Ananse Center for Arts and Culture
Central Region of Ghana, West Africa
In early 2024, a group of artists, cultural organizers, teaching artists, educators, and cultural workers led by CCSS LLC founder, Dr. Herukhuti, began the creation of a cultural and creative arts institution in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa, the Ananse Center for Arts and Culture.
Informed by their experiences using the power of the arts and culture to inspire, empower, heal, form community, and make meaning in transformative ways, the group–transformative leader, decolonial organizational scientist, and artist-education, H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams, PhD, theatre maker, educator, and arts administrator, Courtney Bryan Devon (Theatre of Hunger), creatix of Gastrointestinal Epigenetic Somatic Theory (GEST) and performance polymath, Bryanna Bradley (Theatre of Hunger), and singer-songwriter, ecotourism autodidact, and hospitality industry professional, Jamal Baker–is building the Ananse Center on land stewarded by Williams Family, recently obtained as part of the family’s repatriation.
The significance of this effort can not be underestimated when considering the structural violence and socioeconomic vulnerability that each member of the team experiences as Black artists, cultural organizers, teaching artists, educators, and cultural workers in the settler-colonialism, white supremacy, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy of the United States.
The Land and Center
Present day Ghana, West Africa is home to a rich, complex cultural and social fabric and history weaved together by various groups including the Akan people. In addition to the indigenous forces that have contributed to Ghana’s legacy, European colonialism and the transatlantic slaving trade had a significant impact upon the people and the land. A reported 30 million Africans were kidnapped and enslaved by Europeans during the transatlantic slave trade with an estimated 14.4% of which not surviving the trip across the Atlantic due to the horrible conditions. This experience changed the people who were taken and the families and communities they left behind.
Many of the enslaved were taken from or were transported through Ghana. Land in the Central Region of the country is marked with reminders of this historic violence in the form of forts used to warehouse enslaved people on the way to markets in the Americas. The Williams Family was one such Akan family whose members were kidnapped and brought to the United States to endure centuries of racial terror and violence. On a study tour in December 2024, Dr. Herukhuti received an ancestral call to repatriate matrilineal family members back to Akan territory. Consistent with their philosophy of cultural organizing, Dr. Herukhuti saw this return as an opportunity to build a bridge for descendants of Africa who made it to the Americas and those who were left behind to renew their bonds with each other and give birth to a liberatory, Afrofuturist form of life and community.
Located in the Central Region, The Ananse Center will be a cultural and creative arts center and school NGO (i..e, non-government organization/non-profit) for professional training and career education in the cultivation, preservation, education, and development of the cultural and creative arts (e.g., performing arts, visual arts, musical arts, culinary arts, martial arts, textile arts, folk arts, etc.) develop by people of African ancestry.
The mission of the Ananse Center is to promote the unification and liberation of all African people through cultural and creative arts as restorative practices. By drawing upon the cultural and historical knowledge in the region as well as its proximity to various sites of significance to the Diaspora in Ghana (e.g., colonial slaving forts and the River of the Last Bath), the Center will be a place where descendants of Africans enslaved in the Americas and Africans colonized in West Africa use cultural and creative arts to heal the intergenerational traumas of colonialism and slavery and learn how to be cousins again.
The Timeline
December 2023-January 2024 – A Sankofa Journey and the Ancestral Call
Dr. Herukhuti participates in 10-day study tour of Ghana led by Dr. Clinton Crawford of Sankofa World Tours with in country guide Yaw Augustine Simpson of Afro City Tours and receives the ancestral call of repatriation.
January 2024 – Returning with Purpose
Upon returning, Dr. Herukhuti gathers family, loved ones, and community members to share the story of the Ghana trip and the call to repatriate. Williams Family meets and decides to support the answer of the ancestral call.
April 2024 – Forming Community and Finding Land in Ghana
Dr. Herukhuti and Courtney Bryan Devon spend 3 weeks in Ghana building relationships with Ghanaian artists, entrepreneurs, chiefs/queen mothers/nanas and looking for land to for repatriation and locate the Ananse Center.
With the help of Yaw Simpson, they find land and negotiate a long-term lease (land can not be bought or sold in Ghana because culturally land is an ancestral relationship) with a local chief/nana in the Central Region.
September 2024 – Making a Way Back to the Motherland
Williams Family obtains lease and takes responsibility for holding the land in good relationship.
Dr. Herukhuti, Courtney Bryan Devon, Bryanna Bradley, and Jamal Baker hold first fundraising event to support the project.
Dr. Herukhuti begins the process of incorporating the Center as a non-profit/non-governmental organization and forms board of directors for the Ananse Center.
The Community Call
If you would like to support the development of the Center or know someone who would, please complete the form below. Join this important, transformative effort and participate in the work to repair the centuries-long harm that the colonialism and slavery have done to Black families on both sides of the Atlantic.
Until the Ananse Center is formally incorporated, the Center for Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality LLC will collect funds for the project. You can give funds to make the project come alive through PayPal by clicking this link. or by subscribing to Dr. Herukhuti’s page on Patreon for updates about the project and other behind-the-scenes content. Contributions are not tax-deductible at this time.
And keep checking here for future updates.
Medasee paa/Thank you very much.
