you in doing your emotional work.
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.
THE HEALING
Healing generations of trauma requires a process turned practice. These multi-media projects do not have shelf-lives, they are designed to be engaged, returned to, harnessed again, and again, and again – that is a path of healing for a practice with Emotional Justice.
THE FOCUS
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Intergenerational global Black women
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Global Black masculinity
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Africa-Diaspora relations & connections
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Health equity
THE THEMES:
Loss | Legacy | Leadership | Grief | Growth | Power | Untreated Trauma |
THE PROJECTS
Drum | Dramatization | Dialogue
LOATAD (Library of Africa & The African Diaspora)
Ghana
With sponsorhip from, and in partnership with Ghana Tourism Authority, Beyond the Return Secretariat, The African American Association of Ghana, The Ghana Caribbean Association and Ahaspora, we brought together global Black people to explore and engage ‘Black-on-Black healing’. September is global Black-on-Black healing month, and this event launched the month.
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WITNESS: 50 men | 50 interviews
Accra & Takoradi
Ghana
Fifty men from across Greater Accra and Takoradi in the Western Region shared, revealed and highlighted what violence they witnessed by men towards women, and how what they witnessed shaped their masculinity and impacted them as men.
What is the toll of trauma as a Black man in America during pandemic lockdown, and how did loneliness, leadership and loss shape, change or create growth?
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SEX & THE AFRICAN MAN
Consent | Culture | Patriarchy | Pleasure
Accra
Ghana
How did Ghanaian men learn about consent, from whom, and how has what they learned shaped their ides of sex, power, their bodies and women’s bodies?We engage with Ghanaian men to explore these questions, the power of permission, the silence among men about sex and its toll.
Reimagine power, unlearn silence, reckon with aggression is our focus as we work to shift the national dialogue on masculinity in Ghana. This was in partnership with The Safe Space Foundation, White Ribbon Ghana, and EAA Media Productions.
THE BLACK FRONTLINE
USA | UK | GHANA
an oral history project of global Black doctors and nurses
THE BLACK FRONTLINE is the largest oral history project of global Black doctors and nurses. It is our harm, healing and health equity project that was born out of the pandemic to shape the future of healthcare with empathy and equity.
PART 1: The Storytelling
PART 2: The Launch
PART 1
We gathered 300 stories – 100 from the US, 100 from the UK, and 100 from Ghana building a global team of site managers in the three countries.
To listen to the stories, and learn more about the project: www.theblackfrontline.org.
PART 2
The Black Frontline was launched globally in the US and the UK.
US: The first part of the launch was at Brown University, the Department of Africana Studies.
UK: The second part of the launch was at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. We then held an audio exhibition and panel at London’sHQ of Royal College of Nurses, the world’s largest nursing union. St. Bartholomew, known as ‘Barts’, is an international teaching hospital, and part of Barts NHS Health Trust.
