Cultural Initiative

Rooted Spaces

Cultural gatherings that nourish body, soul and spirit through community, joy, creativity, and connection.

Photo Credit: Donna Lyons Photography

Where Culture &
Justice Meet

Rooted Spaces is our creativity and community culture initiative that honours the truth that liberation requires more than strategy; it requires joy, community, and spiritual grounding.

Through faith, poetry, dance, and music gatherings, we create spaces where creativity and Black joy is centred, cultural traditions are honoured, and communities can heal, dream and work cohesively together.

These gatherings are not separate from our justice work—they ARE justice work. They are acts of resistance, celebration, hope and collective care.

Our Gatherings

Dance

Movement as medicine, resistance, and joy. Our dance gatherings celebrate African diasporic dance traditions—from West African dance to hip hop to contemporary—they are embodied expressions of freedom.

These sessions honour the body as a site of knowledge, trauma, and healing. Dance becomes a practice of reclaiming our bodies from systems that seek to control and oppress them and a way to express and dwell in joy.

Poetry

Spoken word gatherings where stories are shared, truths are spoken, and shared language becomes a tool for liberation. We create brave spaces for poets to centre and amplify the work and creativity of Global Majority poets.

Following in the tradition of Black radical poets, we use verse to name injustice, imagine futures, and connect across difference.

Music

Live music events celebrating the genius of Black musical traditions—jazz, blues, gospel, R&B, Afrobeat, and more. Music as soundtrack to movement, communion, and collective memory.

We gather to listen, create, and remember that music has always been central to our survival and our joy. From spirituals to protest songs, music carries our history forward.