Peace Beloveds, I’m so excited to finally be able to tell you more about New World Haven and to share some visuals. Below is the first vnote I recorded about the project earlier this year. By sharing this background, I hope to help my community understand my motivations for visioning this project and my connection to NHV.
We are eager to engage with those of you who are as obsessed with New Haven as we are and with those who love visionary, aspirational Black storytelling.
The below voice note and transcripts recount the beginnings of my interest in the project, from how my relationship with New Haven begun to the people who led me to falling in love with the city 💙
If you’d like to be a part of the project, there are many ways to get involved. Leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to reach out to you.
You can also email nwhv@noirlabs.org for a quicker response. Local partnerships are our current priority.
Huge thanks to the Mellon Foundation & the New Haven Arts Council for funding this project.
Voice Note
New World Haven: In Divine Alignment
Ai Summary from Ai Vnote Transcript
Feb 18, 2024
Peace, peace, peace.
New World Haven is on my mind, and it wants to be discussed. The Spirit wants me to talk about it. If you’ve been keeping up, then you have heard of New World Haven.
It’s a project that I recently received notification of a grant for, and while the funding period has not yet begun, it’s exciting to think about its potential.
Though a small seed grant, this opportunity is incredibly worthwhile for us economically as it allows for the implementation of many revenue rivers, allowing us to shift from thinking of ourselves as just artists and creators to becoming astute revenue generators.
Falling in Love with New Haven
To give you a little background on how I came up with this idea, I moved to New Haven in 2017 to do my master’s at Yale, which was a significant move for me and my daughter. Leaving Black Brooklyn, the epicenter of Black creativity, for one of the peaks of whiteness was nerve-wracking, but I quickly fell in love with New Haven.
Yale’s beautiful architecture, green spaces, and the intentionality and art throughout the city captivated me. New Haven’s beauty and energetic vibe always lifted my mood, making it a place that felt like a little Brooklyn suburb—calmer, quieter, and cleaner, yet still vibrant and connected to New York.
Building Community and Future Vision
As a natural-born community builder, I sought out where the Black people congregated and, not finding it, created it. I focused on building community among African graduate students and Black Americans at Yale.
Hosting events like the Atlantic Brunch Series, where we celebrated different parts of the Black Diaspora, helped us connect meaningfully and foster a sense of belonging. My love for New Haven and its proximity to Brooklyn made it easy for me to fall in love with this place and want to tell its stories.
I met incredible people like Nadine Nelson and Ife-Michelle Gardin, who were the first to share with me the rich histories of Black New Haven. The goal of New World Haven is to tell New Haven’s most glorious, radical Black stories from the future’s perspective, involving the community in sharing their histories and visions for the future.
Join us on this joyous journey as we celebrate New Haven and its vibrant community.
Full Original Transcript (Vnote)
Introduction to New World Haven – Feb 18, 2024
Peace, peace, peace. I believe it’s recording now. Took a minute. How y’all doing today? New World Haven is on my mind. It wants to be discussed, to be talked about. Spirit wants me to talk about it. If you’ve been keeping up, then you have heard of New World Haven. It’s a project that I recently received notification of a grant. I haven’t gotten the grant funds yet. And just so y’all know, we are only allowed to pay ourselves a percentage of that money less than half, so as rich as I am in spirit, you know, the funds go to the execution. The majority of the funds go to execution, and they do encourage you to pay yourself something, so that’s awesome. But for me, it is a viable business opportunity even, right? Because we’re shifting from thinking of ourselves as just artists and creators, and we have to be business people, right? So why I saw the opportunity as worthwhile, even though it’s 20K for a one-year project, is because there are streams of potential revenue through the project.
Falling in Love with New Haven
So just to give you a little bit of background and insight into how I came up with this idea. I came to New Haven in 2017 to do my master’s at Yale, and it was a big move for me and my daughter. She had to go to my parents in Missouri for nine months, you know, for my first year. And, um, you know, I moved into the graduate dorms. I was like 30 years old—over 30 years old. And, um, it was, you know, it was awkward at first, right? It was like leaving black Brooklyn, the epicenter of black creativity, to come to, you know, one of the peaks of whiteness. And so that was very nerve-wracking, but I absolutely just was enamored with New Haven from the jump. And of course, Yale’s campus helps because, you know, I’m very into beautiful architecture. I’m very into green space. I’m just into beauty, you know, and design, intentionality, and art.
When you live in a place like New Haven where everything is beautiful, you know, everything’s intentional; it’s not perfect. It’s not like Morocco, but there is a lot of beauty in the architecture and design of the city. There’s a lot of ease and rest built into the city. It’s a beautiful place, and energetically, it’s really great. My daughter and I always say that every time we would come here, we would just, our mood would be lifted right after, you know, after we had left in 2019.
Building Community in New Haven
So I came to New Haven in 2017, did a master’s in African studies, and ran a lot of shit while I was here, right? I was looking for, as with any place I go, where the Black people congregate, where the cool, you know, forward-thinking, visionary, creative, you know, fun-loving, high-vibrational Black people congregate. And I didn’t find it. So I created it, right? A few different ways. So as an African grad student, I sought community with other African grad students, black and African diaspora, first generation, the whole thing. So for me, I get along with everybody. I get along with folks fresh off the continent. I get along with folks from here. I straddle my identities evenly, in a sense. And it was interesting because I noticed such a chasm between the different factions of blackness on campus. But I’ll talk about that more in the future.
All I have to say is that I fell in love with New Haven and got to work building community, particularly among African graduate students. Um, and even, you know, black Americans. So of course my closest friends were from here, right? The closest friends, the people I spent the most time with while I was at Yale, were from the States, you know, black folk, like radical folk. Right. But that is my gauge, right? The people you’re going to find me connecting with are more than likely going to be, um, thought leaders, you know, thinkers, innovators, right? Um, and radical ones at that, those who use their innovation skills to, you know, transform the experience of black people globally. Right.
Events and Community Engagement
So, um, you know, shout out to the Yale eating club and, you know, folks like Patrice and, and social and sociology and others that I spent a good amount of time with. And then, you know, there were African students, like, SOM, you know, congregation, right? Anyway, it was easy to build community in New Haven, in a sense, because there was, you know, there was a generosity of space on campus, right? But even outside of campus, you know, DJ Cash was willing to work with us, right? Was happy to work with us, really. So it was easy to throw parties, you know? It was easy to collaborate with restaurants, you know. Of course, I really want to do business with Yale, right? So it puts you in a really interesting position when you’re a student at the university you have university funds to buy food with, right? So I got busy. We hosted Busy; we hosted some mixers; we did the Atlantic brunch series, which I might want to bring back with this project. We’ll project we’ll see the Atlantic brunch series; we would bring food from different distinct parts of the black diaspora, and we would learn about the cultures in those two places.
You always met a friend; you know, everybody would come and meet new friends and connect meaningfully. And yeah, and just feel more connected to the community. And so that has always been a key part of the medicine that I seek to put into the world. And we had these events, which put me in contact and, you know, in community and connection with a lot of different people around campus and around the city. And it just made me feel very comfortable here. The fact that it was easy to build community, that people were supportive of building community, and there was just tremendous opportunity to do so. So, as a natural-born community builder and community organizer, I do it in many different ways, right? But someone who experiences life in that way, Black folk in New Haven, were very interesting to me. I got a very little taste of Black New Haven while I was in my two years at Yale because the bubble does keep you locked in, so you don’t really see what’s out there as much as you would like.
Reflections and Future Vision
But I did get to experience some of Jason’s events, and they were pretty much it. That was pretty much the highlight. He threw the Harvard-Yale party the year that it was in New Haven. It was a big party, a big success. DJ was terrible, but you know. If you were around for Hybrid Yale 2017, stand up, because you know that DJ was a ratchet. But anyway, it was still a great time regardless. So I got to go to some of Jason’s stuff, and he had some really interesting, creative ways of bringing folks together. And then there was a program at Dwight Hall where I got to meet Nadine and Ife. Michelle Gardin and Tom Ficklin, you know? So it was like, everybody I interacted with from Black New Haven was like, pretty dope, you know? And I was like, y’all are very interesting.
Being that I felt really at home in New Haven, just energetically and architecturally, you know, I said to a friend recently, like, somebody said to me actually, that it was like a little, like a mini Brooklyn. And on the soft side, like, you know, but there’s something about New Haven that feels like a Brooklyn suburb. It feels like a calmer, quieter, cleaner, you know, Brooklyn suburb. Maybe like a Ditmas Park, kind of on the edge of the, you know, the internationality. So I love that about this place. It really does. And to know that I could just get on the train and go to Brooklyn at any time, it’s a lot. You know, it’s like easy to just pop in and out.
But if you have to actually spend the night, considering how big my caravan needs to be because I’m a queen and all that, you know, it’s not fun, you know, taking a train and having to go from Uber to Union Station, you know, train to Grand Central, standing outside in the cold waiting for it. You know, the four from Grand Central to Crown Heights, whatever, whatever. I would like a bullet train right to the heart of Crown Heights. Hello. Can I get on the train at Dixwell Plaza or freaking Hamden Plaza or Yale and just be in Brooklyn in like 20 minutes? Like, I would love that. Yo, anything is possible, y’all.
So anyway, it’s my love for New Haven and its proximity to New York and Brooklyn, especially that, that made it easy for me to fall in love with this place. And, um, made it really exciting for me to, like, tell the stories of this place, right? I hear so many rich stories. I always have to shout out Yvette Michelle because, like, the little gems that she drops. And there’s so many people, Nadine; there’s so many people who know about this place. And there’s just such rich histories, and you’re always finding out new things. For me, it usually adds up to, like, my daughter just entered the car. It usually adds up to…
Black radical tradition Hello, and you know that’s my church, so when I hear about black people getting radical and getting froggy with it, I want to know what was going on. I want to hear the story, so those are the stories you know a lot of y’all that I’ve reached out to. If you’ve heard about you know the project, like we’re going to talk, I want to hear you have if you have rich New Haven histories come pull up pull up.
I think this will be like what the events are for. Maybe we could film y’all sharing different New Haven histories at these events. You know, I’m still ideating. So whatever ideas or whatever you think, I would love to hear from you. But really, the goal is to tell New Haven’s most glorious, most beautiful, most radical black stories in a way that and, you know, in a way that’s told from the future. One by, you know, some young characters that are living in the New Haven of the future. Hello. What does the New Haven of the future look like to you? I want to hear from you. Yeah. Told from that perspective. Right.
And so that’s really what I know right now. But we’re going to have at least a few events. Right. And so I’d love to partner with y’all on the events. If you’re listening to this, there are a few places that I’ve already identified. Shout out to Possible Futures. Lauren helped my application. Love you. Love you. Love you. Thank you so much. Shout out to Alicia of Bloom. Shout out to Miss Adriane Jefferson herself. Shout out to Ife Michelle of Elm City Lit Fest. These are all the folks who helped me get my application through in like less than a week, y’all. It was crazy. So I love y’all so much and thank you so much.
But yeah, we’re going to be having events, and we’re figuring out the details of it all, but it’s going to be a joyous journey. I invite you to join and to follow along, especially check out the other artists too, because I’m going to link to the announcement. Everybody’s name except, I think, for one is linked. I’m still learning about them. I’m really, like, finding out really amazing things. Shout out to Black Excellency. And shout out to Nora. They’re the two profiles I’ve been able to, like, go deep into. But, yeah, that’s what it is. I want to keep this nice and, you know, brief. But I love y’all. Thank you for listening. Thank you for all your support. And yeah, we’re going to make it. All right, get on the portal. PortalX.space. Love you. Peace.
