The Black Thought Project creates spaces where Black people feel safe to express our love, experiences and visions for the world we want to live in.
We collaborate with communities to Center Blackness in public. Our interactive, community-based art installations engage people from a place of joy, healing and possibility.
Centering Blackness is everyone’s work. We all have a role to play to ensure Black people can move through the world safely and live in our fullness. The Black Thought Project trains and invites people who are not Black to protect, witness and honor Black people and our sacred spaces of expression.
We are committed to Centering Blackness in public, with our bodies, in our communities, in real time. The Black Thought Project has partnered with community organizations across the U.S. to facilitate transformative experiences.
impact Report
Lessons in Centering Blackness.
In 2019, Alicia Walters created this simple experiment, The Black Thought Project, with a big vision: to make the world a sanctuary for Black thought, Black expression, Black people. And in so doing, eradicating the anti-blackness that lives in our minds, bodies, relationships, cultures, and structures so we may all live liberated.
“I wanted nonBlack people to practice protecting Black people and our sacred experiences FIRST. To see what it feels like to witness themselves in an environment where they are not the center, to honor and see themselves in relationship to Blackness— Black joy, pain, dreams, desires— without the need to co-opt, pathologize, stifle, or make it in any way about them. And from that place, to listen and learn what Black folx think about who we are, where we are and where we want to be as a society, to uncover power narratives and solutions that put Black people’s humanity, wellness, and visions at the center.
In just 4 years, I have done all that and then some. And we’re just getting started. The Black Thought Project has activated 15 Black Thought Walls in 4 cities across the U.S., in deep partnership with over 25 organizations, engaging thousands of people of all races, and documenting over 1,500 responses from Black people.”