Do you remember what it was like to be at peace? To live freely without fear of racist violence, no longer displaced or confined by the whims of prejudice, politics of apartheid, or economics of capitalism? The memories of freedom and peace our ancestors deposited into the DNA we carry are still there waiting for us to access them.

The American empire is crumbling and expanding at the same time, with Black people still among its most vulnerable. What will help us survive this evolution? Where can we find safety? All the while, Africa is on the verge of a continental restructuring. By bringing together Black folks across the Continent with their Diasporic cousins, we hope to not only answer those questions, but discover even more fundamentally–how can we restore the bonds destroyed by centuries of attack and decay, to rebuild our communities?

On a study tour in December of 2023, while visiting the dungeons used to hold the enslaved in a fort on the shore of Cape Coast, Ghana, our founder, Nana Dr. H. Kojo Herukhuti Sharif Williams, was contacted by two ancestors. “Bring our family back home,” they said. Nana Kojo, a respected artist, cultural organizer, scholar, and educator born and raised in a Pan African household in Brooklyn, New York, recognized this ancestral charge as a call to build a place where Black folks of the African Diaspora could come together with continental Africans and learn to be cousins again. 

It begins with Ananse—the wise, trickster spider of West African folklore—who spun webs not only to catch food, but to weave wisdom, connection, and survival. Ananse taught us that stories can heal, that culture is resistance, and that transformation begins with imagination. Nana Kojo saw Ananse as the perfect inspiration for an institution that would use arts and culture as tools for cultural organizing and healing. Inspired by Ananse, Nana Kojo spun our name into existence–the Ananse Center for Arts and Culture.

In 2024, he returned to Ghana twice across a total of 6 weeks, fueled by his own resources, to look for a suitable location for this historic institution and build relationships with; artists, artisans, creatives, cultural organizers, farmers, salt miners, fish purveyors, priests, weavers, educators, scholars, business owners, and tribal Chiefs and Queen Mothers across the country (including Accra, Akatakyiwa, Akosombo, Bogyawe, Bonwire, Cape Coast, Elmina, and Kumasi). On his final trip that year, he signed an agreement with the Chief of Akatakyiwa for a traditional 50-year lease on 2 acres of undeveloped, tribal land in the village and received the Chief’s invitation to join the community as a member.  Upon returning to the United States, Nana Kojo formed the Trustee Circle, the governing board of the Ananse Center for Arts and Culture.

We have been meeting twice a month since December 2024 to build our working relationships and take the next steps in giving birth to Nana Kojo’s vision. In March of 2025, after analyzing the conditions in the United States–rising fascism, authoritarianism, economic inequality, and white supremacy–and in West Africa–rising decoloniality, Pan Africanism, and focus on the arts as tools for liberation, we decided that Nana Kojo should return to Ghana sooner rather than later to oversee the next phase of the Ananse Center’s development.  

We are utilizing this initial $30,000 crowdfunding campaign to support Nana Kojo’s relocation to Ghana. The time is now, and we need your help to get Nana Kojo back to Ghana. This is not merely a building project. It is a living, breathing web of possibility. Words uttered by a distant ancestor have set in motion an initiative to bridge the gap between those lost to the demands of slavery and those left behind to face the pressures of colonialism. 

The Ananse Center, stewarded by Nana Kojo, aims to reconnect artists of the Continent and the Diaspora by way of transformative artmaking. How can we come together, imagine, and in turn, create a new way of being? A vision of freedom? Service has been handed down to Nana Kojo through generations, and has materialized as this place, a place where storytellers and griots of all mediums can come together, and think through how we, individually and collaboratively, contribute to the liberation of all Black people. The time has come to restore our family tree, and the Ananse Center hopes to be a central root.

We invite you to join us in bringing the Ananse Center for Arts and Culture to life—a sacred and creative space where Black artists, visionaries, and cultural organizers from around the world will gather to co-create, learn, and collaborate.

Every contribution is a strand of the web. Every dollar builds more than walls—it builds freedom, memory, and legacy.

We are asking you to donate today and help us spin this dream into reality.

Together, let’s build the Ananse Center for Arts and Culture. Let’s build a home for our stories, our healing, and our future.

Because when spiders unite, they can tie down a lion.

With gratitude and vision as web weavers,
The Trustee Circle of Ananse Center for Arts and Culture

Kenyatta Andrews, Treasurer

Norma Harris, PhD, Chair

Nefertiti Macaulay, Member

J. Christopher Ifadadefumi Fasanmi Neal, Vice Chair

Renee Redding-Jones, Secretary

Nana H. Kojo Herukhuti Sharif Williams, PhD, Founder and CEO